ion to money-getting, the rapid increase of
senseless and debauching luxury, the reckless frivolity, the unthinking
haste and selfish pleasure-seeking--one questions. Underneath, however,
is a tremendous latent idealism. We are young, enthusiastic, capable of
glorious consecration. Cynical disillusionment is all upon the surface
--the cult of the clique of cleverness, uprooted from the soil of common
life and the deeps of the eternal verities. Beneath in the great mass
of the people is profound faith in life, deep trust in the ideal, belief
in the great future of humanity. Democracy will justify itself. We
shall rise to the test; but how we need to hear and heed the call!

"Awake America" means Americans awake! For in democracy the individual
is the soul. On each person rests the responsibility. Let us accept
the bitter burden and meet the supreme test, giving time, money,
service, life and those we love better than life, for the sake of the
safer, freer, nobler world that is to be. Since we stood apart so long
and entered the horrible devastation so late, it is our privilege to do
all we can to save the spiritual heritage of humanity, to keep our
hearts clean from the corrosive acid of national and racial hatred, to
do all in our power to remove it from the breasts of others. Injustice
in high places is possible only because there is injustice in the hearts
of men. To overthrow tyranny is but the initial step of emancipation:
unless the tyrant hate in the heart is dethroned, the external tyrant,
in some form of social injustice will surely return. He who conquers
hate and the lust for revenge in his own breast is spiritually free and
master of the tyrant that wrongs him. Thus it is our privilege and duty
to hate no one; but to hate injustice, greed, tyranny, aggressive
selfishness, the wicked ambitions of autocratic imperialism, to resist
and help to overthrow them, and so do our part in bringing in the free
brotherhood of the nations and peoples in one humanity, that will be the
dawn of the longed-for era of universal and permanent peace for mankind.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Soul of Democracy, by Edward Howard Griggs

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