What I desire with all my heart is to radiate not only my _readiness_ and _willingness_ to line up with the unpopular cause, _but the fact that I am already lined up_. That, without being asked, people will know what my position is sure to be; that I naturally belong on the side of the "under dog," and that in any conflict against entrenched power and wrong, where the weak and oppressed are fighting for rights which are inherently theirs, that as soon as I hear the battle-cry my "HERE!" will ring out immediate, bold and clear. Nor do I always want to wait to be called upon. I may not have either the wisdom and discretion or the ability to be a leader and I have no desire to thrust myself forward as such. At the same time, I do not want to be cowardly and hang back when I see that which I feel is inherently wrong. Even though I stand alone, I want to stand in protest and contemporaneous rebellion against the wrong that I see. Nay, further, I want to radiate as _my habitual attitude of mind_ that I am ever on the alert to _seek out opportunities for rebellion_ against any and all systems of wrong, no matter how powerful, that I may gladly take upon my shoulders some part of the burden of helping forward the real progress of the entire human race. James Russell Lowell expressed the passionate desire of my heart in his _Present Crisis_. In that majestic poem he shows the need for this contemporaneous rebellion: Backward look across the ages, and the beacon-movements see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's Sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet Earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by. Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne,-- Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own. The whole poem is full of this passionate great-hearted, manly, God-like sympathy, _now_ and _here_, with the needy, the oppressed, the helpless of today. The crises are here now, those stern winnowers that test and try men's souls, that discover whether they are wheat or chaff, ashes or gold. Oh, for men who have made already the "choice momentous"--while the battle is raging, when there is danger, risk, peril, possible death in the conflict. Is he a true man who waits, pauses, hesitates, wavers in such conflicts, "till the judgment hath passed by"? I would radiate, again let me say it, my readiness to march at the sound of the drum, to advance with the front ranks, to fight at the first word. History affords us many noble examples and "beacon lights" of those who have lived in accordance with the principles herein laid down.