with a reasonable equipment for the struggle of life and an un- 

 tarnished name. So the noblest task that confronts us all today is to 

 leave this country unspotted in honor, and unexhausted in resources, 

 to our descendants, who will be, not less than we, the children of the 

 founders of the republic. I conceive this task to partake of the 

 highest spirit of patriotism. 



LEARNING FROM HISTORY 



The following is an extract from a paper by A. B. Benton, before the 

 Tri-counties Reforestation Committee, in Southern California. It 

 certainly affords food for thought. 



The editor of one of our great weekly journals has written: "Prob 

 ably the work for which President Roosevelt will be longest remem- 

 bered is his efforts for the conservation of our national natural re- 

 sources. ' ' 



The fountains must be renewed, the field must be planted, the fire 

 must be checked, and by us or we will' justly merit the contempt of 

 mankind. We are not the first, but the last of the nations who have 

 squandered their birthright. The splendid nations of old time, Egypt, 

 Babylonia, Asia Minor, Greece, India, China ; where our race began its 

 career, where the arts and letters and commerce and architecture were 

 born and nourished in glorious achievement for centuries and cen- 

 turies do you think their lands were sterile then ? Do you conceive 

 them as poorer in lavish gifts of nature than is our land? Do you 

 suppose the teeming millions of their inhabitants so prospered in the 

 deserts which we find there now ? Believe me, the deserts there are of 

 men's making, and their desolation was brought about by their own 

 hands. We look on the poor ruins of these once mighty empires with 

 a complacent pity, but I have little doubt that the spirits of the men 

 of old, if they are cognizant of our doings, have greater reason for a 

 scornful pity than have we, for they began civilization and had little 

 before their time to take warning, while we, latest of all, I verily 

 believe have been as reckless as any of the great nations, ancient or 

 modern. 



There are many, even in this day, who can learn nothing from his- 

 tory for their own profit. The world of men for thousands of years 

 has been experimenting with civilization of higher and lower types. 

 Enough of their experiences have been written to teach us every lesson 

 we need to learn had we the wit to read them aright. The treasures of 

 ancient and medieval research, their economics and philosophy have 

 been opened to this age a thousand-fold more widely than to any age 

 whatsoever before us. If it, with the histories of the good and bad 

 of all ages before it, not in dead language, nor locked in secluded tem- 

 ples and cloisters, but in its living tongues, and in multiplied libra- 

 ries if, with all this before it, it follows the blunders and mistakes 

 and follies of the old ages because it will not see, and seeing learn, 

 then our civilization deserves not only to perish as miserably as the 

 most miserable failure of them all, but will richly merit the epitaph of 

 Justice Dogberry to "be written down an ass!" 



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