Develop National Parks, and there is no danger that the people will fail to use them. They will help us to build a vast travel industry. In each of the years immediately preceding the European war, more than half a million Americans went to Europe. Each individual spent not less than a thousand dollars, a total of five hundred million dollars--this exclusive of large sums spent for works of art, jewelry, and clothing. Why should not such vast expenditures be made in our own country instead of in foreign lands? Scenery is an asset, and parks, multiplied and properly managed, would greatly help to keep our money at home as well as to educate and refine our people. The existing National Parks--and there will be others--are a vast undeveloped resource of enormous potential value. They are a golden field that will grow the more with reaping! The Parks have the power to change and better the habits of a nation. They may arouse in us the desire to spend most of our spare time, and lead to the fashion of holding most of our social gatherings, outdoors. Lack of national unity is perilous. A nation divided against itself is not strong. Internal strife sometimes is worse than foreign war. The people of the United States are united in name, but are they doing good team-work? The mingling of people from all quarters in their own great National Parks means friendly union. The Westerner ought to know the Easterner; the Easterner should be acquainted with the Westerner, and he ought also to see the magnificent distances in the West. Travel to National Parks will promote such acquaintance in the happiest circumstances. Greatly it would help the general welfare of the nation if the citizens of the United States were better acquainted with their own country, its resources, its people, and its problems. The debates on various public measures in Congress show a lack of national unity that arises from a lack of national information. A people united is a nation well prepared. I sometimes think that getting really acquainted with some person, or with some fact, is a great event. There is nothing like acquaintance for promoting friendship, sympathy, and coöperation. To bring the capitalist and the laborer--all classes--together in the Park's august scenes, is bound to encourage acquaintance and to prevent misunderstandings. All this means unity, friendship, and will keep war drums in the background. He who feels the spell of the wild, the rhythmic melody of falling water, the echoes among the crags, the bird-songs, the wind in the pines, and the endless beat of wave upon the shore, is in tune with the universe. And he will know what human brotherhood means; will understand the heart of the democratic poet who declares, "A man's a man for a' that."