Any number of depraved units cannot form a great nation.
The people may seem to be highly civilised, and yet be ready to fall to pieces at first touch of adversity.

Without integrity of individual character, they can have no real strength, cohesion, soundness.

They may be rich, polite, and artistic; and yet hovering on the brink of ruin.
If living for themselves only, and with no end but pleasure--each little self his own little god--such a nation is doomed, and its decay is inevitable.
Where national character ceases to be upheld, a nation may be regarded as next to lost.

Where it ceases to esteem and to practise the virtues of truthfulness, honesty, integrity, and justice, it does not deserve to live.

And when the time arrives in any country when wealth has so corrupted, or pleasure so depraved, or faction so infatuated the people, that honour, order, obedience, virtue, and loyalty have seemingly become things of the past; then, amidst the darkness, when honest men--if, haply, there be such left--are groping about and feeling for each other's hands, their only remaining hope will be in the restoration and elevation of Individual Character; for by that alone can a nation be saved; and if character be irrecoverably lost, then indeed there will be nothing left worth saving..