6 The Strenuous Life 



books he speaks of "the fear of maternity, the haunt 

 ing terror of the young wife of the present day." 

 When such words can be truthfully written of a na 

 tion, that nation is rotten to the heart's core. When 

 men fear work or fear righteous war, when women 

 fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom ; 

 and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, 

 where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men 

 and women who are themselves strong and brave 

 and high-minded. 



As it is with the individual, so it is with the na 

 tion. It is a base untruth to say that happy is the 

 nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the 

 nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is 

 to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, 

 even though checkered by failure, than to take rank 

 with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor 

 suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight 

 that knows not victory nor defeat. If, in 1861, the 

 men who loved the Union had believed that peace 

 was the end of all things, and war and strife the 

 worst of all things, and had acted up to their belief, 

 we would have saved hundreds of thousands of 

 lives, we would have saved hundreds of millions of 

 dollars. Moreover, besides saving all the blood and 

 treasure we then lavished, we would have prevented 

 the heartbreak of many women, the dissolution of 

 many homes, and we would have spared the coun- 



