Roland G. Usher

“ We cannot tell in advance what the future is going to be, we cannot tell in advance which of us will render the service which will be seen a thousand years hence to have been important; but surely we can all be pardoned for believing that we have some part to play in it. ”

“ THE defense alleged by all the nations at present involved in the European war hinges upon the necessity of their continued existence to insure the future of civilization. Nor can we claim with a shadow of truth that the insistence upon this point is more vigorous at Berlin that it is in London or in Paris. We shall surely be lacking in fairness if we question the sincerity with which all these European nations tenaciously cling to the notion that they are indispensable to the happiness of future generations. ”

“ In reality we are dealing to-day with essentially different notions of civilization, of its object, of the methods necessary to attain it, of the hands which will perform the work. It is the difference of opinion about the future which lies at the root of the present difficulty, and in that opinion we shall find, as in a looking-glass, the images of the nations as they successively step forward. They differ in their national character, their ideas of morality, their ideas of the future because of their past. ”

“ If there is anything in the tenet of the relativity of truth, we have not now and are not likely to have any notion of what is really indispensable to the future of civilization, because we have not and cannot have a definite notion of what the future of civilization is. ”

“ It ought to be sufficient for us to remember that northwestern Europe, which we now look upon as the seat of civilization, was, at the birth of Christ, scarcely known to be upon the globe, and was in all honesty believed by scientists to be the place where the world came to an end and space began. ”

“ We find in England a notion of individual liberty which, on the whole, allows the individual to do pretty much anything he wants to until some other individual sues him in court. The government is to arbitrate between the two, but is to direct neither. In Germany the government promulgates sets of rules regarding the conduct of individuals toward each other, and compels individuals to observe them. The citizens of both nations claim that the results are as nearly ideal as anything is likely to be in this imperfect world. ”

“ Germans as the death of civilization. Indeed, educated men were pretty positive for nearly a thousand years that the Barbarians had destroyed civilization. Of this the Renaissance had no doubt in whatever, and named the centuries subsequent to the fall of Rome and previous to their own time as the dark ages, when the light of civilization had been quenched. It is an astonishingly different notion of the Barbarian invasions which we find in the pages of ardent Teutonists like Lamprecht or Chamberlain. They are quire convinced that those centuries saw the dawn of civilization. ”

“ Surely if in the whole range of history we come upon a country which believed its own efforts indispensable for the progress of the race, it was Renaissance Italy, and it was more nearly right than contemporaries usually have been ”

“ Their national aims and ambitions are the result of the history of Europe, the result of their deep hatreds, antagonisms, and rivalries during the fifteen hundred years since their ancestors poured down from the forests of the North upon the provinces of decadent Rome. From such a long and tangled past have come deep-rooted ideas, intense passions, strong beliefs, determinations to prevail. ”

“ A cold and unsympathetic reception awaits the advocate of the usefulness of imperial Rome of the fourth century A.D. There can be absolutely no doubt that the monasteries rendered indispensable service to the cause of civilization in the early middle ages, not only by the preservation of art and letters, but by the preservation of technical skill in many mechanical trades. ”

“ But in the sixteenth century the monastic orders had no friends sufficiently ardent and powerful to ward off destruction, and there are not many students to-day who are inclined to question the general gain for civilization by the breaking of their power. ”