Editorial February 15, 1908 Issue

THE VISION OF THE PATRIOT

John B. Willis

It may be said that the promise of a nation's future is fairly measured by the love and veneration of its people for those who have made it free. On this basis of prophecy no one can fail to anticipate the enduring greatness of the first American republic, for the character and achievements of the men who have contributed most to its preservation and freedom, establish a standard of citizenship which is recognized and honored, if not emulated, by all. As we dwell with some solicitude upon the pressing problems of the present, we should not forget the happy and significant fact that the remembrance of Lincoln and Washington, these anniversary days, and of their self-forgetting devotion to the interests of the common weal in the crises of the Nation's history, awakens an assuring response in the hearts of all the American people.

Though representing the greatest contrast of social conditions and educational environment, these Nestors of American history well illustrate the fundamental though ill-apprehended truth that all real greatness is akin; it is an approach in every instance to a universal sense of the one infinite good, hence the influences of the great of all times and peoples have ever been convergent; all have ultimately contributed to the realization of the same ideal.

The kinship of Washington and Lincoln appears in the splendid outline and quality of their concept of what it meant to be a true son of the Republic, and in the whole-heartedness, the constancy, and the completeness of their consecration to the attainment of their highest hopes for the Nation. Insistently indentifying themselves with the most favorable estimate of the people, they labored without abatement and without reserve for the realization of their brightest vision of the country's good. They were fearless amid the tempests, and "in the depths of night they could ken the morn." Of them both Markham's fine lines might fitly be spoken,—

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