Grant 177 



the man. It is the antithesis of levity, fickleness, 

 volatility, of undue exaltation, of undue depression, 

 of hysteria and neuroticism in all their myriad forms. 

 The lesson of unyielding, unflinching, unfaltering 

 perseverance in the course upon which the nation has 

 entered is one very necessary for a generation whose 

 preachers sometimes dwell overmuch on the policies 

 of the moment. There are ndt a few public men, not 

 a few men who try to mold opinion within Congress 

 and without, on the stump and in the daily press, 

 who seem to aim at instability, who pander to and 

 thereby increase the thirst for overstatement of each' 

 situation as it arises, whose effort is, accordingly, to 

 make the people move in zigzags instead of in a 

 straight line. We all saw this in the Spanish War, 

 when the very men who at one time branded as trai 

 tors everybody who said there was anything wrong 

 in the army at another time branded as traitors 

 everybody who said there was anything right. Of 

 course such an attitude is as unhealthy on one side as 

 on the other, and it is equally destructive of any ef 

 fort to do away with abuse. 



Hysterics O'f this kind may have all the results of 

 extreme timidity. A nation that has not the power 

 of endurance, the power of dogged insistence on a 

 determined policy, come weal or woe, has lost one 

 chief element of greatness. The. people who wish to 

 abandon the Philippines because we have had heavy 



