Page 42 - 1919 Hartridge

necessity hardened to their suffering; but the knowledge of that agony, a knowledge that underlies subconsciously our every thought and act, can not steel our hearts to the personal tragedies
that lie before us.
It seems bitter in a way that all over the country our young
people, instead of standing this week at the glad commencement of life, are on the very threshhold of the darkened house of pain; bitter that we must urge you to shut your hearts delib­ erately to your own griefs, to content yourselves in that house.
Whatever training you have had has been a training for community interest and fellowship. Xo one has attempted to train you for leadership. Those who lead have, I believe,
some God-given quality that brings them to the front. Train­ ing can not give that quality. Xo accident of lowly birth, no ignorance of men or books, could keep the peasant Joan from her place at the head of the soldiers of the Dauphin, or from her abiding home in the hearts of the people of France. Xo log cabin in a remote section, no apparent lack of opportunity, could
keep the uncouth Lincoln from his place as the saviour of this Union, or from his abiding home in the hearts of the people of America. Xot all the training that Germany’s first War Lord could give could fit his eldest son and heir to be a leacier of men—though it might have served to help him rule as a master
of slaves.
l.ay aside desire for leadership. The times are clamorous
for competent workers, for faithful followers. There is no
room now for ambition, no room for the shallowvthe superficial, the idle, the selfish. I'he future of the world lies with you and with girls like you. Be true to your training. Learn all that you can. Do all that you can. Help all that you can. Be worthy of the untaught Joan and the self-taught Lincoln. Dream, like the Belgians, a patriot’s dream, the dream that enabled them to give all for an ideal, to accept martyrdom, anci to cry in the midst of that martyrdom, //A’ regret nothing.
We do not lack examples of heroism and of faith. And you, too, you, the women of America, will endure to the end that the men of America may win to freedom for the worlci.
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