We, who
have so long been eager in the pursuit and accumulation of riches, are
now to show more generous energies in the free spending of our means
to gain the invaluable objects for which we have gone to war. There is
nothing disheartening in this prospect. Our people, accustomed as they
have been during late years to the most lavish use of money, and to
general extravagance in expense, have not yet lost the tradition of the
economies and thrift of earlier times, and will not find it difficult
to put them once more into practice. The burden will not fall upon any
class; and when each man, whatever be his station in life, is called
upon to lower his scale of living, no one person will find it too hard
to do what all others are doing.
But if such be the objects and the prospects of the war, it is plain
that they require more sober thought and more careful forecasting and
more thorough preparation than have thus far been given to them. If we
be the generation chosen to accomplish the work that lies ready to
our hands, if we be commissioned to so glorious and so weighty an
enterprise, there is but one spirit befitting our task. The war, if it
is to be successful, must be a religious war: not in the old sense of
that phrase, not a war of violent excitement and passionate enthusiasm,
not a war in which the crimes of cruel bigots are laid to the charge of
divine impulse, bur a war by itself, waged with dignified and solemn
strength, with clean hands and pure hearts,--a war calm and inevitable
in its processes as the judgments of God.
Pages:
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307