Through the ages this Common Man has been building like the coral insect—silently, secretly, steadily, strongly. History has little to say about him or his work, and that little misleading; the historians have been unable to get away from courts and battlefields and the legislation halls where fierce but futile and evanescent class struggles rage. But the real story of the past of the human race as an interpreter and prophet of the future is the story of the building of the coral continent founded broadly and deeply upon freedom and justice, upon Intelligence and Democracy. And now at last this continent of enduring civilization begins to emerge not here and there, not merely above the ebbtides of ignorance and tyranny, but everywhere and for all time.
Let us read the past aright. Its departed civilizations are not a gloomy warning, but a bright promise. If limited intelligence in a small class produced such gleams of glory in the black sky of history, what a day must be now dawning!
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.