CHAPTER XVIII

REGENERATION

When the great war broke upon an unsuspecting brotherhood of fellow humans, we were, as a nation, from prosperity and self-indulgence, perilously near the brink of disaster. It is only in the light of events and a backward glance toward the precipice which had yawned for us that we may now indulge in a certain sort of solemn consolation. At least, we have been saved from a worse fate, one that has bells on its toes--our _national intellect_ was on the wane; likewise our _national conscience_. But we were not alone--all nations were afflicted, ours no more than the rest, but we were the younger and more opulent.

_Regeneration or degeneracy?_ That was the uppermost question in the public mind when the king of Berlin turned loose his hosts of degeneracy, thereby bringing back to its sober senses the brain power of civilized mankind. And with it came the brawn.

Now when _brain and brawn_ hook up together the danger of getting stuck in the mire is well nigh impossible. Men who had gone sordid while amassing great fortunes and looked on passively while their families cut the swath to which wealth and position seemed to entitle them, jumped to their feet with a _new light_ in their eyes, while men just entering upon the threshold of success stood in awe of consequences beyond their control. But the main thing to happen was that the world turned its face toward the great intruder and, thereby, its heels toward the fatal abyss into which millions would have fallen _from sheer crowding from behind_.

We had been following the modern tendency and had gone the limit in quest of that will-o’-the-wisp called _pleasure_--which we never quite found. We nearly did, or thought we surely would, but in our hot pursuit we heard the blast of a _war trumpet_ and we stopped in our tracks!

The weakest link in the chain of _self-gratification_ had broken--the War Lord and his hosts had gone stark mad! Now was the time for the cohorts of insanity to wreak vengeance upon the joy-seeking, peace-loving people of the world. We who were on the brink of another kind of pitfall--_too much opulence_--paused in awe and horror to gaze upon the oncoming hords. And right here began _the regeneration of mankind_.

No one, taking the larger view of the world’s greatest catastrophe since the flood, will hesitate to believe that, even unto its most horrible detail, it represents the working out of _some great plan_. The world was far better off after the flood, for when the waters receded it was found that the valleys had been enriched by the washings from the mountain-sides and the hills. A new virginity had entered into the soil, the future value of which, to mankind, being wholly beyond computation.

And so in the final reckoning this tremendous letting of blood will have long since shed light upon its true significance. To-day we estimate it upon the basis of its horrors, its seeming uselessness, _the blight of its trail_ across our own dooryards. But we’ve all heard of the _fungus growth_ which blights the progress of plants and trees; and _parasites_ which destroy the grains of the field, bringing famine upon the population. In the present case the tentacles of the great Octopus of Degeneracy took such strangling hold upon the body politic that half a world seems doomed to die that the other half may live in aid of the great plan of the universe. In the meantime, _no life is worth while_ that takes no part in the titanic struggle, which must go on and on until, in the words of our leader, “_the world is made safe for democracy_.”

A Series of Six Inspirational Books

BY DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS

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LIST OF TITLES

1. _Whistle and Hoe--Sing as We Go_ 2. _Taking Stock of Ourselves_ 3. _Initiation and Self-Reliance_ 4. _Assuming Responsibilities_ 5. _Profiting by Experience_ 6. _Wedlock in Time_

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Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Redundant chapter titles have been deleted from this eBook.

The first uncaptioned illustration represents the cover; the other uncaptioned illustrations are semi-decorative line drawings of the author.

End of Project Gutenberg's Making Life Worth While, by Douglas Fairbanks