234 National Duties 



should be exercised with caution and self-restraint; 

 but it should exist, so that it may be invoked if the 

 need arises. 



So much for our duties, each to himself and each 

 to his neighbor, within the limits of our own coun 

 try. But our country, as it strides forward with 

 ever-increasing rapidity to a foremost place among 

 the world powers, must necessarily find, more and 

 more, that it has world duties also. There are ex 

 cellent people who believe that we can shirk these 

 duties and yet retain our self-respect ; but these good 

 people are in error. Other good people seek to de 

 ter us from treading the path of hard but lofty duty 

 by bidding us remember that all nations that have 

 achieved greatness, that have expanded and played 

 their part as world powers, have in the end passed 

 away. So they have; and so have all others. > The 

 weak and the stationary have vanished as surely as, 

 and more rapidly than, those whose citizens felt with 

 in them the lift that impels generous souls to great 

 and noble effort. This is only another way of stat 

 ing the universal law of death, which is itself part 

 of the universal law of life. The man who works, 

 the man who does great deeds, in the end dies as 

 surely as the veriest idler who cumbers the earth's 

 surface; but he leaves behind him the great fact that 

 he has done his work well. So it is with nations. 

 While the nation that has dared to be great, that 



