Let me use a homely illustration: We have all known fathers and mothers,
devoted to their children, whose attention was fixed and limited by the
household routine of daily life. Such parents were actively concerned
with the common needs and precautions and remedies entailed in bringing
up a family, but blind to every threat that was at all unusual. Fathers
and mothers such as these often remain serenely unaware while some
dangerous malady or injurious habit is fastening itself upon a favorite
child. Once the evil is discovered, there is no sacrifice too great to
repair the damage which their unwitting neglect may have allowed to
become irreparable. So it is, I think, with the people of the United
States. Capable of every devotion in a recognized crisis, we have yet
carelessly allowed the habit of improvidence and waste of resources to
find lodgment. It is our great good fortune that the harm is not yet
altogether beyond repair.
The profoundest duty that lies upon any father is to leave his son with
a reasonable equipment for the struggle of life and an untarnished name.
So the noblest task that confronts us all to-day is to leave this
country unspotted in honor, and unexhausted in resources, to our
descendants, who will be, not less than we, the children of the Founders
of the Republic.
Pages:
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104