asion, to the man who failed to come up to the mark of noble
manhood, just because we feel that we might under like circumstances
have failed too, then we give up the code of honor altogether, and our
ideals droop to the level from which we fight and pray to be
preserved.

We pass judgment upon the coward, upon the failure, upon the man who
has not mastered his life and life itself, unhesitatingly. It is hard
to do, it looks as though one were without pity and without sympathy.
Not so; it is because we have great sympathy, and I hope unending
pity, and a growing charity, and constant willingness to lend a hand;
but to condone failure is to commit the selfish and unpardonable
cowardice of not judging another that you may not be forced to judge
yourself too harshly. That is far from being hypocrisy. Indeed, in
these days it is one of the hardest things to do, so fast are we
levelling down socially and politically and even morally. It looks
like an assumption of superiority when, God knows, it is only a
timorous attempt on our part not to lose our grip on the ideals that
help to keep us out of the dust and the mud. But he who lets others
off lightly in order that he may not be thought to have too high a
standard himself, or because he fears that he may one day fail
himself, such a one is the coward of cowards, the candidate for the
lowest place in hell; and well he deserves it, for he helps to lower
the standard of manhood, and he tarnishes the shield of honor of the
whole race. Let them call us hypocrites till they strangle doing so,
for when we lower our standards because we fear that we cannot live up
to them ourselves, all will be lost. To be mild with other men,
because we distrust ourselves, is a poisonous sympathy that rots away
the life of him who receives it, and of him who gives it, and ends in
a slobbering charity which must finally protect itself by tyranny and
cruelty. Not infrequently in dealing with individuals and with subject
nations it is senseless cruelty to be over-kind.

This sneer of Saxon hypocrisy, of "Perfide Albion," is seldom
explained to other people by men of our race, and we Americans and
Englishmen have taken little pains to make it clear. We should not be
surprised, therefore, if we are misunderstood. We have been easily
first so long that we have neglected the explanation or the defence of
ourselves to others.

The Germans, too, have something of the same indifference. A most
sympatheti