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whatever. Political strategy differs from military strategy in that there can be no concealment in regard to the objective. If the leader conceals his intentions, his followers become suspicious and desert him. The strategic retreat or the change of base is, therefore, a hazardous operation. Fabius, had he been in politics instead of war, would have found it well-nigh impossible to keep his forces together.

The skill of a great politician consists not in the ability to outwit his opponents, but in his ability to keep in check his more impetuous partisans without cooling their moral ardor. He must insist on doing one thing at a time, and yet so win their confidence that they shall believe that when that thing has been done he may be depended upon to take with equal courage the next necessary step. When he acts with prudence, he must see to it that his prudence is not mistaken for cowardice or sloth.

It was in his power of sun-clear exposition that Lincoln was preeminent. In his letter to Horace Greeley in 1862 he expounded his principles of political expediency in a way that could be 'understanded of the people.' 'My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I believe that what I am doing hurts the cause. I shall do more whenever I believe that doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors

when shown to be errors: and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.'

Here two things are made perfectly clear, the personal wish and the official duty. Abraham Lincoln, the man, wished every man everywhere to be free: let friend and foe alike be aware of this. But Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, had a task to which everything else must be subordinated. His sworn duty was to save the Union, and no ulterior desire could be allowed to interfere with that. To save the Union he needed the help of those who believed in the immediate abolition of slavery, and he needed the help of those who did not so believe. And he was able to receive the help of both, because he took both into his full confidence.

The tragic blunders of the era of reconstruction came from the lack of such magnanimous politics. Lincoln would have made no mystery of the duty of the day, and he would have made it clear that it was a new day. He would have called upon the men of the South and the men of the North to lay aside their animosities as things irrelevant, in order together to save their common country from new perils. It took the ordinary politician a quarter of a century to see what the great politician could see in an instant, the Civil War was over. What miseries were endured, and what injustices were done, because well-intentioned leaders lacked the quality of moral quick-wittedness!

that

If war is the game of kings, politics is the game of free peoples. There is no form of human activity which calls into play so many qualities at once, or

which demands the constant exercise pleted in his own lifetime. He may

of such energetic virtue.

'Like a poet hidden in the light of thought,' the politician's private conscience is hidden in the light of his public duty. He is himself a poet-a maker. He works not through words, but through the impulses and convictions of other men. His materials are the most ordinary — the events of the passing day, and the crude averages of unselected humanity. He takes them as they come, and remoulds them nearer to the heart's desire. Out of the conflicting aims of the multitudes of individuals, he creates the harmonies of concerted action.

To some the praise of politicians may seem but the glorification of worldly success. 'But what,' they ask, 'about the failures? The world acclaims the hero who marches to triumph at the head of a great people. But what of one who is far in advance of his own time, the lonely champion of unpopular truth who dies unrecognized by the world he serves?'

The answer must be that there are good and great men whom we praise for other qualities than those of the politician. Their high function it is to proclaim ideas that are not affected by the changing circumstances of their own day. They belong to the ages, and not to a single generation. Their fame is dateless.

But, on the other hand, we must recognize the fact that one may be in advance of his age and yet closely related to it, as an effective politician. The politician aims at success, but it is not necessary that the success should be personal. It is the final issue of the struggle which must be kept in mind.

The politician is quick to seize an opportunity, but it may be only the opportunity to make a beginning in a work so vast that it cannot be com

deliberately ally himself to the party of the future, and labor to-day for results that cannot appear till day after to-morrow. He may see that the surest way to the attainment of his ultimate purpose is through the ruins of his own fortunes, and he may choose to take that way.

In all this he is still within the range of practical politics, and is concerned with the adaptation of means to ends. He is dealing with the issues not of a day, but of a century. It is not safe to say that a politician has failed till the returns are all in.

As the true sequence of events becomes plain, History revises our judgments in regard to political sagacity. We begin to see who were the leaders, and who were the blindly led.

There have been martyrs who in the hour of their agony have been farseeing politicians. They have been sustained not so much by a beatific vision as by their clear foresight of the public consequences of the blunder of their adversaries. They have calculated the force of the revulsion of feeling that was sure to follow an act of cruel injustice. It was in this mood that heroic Hugh Latimer watched the fagots that were being piled around him. 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out.'

Latimer's words were justified by the events. Those martyr fires, manfully endured, determined the policy of the nation.

Here good politics and good ethics are one. No cause has ever triumphed through clever management alone. There is always need for the leader, who, without regard to what may happen to himself, is resolved to play the

man.

