Part 16
“Where there is no vision the people perish.” History is filled with instances of the truth of that; the greatest empires of the world became decadent, were defeated by enemies, and vanished from the earth when their rulers and people saw no vision beyond wealth and power. Nineveh and Babylon and Troy, Byzantium, Persia, the Macedonia of Alexander the Great, Carthage and Imperial Rome all fell because gold and possessions had blinded their eyes. Material power, and the wealth that often goes with it, has been as dangerous to nations as it has been to individual men. It is only too apt to lead to the greed for greater and greater power, to bend other peoples to its will, to magnify itself at the expense of everything else in the world. It is easy for power to make nations forget their dreams of nobler things, of freedom and justice, of the rights of men everywhere to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Strength is a splendid thing, but it must be used to help other and weaker people, not to aggrandize oneself.
That the great nations of the ancient world forgot, and that such empires as the Ottoman Turks and Austria-Hungary have never known. Has the Turk ever held any vision of helping other peoples? Have the rulers of Austria ever cared for the welfare of their subject races? The history of both empires shows that the men in power have thought only of themselves. And what vision those countries have ever known has been that of a few devoted patriots who struggled for liberty and were suppressed.
Now in the past century Germany has been blinded by her growing power. Her rulers lost their vision, they made might their God; then her people were tempted, as Satan tempted Christ with a prospect of the world’s dominion, and the people fell and were blinded, and so the spirit perished in them as it has perished in other and greater peoples. They talked of German “culture,” of the blessings of German civilization; and they wanted to thrust it by force on the rest of the world, not for the good of that world, but for the glory of Germany alone. Their God became the God of the savage tribe, a God who belonged to them and to them only.
There are times when all peoples are apt to forget the vision, times when ease and plenty wrap them about. Few men are like Lafayette, who from youth to old age hold fast to their ideals, no matter what comes. Then, in a time of stress, the question is put to them: What will you do? Take the easy road of blindness or follow the rough road of vision? Belgium had her choice; she chose to lose all her worldly possessions rather than lose her soul. France had her choice, and England and Italy: to each the vision of liberty was greater than safety of life. And as each has had to pay in countless suffering so the soul of each nation has risen to greater heights. Their people do not perish like the blind; they have seen the vision of a more Christlike world when the tyrants have been destroyed.
America had her choice. Under all the power and wealth that her hundred years and more had brought her she had kept her vision; she too knew that liberty is priceless, immeasurably above all things else in the world. And this is the America that we all love. For unless we would go the way of the great nations of the old world, the nations that have perished in their blindness, we must have ever in mind the sacred duty to set and keep all men free. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. And lasting peace comes only with liberty to men and nations.
We cannot read the story of Lafayette without feeling that in his generous youth he gave us the best he had, his love and devotion, his courage and perseverance, his dauntless spirit that would not be denied its purpose to fight for liberty. All this Lafayette gave us because he saw in us the hope of the world. And now our precious opportunity has come to repay that great debt. It is for us to give the land of Lafayette all that he brought to us, and we do it for the same reason, because we see in France and her allies the present hope of the world.
It is for youth to fight, for age to counsel and help youth in the combat. Glorious is the opportunity that lies before the youth of our country now; as glorious as was the opportunity that called to the boy of seventeen in the days of Louis XVI. We may not all accomplish as much as he did, but we can all thrill to the same generous impulses, see the same great vision, resolve that we will do all that lies within our power to win the crusade of freedom against tyrants. Every boy and man in America should learn the lesson of Lafayette’s life and then go into the struggle with the feeling that he is following in the footsteps of that great idealist, that great patriot whose country was not limited to his own nation but to all men who yearned for liberty. The greatest gift of patriots is not the material things they may build, but the devotion to ideals they show to other men. We may each be Lafayettes in our own way.
“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock.” So is liberty built; founded upon a rock; as unconquerable as the soul of man. Liberty must win after floods and storms; its beacon-light must in the time to come illumine the whole world. Its enemies are strong and well-prepared; they call to their aid all the powers and devices of darkness; but as truth is greater than falsehood so is liberty greater than all the oppressors of man can bring against it.
America answers France and her answer is clear and dauntless. It is as ringing as the Declaration of Independence, the rock upon which America built her house. The power of Prussia, the power of the Hun, the power of tyrants, must be utterly crushed before the world can be free. Germany sought this war in all wickedness and greed; to satisfy her ambition she has pulled down all the piers that support the house of civilization that men have been building for ages; she would destroy the world in her purpose to dominate it. And America intends that Germany shall have war until all the devils are driven out of her.
America can do it. America came to this conflict with clean hands and a clean soul; no selfishness was in her; she fights for no ends of her own save the highest end to make the world safe for democracy. And as she has truth and justice on her side she fights with a spirit unknown to the servile bondsmen of autocracy. She is young and immensely strong, she is still the land of freedom. And when she rises in full, relentless might, thrice armed in that she has a just cause, she will destroy the serpent and cast him from the earth. The greatest page in our history is being written; we shall write it so that the better world to come shall call us blessed.
“We are coming, Lafayette!” What a call to victory is that! We have already come. We have joined with the descendants of that youth of France who came to us in our hour of need. The spirit of Washington must glory in that fact. The great Father of our country loved the Frenchman as his son. To what nobler end could Washington’s children dedicate themselves than to help their brethren? And the spirit of Lafayette must rejoice to see his dreams fulfilled, his dreams of the great republic and of the dawn of the brotherhood of men!
Lover of liberty and justice, we salute you! The time has come for us to show that what you hoped of us we now are, and to show it to the end that liberty shall not perish from the earth, that all men be free, and that in truth man was endowed by his Creator with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
This text has been preserved as in the original, including archaic and inconsistent spelling, punctuation and grammar, except as noted below.
Obvious printer’s errors have been silently corrected.
Illustration notation has been moved to below any enclosing paragraph.
Text in italics in the original work is represented herein as _text_.
Small capitals in the original work are represented herein as all capitals.
End of Project Gutenberg's Lafayette, We Come!, by Rupert S. Holland