and ranks, and therefore you must not allow class pride to develop within you. In time to come we want to see one Empire; therefore you must discipline yourselves into one organization. In time to come we want this people to be faithful; therefore you must learn fidelity. We want this people in the future to be obedient; you must therefore train yourselves in obedi ence. We want this people to be peace-loving, but courageous; you must therefore learn to be peaceful and courageous at the same time. . . . We do not want this people in time to come to be weak, but strong enough to withstand the hardships of human existence. You must therefore steel yourselves while you are young. You must learn to be hard and endure privation without ever giving in. . . . We want you in the future to be a proud people; therefore in your youth you must live in true pride. You must be proud to be the youth of a proud people, so that in the future your youthful pride becomes the pride of the generations. We shall pass away, but in you Germany will continue to live, and when there is nothing left of us, you will have to hold in your own strong hands the flag which we once lifted from obscurity. You must therefore stand firm on the ground of your own country, and be hard, so that this flag shall never drop from your hands. You cannot but be linked with us, when the great victorious battalions of our movement are marching to-day through Germany. I know you are joining the battalions, and we all know: Germany lies in front of us; in us Germany is marching; and after us lives Germany! Excerpts from Address to the Youth of the BY STANLEY BALDWIN We are passing. You are the governors of the future. We are passing on to you the duty of guarding what is worthy and worth while in our past, our heritage, and our tradition. . . . It will be for you to protect democracy in whatever part of the Empire you may live. It must be defended from without, and equally it may have to be defended from within. And it may well be that you will have to save democracy from itself. You have to show the world—and in many parts of it an exceedingly critical world-that there is nothing in democracy and its principles, its purposes, or even its methods which necessarily breeds timidity of outlook or mediocrity of achievement. Courage, discipline, efficiency are as necessary to democracy as they are to any dictatorship, and democracy implies and demands leadership. . Here we have ceased to be an island, but we are still an Empire. And what is the secret? Freedom, ordered freedom, within the law, with force in the background and not in the foreground; a society in which authority and freedom are blended in due proportion, in which State and citizen are both ends and means. It is an Empire organised for peace and for the free development of the individual in and through an infinite variety of voluntary associations. It deifies neither the State nor its rulers. The Christian State proclaims human personality to be supreme; the servile State denies this. Every compromise with the infinite value of the human soul leads straight back to savagery and the jungle. Expel this truth of our religion, and what follows? The insolence of dominion, and the cruelty of despotism. Denounce religion as the opium of the people, and you swiftly proceed to denounce political liberty and civil liberty as opium. Freedom of speech goes, tolerance follows, and justice is no more. . . . Slavery is a weed that grows in every soil. . . The torch I would hand to you, and ask you to pass from hand to hand along the pathways of the Empire, is a Christian truth rekindled anew in each ardent generation. Use men as ends and never merely as means; and live for the brotherhood of man, which implies the Fatherhood of God.. VI NOTHING FAILS LIKE SUCCESSORS "Still have I found, where tyranny prevails, Despotisms may have been successful in various parts of the primitive and ancient world, but they cannot work successfully in modern times. The ritualistic despotism cannot adapt to change; the personal despotism cannot maintain its leadership. Despotic conformity to an old tradition will not work in the modern world. It stands too steady; and it is too rigid. It will not adapt itself to change. Primitive tribes. have been found living on South Sea Islands just the way they had probably lived for ages. But this old plan of life could not continue. While the ancient taboos would protect against poison fruits, they had no effect against alcohol; and while old customs as to food gave vitamins sufficient to prevent scurvy, there was no traditional guardian against flu or tuberculosis. The rituals of our Indian tribes were of no avail against the diseases and the vices of the white man. Egypt fell before a new invention, the Roman phalanx. For a long time China kept her enemies out |