CHAPTER XXI.

THE FUTURE.

WHAT MAY REASONABLY BE EXPECTED FROM SUCH A PRESIDENT OF SUCH A NATION-BELIEVING IN THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND AMERICAN CONTROL OF THE CANAL AT THE ISTHMUS, IN RECIPROCITY AND EXPANSION, MR. ROOSEVELT IS STRONG, UPRIGHT, HONEST AND AGGRESSIVE, AND IMPLICITLY TRUSTED BY A UNITED PEOPLE-AMERICA'S GOLDEN ERA.

The life of a nation is much like the life of a man. It begins with an infancy of weakness, of reliance upon others, a seeking for guidance in the experience of those who are older, in the conservation of all the forces available, and the development to a strength which is not taken seriously by the neighbor nations of the earth. Extension of territory and accumulation of wealth follow, with increasing time for the arts and luxuries which opportunity brings, and then the serene stages where full growth is achieved, and when the hot passions of youth have faded into the dignified serenity of established position. In this period is the nation's peril. Shakespeare

has told us of the "Seven Ages of Man"; of the progress from infancy, through strength, to the period of decay, when human senses all have vanished, yet life still lurks in the slowly-pulsing heart; and after that comes dissolution, and the gathering again of elements in other formations; the disappearance of factors as they had been known before, and their reassembling in newer combinings, that shall begin again the strange experiment of life. Some flash into glorious promise, and pass before that promise is fulfilled. Some linger superfluous upon the stage, the glow of a splendid past behind them, the certainty of extinction before.

So with the nations that have made procession across the page of history. It is fair to gather from the record of those that have vanished some rules that must apply to those that still exist; for those departed have trod one way, and all their exits have led through a single gate.

This nation we call the United States has seen its time of infancy. It passed impetuous boyhood in 1812. It proved adventurous in 1848. It came to quick blows in its full maturity, and reveled in the exuberance of unmeasured strength from 1861 to 1865. Then came the time of judg

ment, of serene self-valuation, of conscious equality with any other, and then utility arrived. Opportunity was seized-opportunity was made. All the resources that lay in the land, that lurked in the air, that thrilled in the brains and the hearts of men were developed, until the nation in wealth, in power and in magnificence stood at the very apex of existence. After that one thing of two must come. In Rome, riches and culture crumbled the foundation stones of empire; and she who from her seven hills had ruled the world passed through the gate, and was buried in that cemetery of the nations beside Greece, and Babylon, and distant Nineveh. There was a time in each when its armies marched whithersoever they pleased, and when its ships came from every port in the known world with gold in the ingot, with silks in the bale. But a nation drunk with power or debauched with vice is a nation diseased and hurrying on to death.

Perhaps no country in the whole lapse of time has possessed the genius, the wealth or the power of the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. If the leaders of the nation should abandon themselves to the gratification of sense, if the corrosion of idleness should eat at the

iron of vigor and the wine of indulgence dissolve the pearls of purity, there could be but a single ending to the history so splendidly begun, so magnificently maintained. It is providential that in an era of great possibilities-for either good or evil-the happier fate should be assured by the rise of this man; that whatever of moral malaria might have fastened upon the civic health of the people was corrected by the presence of a man of vigorous right, a prophet of the strenuous life, a citizen who teaches the doctrine "Trust in God, and help yourself." It is providential that the right man came to the nation at the juncture in its history when it needed him. And it is a matter worthy of reflection that his whole life seems to have been dedicated to a preparation for the work which now engrosses him. Combined in his veins, as Mrs. Boylan has well said in her splendid poem, runs the blood of master races. He comes of a family which flourished on American soil long before the American nation was dreamed of. Hic parentage, his youth, his training, his education up to arrival at manhood, have all been steps in his preparation, as clearly as was the anointing with oil which set apart the son of Jesse for the throne of

Israel. His political training, his experience in office, his hunting, his conduct of business affairs, his virile, manly strength and heroic soul-all are the attributes which the man of the hour needed-which the man of the hour must have, or the opportunity of the hour will have vanished forever. In an unusual degree the arrival of this man, so equipped, and at the time, is of the very greatest value to the nation. There can be no tendency to idleness or enervation while the industry and energy of such a man provide an incentive to worthy deeds for the youth of America.

Patrick Henry, in that wonderful speech before the Virginia convention, said: "There is but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience." The citizen of the United States can know no better rule by which to decide what shall be the mission and achievement of his country than to study the tendency of the past, and the probable course of the men in control at critical stages. America's history is, or should be, in the possession of the sons of the Republic. It has been a steady progress toward a definite objective, from the very beginning. In a way, that progress has been more a