future of the world have proved groundless as regards the
civilized portion of the world; it is strange indeed to look back at
Carlyle's prophecies of some seventy years ago, and then think of the
teeming life of achievement, the life of conquest of every kind, and
of noble effort crowned by success, which has been ours for the two
generations since he complained to High Heaven that all the tales had
been told and all the songs sung, and that all the deeds really worth
doing had been done. I believe with all my heart that a great future
remains for us; but whether it does or does not, our duty is not
altered. However the battle may go, the soldier worthy of the name
will with utmost vigor do his allotted task, and bear himself as
valiantly in defeat as in victory. Come what will, we belong to
peoples who have not yielded to the craven fear of being great. In the
ages that have gone by, the great nations, the nations that have
expanded and that have played a mighty part in the world, have in the
end grown old and weakened and vanished; but so have the nations whose
only thought was to avoid all danger, all effort, who would risk
nothing, and who therefore gained nothing. In the end, the same fate
may overwhelm all alike; but the memory of the one type perishes with
it, while the other leaves its mark deep on the history of all the
future of mankind.

A nation that seemingly dies may be born again; and even though in the
physical sense it die utterly, it may yet hand down a history of
heroic achievement, and for all time to come may profoundly influence
the nations that arise in its place by the impress of what it has
done. Best of all is it to do our part well, and at the same time to
see our blood live young and vital in men and women fit to take up the
task as we lay it down; for so shall our seed inherit the earth. But
if this, which is best, is denied us, then at least it is ours to
remember that if we choose we can be torch-bearers, as our fathers
were before us. The torch has been handed on from nation to nation,
from civilization to civilization, throughout all recorded time, from
the dim years before history dawned down to the blazing splendor of
this teeming century of ours. It dropped from the hands of the coward
and the sluggard, of the man wrapped in luxury or love of ease, the
man whose soul was eaten away by self-indulgence; it has been kept
alight only by those who were mighty of heart and cunning of hand