ups was most striking, and the bystanders were led to wonder
whether it requires a world-war to teach our young men manners and whether
the schools and homes have abdicated in favor of the cantonment in the
teaching of deportment. In the schools and the homes that are to be in our
good land we may well hope that decorum will be emphasized and magnified;
for decorum is evermore the fruitage of intellectuality and genuine
culture.

As a nation, we have been prodigal of our resources and, especially, of
our time. We have failed to regard our leisure hours as a liability but,
like the lotus eaters, have dallied in the realm of pleasure. Like
children at play, we have gone on our pleasure-seeking ways all heedless
of the clock, and, when misfortune came and necessity arose, many of us
were unwilling and more of us unable to engage in the work of production.
In some localities legislation was invoked to urge us toward the fields
and gardens. We have shown ourselves a wasteful people, and in the wake of
our wastefulness have followed a dismal train of disasters, cold, hunger,
and many another form of distress. Deplore and repent of our prodigality
as we may, the effects abide to remind us of our decline from the high
plane of industry, frugality, and conservation of leisure. Nor can we hope
to avert a repetition of this crisis unless education comes in to guide
our minds and hands aright.

Again, we have been wont to estimate men by what they have rather than by
what they are, and to regard as of value only such things as are quoted in
the markets. Wall Street takes precedence over the university and to the
millionaire we accord the front seat even in some of our churches. We
accept the widow's mite but do not inscribe her name upon the roll of
honor. We give money prizes for work in our schools and thus strive to
commercialize the things of the mind and of the spirit. We have laid waste
our forests, impoverished our fields, and defiled our landscapes to
stimulate increased activity in our clearing-houses. Like Jason of old, we
have wandered far in quest of the golden fleece. We welcome the rainbow,
not for its beauty but for the bag of gold at its end. We seek to scale
the heights of Olympus by stairways of gold, fondly nursing the conceit
that, once we have scaled these heights, we shall be equal to the gods.

To indulge in even such a brief review of some of the weak places and
defections of society is not an agreeable tas