Manhood and Statehood 213 



fibre of moral and mental strength, the soul that 

 steels itself to endure disaster unshaken and with 

 grim resolve to wrest victory from defeat, then the 

 one could not have founded, nor the other preserved, 

 our mighty Federal Union. The least touch of flab- 

 biness, of unhealthy softness, in either would have 

 meant ruin for this nation, and therefore the down 

 fall of the proudest hope of mankind. But no less is 

 it true that had either been influenced by self-seeking 

 ambition, by callous disregard of others, by contempt 

 for the moral law, he would have dashed us down 

 into the black gulf of failure. Woe to all of us if 

 ever as a people we grow to condone evil because it 

 is successful. We can no more afford to lose social 

 and civic decency and honesty than we can afford to 

 lose the qualities of courage and strength. It is the 

 merest truism to say that the nation rests upon the 

 individual, upon the family upon individual manli 

 ness and womanliness, using the words in their wid 

 est and fullest meaning. 



To be a good husband or good wife, a good neigh 

 bor and friend, to be hard-working and upright in 

 business and social relations, to bring up many 

 healthy children to be and to do all this is to lay 

 the foundations of good citizenship as they must be 

 laid. But we can not stop even with this. Each of 

 us has not only his duty to himself, his family, and 

 his neighbors, but his duty to the State and to the 



