I am not a prophet in any sense of the word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism.

To conceive the better American future as a consummation which will take care of itself,--as the necessary result of our customary conditions, institutions, and ideas,--persistence in such a conception is admirably designed to deprive American life of any promise at all.

The better future which Americans propose to build is nothing if not an idea which must in certain essential respects emancipate them from their past.

American history contains much matter for pride and congratulation, and much matter for regret and humiliation.

On the whole, it is a past of which the loyal American has no reason to feel ashamed, chiefly because it has throughout been made better than it was by the vision of a better future; and the American of to-day and to-morrow must remain true to that traditional vision.