mmons. The tradition of
learning lingers still; nay, they are centres of learning beyond
comparison with any other universities in the world. Harvard also, I
suppose, provides a learned clergy; but its principal function, as its
rulers seemed to think, is to send out into the world every year a
great body of young men fully equipped to be leaders in the country.
This is its chief glory; to do this effectively, I take it, is the
chief desire of the president and the society.

It cannot be denied that this is a very important duty, much more
important, for a special reason, in the States than it is in Great
Britain. I used to marvel, before making these observations, at the
constant flying of the stars and stripes everywhere; at the continual
reminding as to freedom. 'Are there,' one asks, 'no other countries in
the world which are free? In what single point is the freedom of the
American greater than the freedom of the Briton, the Canadian, of the
Australian?' In none, certainly. Yet we are not forever waving the
Union Jack everywhere and calling each other brothers in our glorious
liberty. Well: but let us think. In so vast a population, spread over
so many States, each State being a different country, there will
always be ignorant men, men ready to give up everything for a selfish
advantage: there must always be a danger, unless it be continually met
and beaten down, that the United may become the dis-United States.
Why, European statesmen used to look forward confidently to the
disruption of the States from the Declaration of Independence down to
the Civil War. It was a commonplace that the country must inevitably
fall to pieces. The very possibility of a disruption is now not even
thought of: the thing is never mentioned. Why is this? Surely, because
the idea of federation is not only taught and ground in at the
elementary schools, but because the flag of federation is always
displayed as the chief glory of the nation at every place where two or
three Americans are gathered together. The symbol you see is
unmistakable: it means Union, once for all; the word, the idea, the
symbol, it must be always kept before the eyes of the people; it is in
the wisdom of the rulers that the stars and stripes are forever
flaunted before the eyes of the people.

And it is not only the ignorant and the selfish among Americans
themselves; it is the vast number of immigrants, increasing by half a
million every year, who have to be taug