A hundred or more young men came to a certain city to enlist for the war.
As they marched out through the railway station they rent the air with
whooping and yells and other manifestations of boisterous conduct. These
young fellows may have hearts of gold, but their real manhood was overlaid
with a veneer of rudeness that could not commend them to the admiration of
cultivated persons. Inside the station was another group of young men in
khaki who were quiet, dignified, and decorous. The contrast between the
two groups was most striking, and the bystanders were led to wonder
whether it requires a world-war to teach our young men manners and whether
the schools and homes have abdicated in favor of the cantonment in the
teaching of deportment. In the schools and the homes that are to be in our
good land we may well hope that decorum will be emphasized and magnified;
for decorum is evermore the fruitage of intellectuality and genuine
culture.
As a nation, we have been prodigal of our resources and, especially, of
our time. We have failed to regard our leisure hours as a liability but,
like the lotus eaters, have dallied in the realm of pleasure. Like
children at play, we have gone on our pleasure-seeking ways all heedless
of the clock, and, when misfortune came and necessity arose, many of us
were unwilling and more of us unable to engage in the work of production.
In some localities legislation was invoked to urge us toward the fields
and gardens.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29