The sickle in the ripened field;

Nor ours to hear on autumn eves

The reaper's song among the sheaves.

Problems Concern Whole World

The problems before us are flot those of our own land alone, but of the world. The Great War has partly caused and partly revealed a vast change in the position of our country. It has been like a young giant, boasting of his strength, yet in fact only half aware of his real force. The war and the events that followed have shown that the United States, with her resources in men and nature, has become a power unmatched in the world. Other nations are looking to it as they have hardly looked to another people before. It is no small thing to have power to influence the fate of all mankind upon the earth. With power comes opportunity and with opportunity responsibility. Our own right hand may yet teach us terrible things. Our power is likely to grow still greater in the world, and what do we want our nation to become? Shall we be satisfied with material wealth and comfort, or do we desire a higher destiny? In the ancient world there were two peoples, both commercial, both prosperous, both powerful in their day and both at last conquered by the Romans. One of them, the Greeks, led the way for all later European peoples in art, in literature, in philosophy and in science. The other, the Carthaginians, have left nothing, and all we know of them comes from the histories of their conquerors. A nation is what its people make it.

Live up to Highest Aspiration

If we could retain the fervor and devotion that our young men displayed in the war, and which they would put forth again in a national crisis; if we could retain that spirit in the slow, hard labors of peace; if their exaltation should never fade in the light of common day, we could be the greatest people that ever dwelt upon the earth. This is not to be achieved by men's comparing themselves among themselves, or measuring themselves by an average standard; but by living up to the best they know and measuring themselves by their own highest aspiration. Nor should such men be discouraged because they are not always understood. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Thus drifting afar to the dim vaulted caves

Where life and its ventures are laid,

The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves

May see us in sunshine or shade.

Yet true to our course though our shadow grow dark

We'll trim our broad sail as before,

And stand by the rudder that governs the bark.

Nor ask how we look from the shore