a. After a long journey through winding corridors of marble,
he was brought to a single flickering light set in a jeweled recess in the
wall. "And what is this?" said the tourist. "That, sir," replied the guide,
"is the sacred fire which was lighted 2,000 years ago and never has been
out." "Never been out? What nonsense! Poof! Well, the blamed thing's out
now." This wild Westerner doubtless typifies those who without heed and in
their hot-headed and fanatical worship of change would destroy the very
light of our civilization. But let me remind you that all fanaticism is not
radical. There is a fanaticism that is conservative, a reverence for things
as they are that is no less destructive. Some years ago I visited a fishing
village in Canada peopled by Scotchmen who had immigrated in the early part
of the nineteenth century. It was a place named Ingonish in Cape Breton, a
rugged spot that looks directly upon the Atlantic at its cruelest point.
One day I fell into talk with a fisherman--a very model of a tawny-haired
viking. He told me that from his fishing and his farming he made some $300
a year. "Why not come over into my country," I said, "where you may make
that in a month?" There came over his face a look of humiliation as he
replied, "No, I could not." "Why not?" I asked. "Because," said he,
brushing his hand across his sea-burnt beard, "because I can neither read
nor write." "And why," said I, "haven't you learned? There are schools
here." "Yes, there are schools, but my father could not read or write, and
I would have felt that I was putting a shame upon the old man if I had
learned to do something he could not do." Splendid, wasn't it! He would not
do what his father could not do. Fine! Fine as the spirit of any man with a
sentiment which holds him back from leading a full, rich life. Yet can you
conceive a nation of such men--idolizing what has been, blind to the great
vision of the future, fettered by the chains of the past, gripped and held
fast in the hand of the dead, a nation of traditionalists, unable to meet
the needs of a new day, serene, no doubt self-sufficient, but coming how
far short of realizing that ideal of those who praise their God for that
they serve his world!

I have given the two extremes; now let us return to our point of departure,
and the first question to be asked is, "What are the traditions of our
people?" This nation is not as it was one hundred and thirty-odd years ago
when we assert