20 American Ideals 



words of those who have striven to bring evil on 

 the land. Most fortunately we have been free from 

 the peril of the most dangerous of all examples. 

 We have not had to fight the influence exerted 

 over the minds of eager and ambitious men by the 

 career of the military adventurer who heads some 

 successful revolutionary or separatist movement. 

 No man works such incalculable woe to a free coun- 

 try as he who teaches young men that one of the 

 paths to glory, renown, and temporal success lies 

 along the line of armed resistance to the Govern- 

 ment, of its attempted overthrow. 



Yet if we are free from the peril of this example, 

 there are other perils from which we are not free. 

 All through our career we have had to war against 

 a tendency to regard, in the individual and the 

 m'tjon alike, as most important, things that are of 

 comparatively little importance. We rightfully value 

 success, but sometimes we overvalue it, for we tend 

 to forget that success may be obtained by means 

 which should make it abhorred and despised by every 

 honorable man. One section of the community dei- 

 fies as "smartness" the kind of trickery which en- 

 ables a man without conscience to succeed in the 

 financial or political world. Another section of the 

 community deifies violent homicidal lawlessness. If 

 ever our people as a whole adopt these views, then we 

 shall have proved that we are unworthy of the heri- 

 tage our forefathers left us ; and our country will go 

 down in ruin. 



The people that do harm in the end are not the 



