“Where there is no vision the people perish.” History is filled with instances of the truth of that; the greatest empires of the world became decadent, were defeated by enemies, and vanished from the earth when their rulers and people saw no vision beyond wealth and power. Nineveh and Babylon and Troy, Byzantium, Persia, the Macedonia of Alexander the Great, Carthage and Imperial Rome all fell because gold and possessions had blinded their eyes. Material power, and the wealth that often goes with it, has been as dangerous to nations as it has been to individual men. It is only too apt to lead to the greed for greater and greater power, to bend other peoples to its will, to magnify itself at the expense of everything else in the world. It is easy for power to make nations forget their dreams of nobler things, of freedom and justice, of the rights of men everywhere to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Strength is a splendid thing, but it must be used to help other and weaker people, not to aggrandize oneself. That the great nations of the ancient world forgot, and that such empires as the Ottoman Turks and Austria-Hungary have never known. Has the Turk ever held any vision of helping other peoples? Have the rulers of Austria ever cared for the welfare of their subject races? The history of both empires shows that the men in power have thought only of themselves. And what vision those countries have ever known has been that of a few devoted patriots who struggled for liberty and were suppressed. Now in the past century Germany has been blinded by her growing power. Her rulers lost their vision, they made might their God; then her people were tempted, as Satan tempted Christ with a prospect of the world’s dominion, and the people fell and were blinded, and so the spirit perished in them as it has perished in other and greater peoples. They talked of German “culture,” of the blessings of German civilization; and they wanted to thrust it by force on the rest of the world, not for the good of that world, but for the glory of Germany alone. Their God became the God of the savage tribe, a God who belonged to them and to them only. There are times when all peoples are apt to forget the vision, times when ease and plenty wrap them about. Few men are like Lafayette, who from youth to old age hold fast to their ideals, no matter what comes. Then, in a time of stress, the question is put to them: What will you do? Take the easy road of blindness or follow the rough road of vision? Belgium had her choice; she chose to lose all her worldly possessions rather than lose her soul. France had her choice, and England and Italy: to each the vision of liberty was greater than safety of life. And as each has had to pay in countless suffering so the soul of each nation has risen to greater heights. Their people do not perish like the blind; they have seen the vision of a more Christlike world when the tyrants have been destroyed.