CHAPTER the Thirtieth.
The Makers of the Republic--Lincoln, Jefferson, Clay and Webster--The Proposed League of Nations--The Wilsonian Incertitude--The "New Freedom" I The makers of the American Republic range themselves in two groups--Washington, Franklin and Jefferson--Clay, Webster and Lincoln--each of whom, having a genius peculiarly his own, gave himself and his best to the cause of national unity and independence.
In a general way it may be said that Washington created and Lincoln saved the Union.

But along with Washington and Lincoln, Clay makes a good historic third, for it was the masterful Kentuckian who, joining rare foresight to surpassing eloquence and leading many eminent men, including Webster, was able to hold the legions of unrest at bay during the formative period.
There are those who call these great men "back numbers," who tell us we have left the past behind us and entered an epoch of more enlightened progress--who would displace the example of the simple lives they led and the homely truths they told, to set up a school of philosophy which had made Athens stare and Rome howl, and, I dare say, is causing the Old Continentals to turn over in their graves.

The self-exploiting spectacle and bizarre teaching of this school passes the wit of man to fathom.
Professing the ideal and proposing to recreate the Universe, the New Freedom, as it calls itself, would standardize it.

The effect of that would be to desiccate the human species in human conceit.

It would cheapen the very harps and halos in Heaven and convert the Day of Judgment into a moving picture show.
I protest that I am not of its kidney.