The Chemawa American, June 01, 1915, Page 10, Image 12

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THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN
jects, such as "The Fuller L,ife", "Education an Asset", and so on;
but with increasing dissatisfaction. My thought was: I don't want to
give those young people the same old high-sounding but empty general
ities that come in one ear and go out the other. Meanwhile, in com
pany with all other men who read and think, my mind was inevitably
occupied with thoughts of the great war, until there came to me, like
an inspiration, the suggestion: Why not make that the subject of 'our
address? Here is a theme in which we all have a common interest.
Here is an event that for its very magnitude, for its tremendous signifi
cance, overshadows anything that has happened since the first page of
history was recorded. Here is something that is going to exercise a
momentous influence upon the lives of these young people; that is go
ing to reform just how much no man dare say the institutions, the
standards, the ideals of society. You are approaching maturity at a
time when the world is on the threshold of one of those great transi
tions, a renascence, a transvaluation, in which old things pass away,
and life finds for itself new channels, new directions, new standards,
new ideals.
Young people you are to be congratulated upon entering the theatre
of active life at a time which I believe I am justified in terming the
greatest in all the history of the world. This I believe I must believe
it we all must believe it that out of this war the greatest evil that has
ever been let loose upon the earth there must come a good not only as
great, but even greater in its proportions. If history can teach us any
thing, if knowledge has any proposition that isinewantly true, it is this:
That action and reaction are equal, that the pendulum must swing for
ward even as it has swung back, that the law of compensation must as
sert itself. It is thus that the inexorable cycles of change evolve them
selves. It is thus that God has chosen to accomplish his unknowable
purposes. The bright morning days of ancient Greece came after ages
of stagant ignorance. The black abysses of the Dark Ages gave wray to
the glorious splendor of the Renaissance. Is it not true in your life and
mine? Is there a pleasure that hasn't its proportionate pain, an evil
that may not yield its good? How may we progress except by toil and
suffering? Victory ever springs from disaster. From Death, L,ifeever
renews itself.
And so I can look upon this welter of blood and horror and outrage,
only as the price that is being paid for the great gain that humanity is
about to make. I am an optimist and proud of it. For those who wail
that the foundations of our civilization are destroyed and that the world
is about to reel back into the beast, I have nothing but pity. I dare to
believe that this great sickness that is now clutching the very vitals of
half the world will but purge it of its vice, will but show it its own