idence." Suddenly a blind impulse fell
upon the forest children. Two columns started southward. The one
rested upon the North Sea and marched southeast; the other rested upon
the Ural Mountains and marched southwest; the two met and converged
upon Trieste. Without maps or military tactics or plans, wholly
ignorant that Napoleon's favorite method of attack was being carried
out by them, these two columns converged toward the Alpine pass, and
for ten years pounded and pounded against the Roman walls until these
yielded and fell. Then the forest children poured down into the
vineyards and villages and cities of the dying empire. Multitudes
remained to intermarry and preserve the dying race. Other multitudes
returned to their old home to sow the northern forests with those great
ideas that were to carry civilization through the long night of the
dark ages.

Another strategic hour came in the thirteenth century. Then all Europe
was stirred with new and awakening life. It was dawn after darkness.
Constantinople had fallen and scholars laden with manuscripts went
forth to sow Europe with the new learning. The times were fully ripe
for another great forward movement for society. Only one thing was
lacking--great men for leaders. In that strategic crisis six leaders
appeared. God gave each wing of the army of civilization a genius for
its general. Copernicus overthrew superstition and brought in science;
Luther gave religion, Gutenberg the printing-press, Calvin
individualism, Michael Angelo art and the beautiful, Erasmus critical
scholarship; and because the old world was filled with debris, and the
new ideas needed room, Columbus gave the new world, offering what
Emerson calls "the last opportunity of Providence for the human race."
Surely this was a strategic moment in history, giving each citizen
unique opportunity.

The strategic element enters into the individual career. Destiny is
determined by our use of our critical hours. It is as if life's great
issues were staked upon a single throw. Not but that the forces we
neglect are permanent. It is that the strategic condition has passed
out of them. The sluggard driving his plow into the field in July has
sun, soil and seed, but the torrid summer refuses to perform the gentle
processes of April. The man who in youth's strategic days denied to
memory the great facts of nature and history, in maturer years still
has his memory, but the plasticity has gone.