Governor Whitman of New York, in a recent address at Mount Holyoke College, quoted these beautiful words of Phillips Brooks, "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks."
Our great task is to preserve this nation and its splendid ideals, so sacredly handed down to us by martyr-heroes. Our children must be taught that the task is great, whether peace or war befall us, but that God can impart the wisdom and courage to perform it, and hand it down unimpaired to their descendants.
Frederick the Great was brought up to be courageous, but his was chiefly the courage of battle.
"Frederick the Great," said Mr. James W. Gerard, our late Ambassador to Germany, in a recent address, "is the hero and model of Germany. His example, coupled with the teaching of Germany's leading philosophers, has built up that ideal of force and dominion which has been the undoing of that great nation. This ideal must be entirely demolished before they can ever resume that place in the brotherhood of nations, to which their gifts and attainments entitle them."
As a model, Frederick the Great is repugnant to the soul of America. We may not all be Christians, but the claim that we are a Christian nation is justified by the fact that our ideals are the ideals of Christianity,—of justice toward all, of the love of mercy, of equality of opportunity for all, and of fraternity among men, of all races and creeds. Peace is one of the grandest things on earth; but, as Dean Howard Robbins reminds us, it is only a means to an end,—namely, this end: the coming of the kingdom of God. If war is required for this end, then we must for a time sacrifice peace.
CHAPTER IX
THE PATRIOT'S RELIGION AND IDEALS
Who seeks and loves the company of great
Ideals, and moves among them, soon or late
Will learn their ways and language, unaware
Take on their likeness.
—President Samuel V. Cole.