The Strenuous Life 7 



try those months of gloom and shame when it 

 seemed as if our armies marched only to defeat. 

 We could have avoided all this suffering simply by 

 shrinking from strife. And if we had thus avoided 

 it, we would have shown that we were weaklings, 

 and that we were unfit to stand among the great 

 nations of the earth. Thank God for the iron in the 

 blood of our fathers, the men who upheld the wis 

 dom of Lincoln, and bore sword or rifle in the armies 

 of Grant ! Let us, the children of the men who 

 proved themselves equal to the mighty days, let us, 

 the children of the men who carried the great Civil 

 War to a triumphant conclusion, praise the God of 

 our fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace were 

 rejected; that the suffering and loss, the blackness 

 of sorrow and despair, were unflinchingly faced, 

 and the years of strife endured; for in the end the 

 slave was freed, the Union restored, and the mighty 

 American Republic placed once more as a helmeted 

 queen among nations. 



We of this generation do not have to face a task 

 such as that our fathers faced, but we have our 

 tasks, and woe to us if we fail to perform them ! We 

 can not, if we would, play the part of China, and be 

 content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our 

 borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond 

 them, sunk in a scrambling commercialism; heed 

 less of the higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil 



