prosecutions were started in St. Louis, members of the House of Delegates denounced the bribery statute as a blue law; but I have observed that any law looks blue to a man when he wants to break it. Why, four years ago men would give bribes and think nothing of it. Men would take bribes and boast of it. Legislative halls were made dens of thieves, and the touch of the unclean dollar was over all. Finally the people were awake to a realization of the fact that bribery is treason, the treason of peace, and then came a firm determination to stamp out the offense that strikes at the heart of free government. But four years ago, why, men would give bribes and take bribes and still consider themselves honest. I will tell you a story just here from real life to illustrate that: A member of the Municipal Assembly of St. Louis accepted a bribe of $25,000 to vote against a franchise bill. Then he accepted a bribe of $50,000 to vote in favor of it from the other side. He sat down and he sent the $25,000 that he had received to vote against the franchise back to the man who had given it to him with a little note saying, "I send you the money that you paid me to vote against that franchise bill because I do not feel, after considering the matter thoroughly, that I can honestly earn that money."

And another along the same line that may illustrate it better, that is, the condition of the public mind four years ago: A state senator sold his vote for $500. He got the money, put it in his pocketbook, put the pocketbook in the inside pocket of his coat. That night he had to take the train and go to his home in a distant part of the State. He took his coat with the pocketbook with the money inside, and laid it in the upper berth of the Pullman where he had taken a berth. When he got up the next morning, he found his pocketbook was gone. He suspected the porter, and had that person brought before him and charged with the larceny. The porter became frightened and confessed, and handed the senator the pocketbook containing the $500 bribe money. The senator drew himself up to his full height and said, "My man, I could send you to the penitentiary for this, but I will not do that. Instead, I will give you a little advice. Remember, wherever you are, under any and all circumstances, that

honesty is the best policy!" It did not occur to him that he had committed a worse offense than the porter when he sold the vote that did not belong to him, but to his constituents. But they have learned better than that now. The public conscience has been educated to viewing the crime of bribery in its true light. The energies of this public conscience have been extended from the domain of the public wrong-doer to that of the private wrong-doer, and probing into the activities of rascals of every kind. Why, some of our great insurance companies were found to be manipulating things for the advantage of some of the directors. Now, they may not have thought that they were doing wrong at first. Lots of these men out in the House of Delegates did not think they were doing wrong when they took the bribe money, but some of these directors are now learning that great lesson. The public conscience is demanding now a higher standard in official life; it is demanding a higher standard of honesty in private life; and that public conscience will continue to make a standard, new yet old, applicable to every act, whether it be of a public official or a private citizen,—a standard of common, simple honesty, that is all.

The world is not getting worse; but these very exposures, the very awakening of the public conscience, shows that the world is getting better. These things do not indicate a moral degeneration, but they show a moral regeneration. Wealth is not worshiped with the same devotion today that it used to be; and gold is not regarded with the same awe as of old. The effort is now to get right more than it is to get rich, to get right and to stay right. There is a constant conflict between the forces of evil and good, of right and wrong, of the law and the lawless, of education and ignorance. In every sphere of life, the right, the true, the law, education, must always be fought for. The wrong, the lawless, ignorance, must always be fought against. It is not enough to be merely against wrong. You must be actively against it if your influence counts. The farmer must not only sow the useful grain, but he must care for it and nurture it, while the briars and thistles sown by accident, cared for by chance, will flourish anywhere. So a field neglected will not grow up in

useful grain, but in briars and thistles. A child neglected will not become good of his own accord, or educated, but he will become bad and ignorant and to make the child good and educated it takes the activity, it takes the energy of someone. And in taking up that work this Conference is doing more for humanity and for American citizenship than any one influence in our public life today.

Now, these things may be ideal, but ideas and ideals are the life of a free people. We are made and governed by the things that we cherish. The public life of a nation or a State is but the reflection of its private life, and no government is better than the majority of its voters. Rome built great highways and founded mighty cities while Roman civilization was declining. She erected barriers against the barbarous hordes that surged against her from without while the strength of Roman character ebbed away; and when that was gone there was nothing to defend, there was nothing to conquer.

There is an old story of an eastern king who caused a great palace to be erected as the abode of majesty and of power. Stone by stone the structure grew, and the heart of the king swelled with pride. One morning the palace was in ruins. "What great treason hath been accomplished here?", the king exclaimed; and a price was put upon the head of the traitor who had destroyed the abode of majesty. But a wise man of the court thus admonished the king: "Great master, there has been no treason here. Thy house that was great and mighty has fallen down because the builders used mortar without sand. Hence their work has come to ruin." So with the State, external grandeur counts for nothing. We may calculate our wealth as the sands of the sea, we may build the domes of our capitols and the spires of our churches until they pierce the clouds and glitter amongst the stars: all must fall and crumble away unless it be welded and strengthened by those principles of Christian education that constitute the ground work of an enlightened citizenship.

So, we of Missouri want to help along in this movement. The patriotism of the South in solving all of these great problems is just the same as the patriotism of the North. There is now but one heart in all,-North, East, South and

West-and that is the heart of America. Here, between the two great oceans, on ground consecrated by the blood of patriots to the principles of liberty and self-government, we have founded an empire such as no conqueror of old ever dreamed of. But the greatness of a nation does not consist in mere acreage of territory, nor in the strength of battleships, but in the purity of its ideals and in the intensity of its devotion to those principles that make for right, for justice, and for education throughout the world. True to these principles, and with the masses educated, we shall be the most powerful among all the nations of the earth; but forsaking these, our strongest military engines will become as toys in our hands, and our proudest naval armaments will be as impotent as the armies and navy of Russia against the victorious Japanese. In the opera, Siegfried is represented as seated at the mouth of a cavern. Birds are singing, leaves are rustling, and light is shimmering about him. Yet he cannot understand what the sounds mean. At length comes the revelation of song, and of life; and the hero passes swiftly up the heights where, encircled in flame, sleeps the soul of his strength. So, in some other day, when we shall have struck to the heart that ignorance that is the real foe of progress, not only in the South but all over the nation, the heights of achievement will be climbed, and we shall stand face to face with the ideal and the true.

The Achievement of a Generation*

BY EDWIN A. Alderman,

President of the University of Virginia

For five years I have been associated with the work of the Conference for Education in the South, and for me it has been a noble and inspiring association. During these five years I have never lost sight for one moment of the reasons for the existence of this conference. This conference is, and always has been, simply a unique association of Americans of all professions and classes and sections, working together in a spirit of brotherhood, to bring to pass one of the nicest and most difficult achievements of any democracy,—the establishment and maintenance of an adequate system of training for all the workers and citizens of a republic saturated with the idea, if somewhat out of plumb in the practice, of equal rights to all and special privileges to none. This conference has contributed, I dare to claim tonight, to the better life of this nation, the new and fruitful idea of voluntary civic cooperation, and in its greatest and directest offsprings, the Southern Education Board, and the General Education Board, and the State Co-operative Associations, has given to this idea a form and a method that increases the directive power of democracy in a simple and natural way. The Southern man is so often thought of as a sort of ambassador from one court of public opinion to another, that I sometimes hesitate to speak of the South as distinct from other sections, for, perhaps, we do dwell on this too much. But this is a Conference for Education in the South, and therefore, I am justified in presenting the peculiar problems of the South. The Southern States of our nation were not chosen as the immediate and transient objective of the work of this Conference because of any doubt as to the ability of the South to build its institutions in strength and in completeness, or to take its position as the equal, and in some respects, the leader

*An address delivered at the Conference for Education in the South, Lexington, Ky., May 4, 1906.