io The Strenuous Life 



from business energy and enterprise, from hard, un 

 sparing effort in the fields of industrial activity ; but 

 neither was any nation ever yet truly great if it 

 relied upon material prosperity alone. All honor 

 must be paid to the architects of our material pros 

 perity, to the great captains of industry who have 

 built our factories and our railroads, to the strong 

 men who toil for wealth with brain or hand; for 

 great is the debt of the nation to these and their kind. 

 But our debt is yet greater to the men whose highest 

 type is to be found in a statesman like Lincoln, a sol 

 dier like Grant. They showed by their lives that 

 they recognized the law of work, the law of strife; 

 they toiled to win a competence for themselves and 

 those dependent upon them ; but they recognized that 

 there were yet other and even loftier duties duties 

 to the nation and duties to the race. 



We can not sit Huddled within our own borders 

 and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well- 

 to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens 

 beyond. Such a policy would defeat even its own 

 end ; for as the nations grow to have ever wider and 

 wider interests, and are brought into closer and 

 closer contact, if we are to hold our own in the 

 struggle for naval and commercial supremacy, we 

 must build up our power without our own borders. 

 We must build the Isthmian Canal, and we must 

 grasp the points of vantage which will enable us to 



