NOTES AND QUESTIONS Biography. Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), twenty-eighth President of the United States, was a native of Virginia. He was educated at Princeton University and later became president of that institution. He was for some years a teacher of history, and he has written many books on history and government, which are models of good English. In 1911 he became Governor of New Jersey, and in 1913 he entered upon his duties as President of the United States, serving throughout the difficult period of the World War. This address was delivered September 4, 1916, by Mr. Wilson wher the Lincoln birthplace farm at Hodgensville, Kentucky, was presented to the nation and accepted by the War Department. By popular subscription the log cabin itself was enclosed in an imposing granite memorial building. Discussion. 1. How did this occasion demonstrate "the vigor of democracy"? 2. Discuss "Genius is no snob." 3. What sentence in the second paragraph describes Lincoln? What do you think of this sentence as an example of saying much in a few words? 4. What are some of the "mysteries of democracy" which Lincoln's life expressed? 5. How do your school and other democratic institutions help you "to make the most of every gift and power you possess"? 6. What other men of humble origin, like Lincoln, served the nation in high places? 7. How does Mr. Wilson explain his feeling that Lincoln was "permanently at home nowhere"? 8. What is the "test of every American"? 9. In what way were Washington and Lincoln typical Americans? 10. Mr. Wilson says, "I have read many biographies of Lincoln"; have you read Nicolay's Boys' Life of Lincoln? 11. What is the best intimate story about Lincoln that you know? 12. Why does Mr. Wilson feel that Lincoln was "a lonely spirit"? 13. In what way might "this cabin" keep alive the hopes of mankind even better than "constitution, doctrines of right, and codes of liberty"? 14. What is your opinion of people who are willing to enjoy the privileges but are not willing to share the duties of the society to which they belong? 15. What is expected of “real democrats"? 16. Which sentence best visualizes for you the occasion-the cabin and the crowds listening to the President? 17. Be prepared to read to the class a sentence selected because it seemed especially significant to you. 18. See Collier's, September 9, 1916, for an illustrated description of the acceptance of the memorial. 19. Library reading: He Knew Lincoln, Tarbell. 20. Find in the Glossary the meaning of: significant; memorial; shrine; democracy; aristocracy; caste; fealty; vital; catholic; manner; consummation; depict; brooding; familiars; communing; vestal; transmute. Pronounce: haunts; dominant; validity; benignant; reassurance; permeating; sovereign. Girls and boys of America, you are the hope of the world. Because the world is sick to death of war, and the world kings favor war and democracies abhor war, and because the United 5 States is the most powerful democracy in the world, and because, when Europe's present leaders are dead, you girls and boys of ten, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, will be governing the United States, and therefore, if you wish, leading the world! Be clear about this. The world looks to you in hope because you 10 are the logical heirs of the present generation of leaders. If you have the gumption and the go, the knowledge, the vision, and the largeness of heart to accept that inheritance, you will have it in your power to determine the course of the world's history for centuries to come! 15 The world asks you to think. It doesn't ask you to stand on a street corner and wave the flag; it doesn't ask you to enlist. The world asks you to sit down and think about your country. Democracy isn't a success, Young America. Not yet. But it isn't a failure, either. Not yet. It's just a gorgeous experiment, that you and I and Tom and Mary and Jane and Betty and Larry 5 and Jack and Susan and Bill could make a success that would shake the world, if we'd only make up our minds to take democracy as seriously as we take, say, baseball-or crêpe de Chine. We know what America stands for; we know what America is. Golden girls and boys, have you ever thought what America 10 might be? We're wasteful-look at our forests, look at the youth in our slums! We're materialistic-look at the faces in our cities, look how hard we are to arouse in defense of a principle, look how quickly, 15 after our moment of exaltation and sacrifice, we drop back into the sordid round of getting and spending! We're improvident, blindly careless of everything beyond the present hour-we never prepare! As citizens we are indifferent-we will endure in our govern20 ment every form of extravagance, inefficiency, and corruption conceivable rather than jump into the midst of the mess and help to clean it up. 25 "We know all these things," you say, a little wearily. "But what can we do?" You? You can do