EMILIA

BY ELLEN ANGUS FRENCH

HALFWAY up the Hemlock valley turnpike,
In the bend of Silver Water's arm,

Where the deer come trooping down at even,
Drink the cowslip pool, and fear no harm,
Dwells Emilia,

Flower of the fields of Camlet Farm.

Sitting sewing by the western window
As the too brief mountain sunshine flies,
Hast thou seen a slender-shouldered figure
With a chestnut braid, Minerva-wise,
Round her temples,

Shadowing her gray, enchanted eyes?

When the freshets flood the Silver Water,
When the swallow flying northward braves
Sleeting rains that sweep the birchen foothills
Where the windflowers' pale plantation waves-
(Fairy gardens

Springing from the dead leaves in their graves) –

Falls forgotten, then, Emilia's needle;

Ancient ballads, fleeting through her brain,
Sing the cuckoo and the English primrose,
Outdoors calling with a quaint refrain;
And a rainbow

Seems to brighten through the gusty rain.

Forth she goes, in some old dress and faded,

Fearless of the showery shifting wind;
Kilted are her skirts to clear the mosses,
And her bright braids in a kerchief pinned,
Younger sister

Of the damsel-errant Rosalind.

While she helps to serve the harvest supper
In the lantern-lighted village hall,
Moonlight rises on the burning woodland,
Echoes dwindle from the distant Fall.
Hark, Emilia!

In her ear the airy voices call.

Hidden papers in the dusky garret,

Where her few and secret poems lie, Thither flies her heart to join her treasure, While she serves, with absent-musing eye, Mighty tankards

Foaming cider in the glasses high.

'Would she mingle with her young companions!'
Vainly do her aunts and uncles say;
Ever, from the village sports and dances,
Early missed, Emilia slips away.

Whither vanished?

With what unimagined mates to play?

Did they seek her, wandering by the water,
They should find her comrades shy and strange:
Queens and princesses, and saints and fairies,
Dimly moving in a cloud of change: -
Desdemona;

Mariana of the Moated Grange.

Up this valley to the fair and market

When young farmers from the southward ride,

Oft they linger at a sound of chanting

In the meadows by the turnpike side;

Long they listen,

Deep in fancies of a fairy bride.

THE NEW RESERVATION OF TIME

BY WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER

So far as I have observed, no attempt has been made to forecast the social effect of the various pension systems which are being put into operation for the retirement of the individual worker upon the approach of age. It is of course too early to judge of effects by results, and speculation is always liable to be errant. But it is quite evident that a new principle has been set at work in the social order, which invites careful study at many points. Society is fast becoming reorganized around the principle of a definite allotment of time to the individual for the fulfillment of his part in the ordinary tasks and employments. The termination of his period of associated labor has been fixed within the decade which falls between his 'threescore,' and his 'threescore and ten' years.

The intention of society in trying to bring about this uniform, and, as it will prove to be in most cases, reduced allotment of time for the ordinary lifework of the individual, is twofold. I am obliged to use the term 'society' in this connection; for when the state is not largely concerned in any changes in the social order, I know of no other collective term which so well expresses that general consent and approval, if not authority, through which such changes are effected. The first intention then of society in this matter is evidently to secure the greatest efficiency in some employments the best quality of work, in others the largest amount. Society virtually notifies the individual that the time will come

when it will account itself better off without his service than with it. More efficient workers will be in waiting to take his place. The workshop, whether manual or intellectual, must be run at a pace with which he cannot keep step. The second, and equally plain intention of society is to make some adequate provision in time for the individual worker before he becomes a spent force. It therefore creates for him a reservation of time sufficient for his more personal uses. Within this new region of personal freedom he may enter upon any pursuits, or engage in any activities required by his personal necessities or prompted by newlyawakened ambitions.

I am not now concerned with the results which society seeks to gain in carrying out its first intention. I think that the intention lies within the ethics of business, and that the results to be gained may be expected to warrant the proposed allotment of time. But what of the second intention of society? How far is it likely to be realized? What will be the effect of the scheme upon those now entering, and upon those who may hereafter enter, on the reservation of time provided for them? What is to be their habit of mind, their disposition, toward the reserved years which have heretofore been reckoned simply as the years of age? Will this change in the ordering of the individual life intensify the reproach of age, or remove it? Will the exceptional worker in the ranks of manual or intellectual labor, but especially the

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