of the new season, if thou art the first to turn thy lancelike buds into blossoms and leaves, their delicate raiment will be torn by the rough blows of the trees that have been slower to put forth leaves and flowers." And the proud and melancholy spirit that was shut up within the great Druidical oak spoke to its tree with peculiar insistence: "And wilt thou, too, seek to join the universal love-feast, thou whose noble branches have been broken by the storm?" Thus, in the enchanted forest, mutual distrust drove back the sap, and prolonged the death-like winter even after the call of spring. What happened at last? By what mysterious influence was the grim charm broken? Did some tree find the courage to act alone, like those April poplars that break into a shower of verdure, and give from afar the signal for a renewal of all life? Or did a warmer and more life-giving beam start the sap moving in all the trees at once? For lo! in a single day the whole forest burst forth into a magnificent flowering of joy and peace. BY MICAH (Hebrew prophet, B. C. 700) HE shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it. BOOK XII Country The higher patriotism; the duty of man to his country as seen from the point of view of those who would make the country the parent and friend of all who dwell in it. 38 Dur Country (Read July 4, 1888) BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (New England Quaker poet, 1807-1892; a prominent antislavery advocate) WE give thy natal day to hope, O country of our love and prayer! Thy way is down no fatal slope, Tried as by furnace fires, and yet By God's grace only stronger made, Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid. Great, without seeking to be great Of virtue which thy children hold. With peace that comes of purity, O land of lands! to thee we give The New Freedom BY WOODROW WILSON (President of the United States, born 1856. The following is from his campaign speeches, 1912) ARE RE we preserving freedom in this land of ours, the hope of all the earth? Have we, inheritors of this continent and of the ideals to which the fathers consecrated it, have we maintained them, realizing them, as each generation must, anew? Are we, in the consciousness that the life of man is pledged to higher levels here than elsewhere, striving still to bear aloft the standards of liberty and hope; or, disillusioned and defeated, are we feeling the disgrace of having had a free field in which to do new things and of not having done them? The answer must be, I am sure, that we have been in a fair way of failure,-tragic failure. And we stand in danger of utter failure yet, except we fulfil speedily the determination we have reached, to deal with the new and subtle tyrannies according to their deserts. Don't deceive yourselves for a moment as to the power of the great interests which now dominate our development. They are so great that it is almost an open question whether the government of the United States can dominate them or not. Go one step further, make their organized power permanent, and it may be too late to turn back. The roads diverge at the point where we stand. |