everything. Your elders are busy, and many of them are stodgy; and they are accustomed to waste and corruption and muddling, and many are afraid of change, any change, and resent as an imposition any attempt to make them think. Thinking is more laborious than digging trenches after 30 you're forty, especially when you're out of training; and many of our elders are. But you, Young America, are not. Thinking to you isn't a chore; it is an adventure! Your minds are like a fresh horse, crazy to take six bars. You are the hope of the world, because you have enthusiasm and ginger, because you feel, 35 and you haven't yet forgotten how to think. What can you do? You know what the men and women of your country did to defend American principles abroad. Let it be your part to find out what your city, your state, your nation are doing for the welfare of their citizens and the upholding of American principles at home. 5 You can do more. You must do more. You, the girls and boys of America, must create a new standard of values for your generation. For a century, men the world over, but especially here in our United States, have bowed to material success as to the greatest god they knew. We have exalted the man with 10 money as we have exalted no other type in American life. We have praised his virtues and ignored his vices, we have listened to him as we never would to a saint in glory, when he told us the stages of his progress toward success; we have pointed to him as a shining example of the best to which a youth might aspire. He who has dollars, we said, has success; he who has not dollars, has not success. It is the first duty of man to be successful, we said. Therefore, get dollars! 15 The youth of America has obeyed that insistent mandate, generation after generation; and in countless hearts, aspirations 20 for something higher than dollar-chasing have been sternly crushed in order that the golden quest should be unimpeded; and men have made unbelievable fortunes; and the glamour of their achievement has made other men everywhere a little greedier, a little more ruthless, a little more jealous of their own, 25 a little more envious of others, impatient of law, intolerant of opposition, scornful of all things that cannot be clutched with hands. We have been taught that success can be written only in figures; and a few men have gathered in the dollars of the many, 30 and, in consequence, we have slums and child labor and strikes and starvation and bomb outrages and the rumblings of revolution. No reform that social theorists can devise can sweep those offspring of our god, Success, for long out of our national life. As long as the gathering of dollars is regarded as the highest 35 form of victorious effort, we shall have inequality, injustice, bitterness, and class strife. If we are ever to be free of them, we must have a new standard of success. We must learn that success consists not in what we have but in what we are, not in what we hold in our pockets but in what we hold in our heads and our hearts, not in our skill to buy low and sell high, but in our ability greatly to dream, to build, to battle, to kindle, to serve. 5 Young America, it must be your business in these years to raise this new standard before the eyes of your fellow-citizens, your aim to give them a new ideal of what constitutes success; for without such a new standard, without such a new ideal, all that you do for citizenship and democracy will be only a stop10 gap that will hold the floods of corruption back here or there for a year or for ten years only to release them at last in increased volume. Our present ideal of success is based on selfish, individualistic enterprise and greed. 15 How can that harmonize with democracy, whose essence is. service? The answer is simple. It cannot harmonize with it; it never has, it never will. In every village, town, and state, greed and selfish enterprise-the qualities that make for "success" as we 20 know it—are the inveterate enemies of democratic institutions If you want dollars above all, do not talk of citizenship and democracy. But if you want democracy above all, know that success in life lies not in the accumulation of unnecessary bonds and houses 25 but in service, in knowledge, and in the appreciation of beauty. If you want honestly to help your country, set about now to give her a notion of what makes real success. NOTES AND QUESTIONS Biography. Hermann Hagedorn (1882-), a native of New York and a graduate of Harvard University, is an author and social worker. He taught English at Harvard for several years. He has written a number of books and plays; his shorter articles and poems appear from time to time in the current magazines. His enthusiasm for Theodore Roosevelt and for those basic principles for which Roosevelt's name is the symbol made him an active worker in the Roosevelt Memorial Association. This selection is taken from his book for American boys and girls, You Are the Hope of the World. |