This year must solve profound problems, determine the trend
of human affairs for centuries, and influence the whole future history
of civilization. This year may actually see the issue; at least it will
serve to light the near future when that issue shall be accomplished.
There has risen, then, a year that is great with no less a thing than
the future welfare of the whole earth. It must embrace the victory of
one ideal over another, and include a decision which shall determine
whether the sublime human hope of freedom and security for all mankind
is to guide human progress henceforth, or the spirit of domination and
slavery to win a new lease of life. On the one hand, this year of the
first magnitude will shine with the glory of such a victory for
democratic ideas as we have not seen, or expected to see, in our
generation; on the other, its bale-fire will blaze upon the overthrow of
all great ideals, the destruction of a weak nation by a powerful one,
and the triumph of that policy of "blood and iron" from which every
enlightened man of this age shrinks with horror. The situation cannot be
stated in simpler terms; no words can make it less than tremendous; and
it is demanded from us to make it personal--as personal to ourselves as
it is to the King of England, the Emperor of Germany, or the Czar of
all the Russias.
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