possible to conceive of a state
without the unit of the family, as it is to consider groups of
families without something that we call a state. It is ludicrous to
think of a strong and virile nation composed of one hundred million
bachelors. We must go back to the feudal days of the middle ages to
get a picture of the family without a state.

In other words, a man, to approach happiness, must have his family in
support of which it is his privilege to take off his coat and work,
and--if fate so decree--live; and he must have his country's flag in
honor of which it is his privilege to take off his hat, and--if need
be--die.

{14}

Love and patriotism--these are the names of two of the sturdy beams of
the house of civilization.

These old familiar laws have been brought forward again by the
outbreak of the Great War. There is a letter in existence written by a
young soldier who volunteered at the start, a letter which he wrote to
his unborn son as he sat in a front line trench in France. It tells
the whole great truth in a line. It says: "My little son, I do not
fully realize just why I am fighting here, but I know that one reason
is to make sure that _you_ will not have to do it by and by." That lad
was responsible for a new family, and was the servant of his
state--and he began his approach to the great happiness when he
thought of writing that letter.

It will be well for us to remember these simple laws as we proceed.

Fifty-eight years ago these laws and several more like them were just
as true as they are now. Fifty-eight years hence they will still be
true, as they will be five thousand eight hundred years hence.
Fifty-eight years ago--to be exact, {15} October 9, 1860--there was
born up in New Hampshire a man child named Leonard Wood, in the town
of Winchester, whence he was transferred at the age of three months to
Massachusetts and finally at the age of eight years to Pocasset on
Cape Cod. This man child is still alive at the time of writing, and
during his fifty-eight years he has stood for these elemental truths
in and out of boyhood, youth and manhood in such a fashion that his
story--always interesting--becomes valuable at a time when, the Great
War being over, many nations, to say nothing of many individuals, are
forgetting, in their admiration of the new plaster and the wall paper,
that the beams of the house of civilization are what hold it strong
and sturdy as the ages proceed.

This place, Cape