Never before have we so much needed the stalwart teaching of those who have led us in our greater past. These still speak to us if we would but listen. Benjamin Franklin still says on every page of "Poor Richard's Almanac" that "We are giving too much for our whistle," and that an old coat is often more to be desired than a new one. The tall Thomas Jefferson still rises above the petty minds about us to say that it were better that we had a nation composed of two persons, a man and a woman, who were truly free, than a nation with millions enslaved. The calm voice of Robert E. Lee urges upon our hearts that he who does his duty with all the strength he has may well leave even the matter of victory or defeat to Almighty God. During these later years, the entire nation has claimed to do honor to the name of Abraham Lincoln, even while we forget everything he stood for, by word and deed, when he was among the living. He is much honored for making the black man free. We have forgotten that great speech of his in which he declared that the white man's freedom should be forever guaranteed by free soil as a national institution. One Robert E. Lee or Abraham Lincoln is worth a great city full of crowding and scheming neurotics, treading upon one another's toes, always trading in their eternal souls for a chance to get rich and then mostly losing out and dying in misery and poverty. Present-day America is unworthy of the mighty voices which have, in the past, led her and called her to the leadership of the world. Those voices spoke to us when we were weak, unformed and poor, yet so rich in thought and in the impelling forces of our national soul. CHAPTER XVIII Drifting Our country is not lacking in incurable optimists, more commonly known as fools. Do we not always hear, they repeat, the cry of "Wolf, wolf" by night, and do we not always wake up in the morning quite safe and sound? I maintain that these poor words of mine are no mere warning of the wolf. Yesterday he was in close pursuit. To-day his jaws are closing upon our flesh. This outcry wrung from pain and fear is due to no imaginary ills.