ADDRESSES OF MAJOR LACEY 245 



ignorant old Rome that conquered the world, and learned 

 Rome that lost it. But learned Rome, though filled with 

 scholars, had no educated common people. The training 

 of the masses was in the wrong direction. Whenever a 

 Roman legion was stationed in the province there we find 

 a center of education ; but corruption in the center sapped 

 the vitals of the nation, and Rome fell. 



In our country, the universal dissemination of a sub- 

 stantial education among the common people is the best 

 guarantee of our future. Lincoln said, "God must have 

 loved the common people or he would not have made so 

 many of them. ' ' 



Comrades, we have done our part towards making this 

 country and generation better than the past. There has 

 never been a period in any country when there was not a 

 large class of pessimists who constantly held up to view 

 the worst side of everything. Like crooked mirrors they 

 distort everything that they reflect. To hear them speak 

 you would believe that this nation was already going over 

 the falls. Every evil is magnified and the good is wholly 

 overlooked. 



When we listen to these mutterings we are taught that 

 all of the dead have died in vain. That is nothing new ; 

 this same old cry has gone up from generation to genera- 

 tion. 



Cobbett hoped for war; he said he was willing to have 

 three hundred thousand men killed in order to get rid of 

 six men that he did not like — the six men being the Eng- 

 lish ministry. In spite of all these gloomy forebodings, 

 the world has steadily gone forward and upward. There 

 is a constant ebb and flow in progress; things mental, 

 moral, and material, like the waves, sweep forward, fall 

 back, and again advance, always rising a little higher 

 than before. 



We must not, however, shut our eyes to things which 



