Modern life is both complex and intense, and the
tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial
development of the last half century are felt in every fiber of
our social and political being. Never before have men tried so
vast and formidable an experiment as that of administering the
affairs of a continent under the forms of a Democratic republic.
The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-
being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy,
self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the
care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth
in industrial centers. Upon the success of our experiment much
depends, not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the
welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government
throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore
our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is
to-day, and to the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason
why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we
should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the
gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these
problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them
aright.
Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set
before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded
and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must
be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well
done, remains essentially unchanged.
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