To Woodrow Wilson, the apparent failure, belongs the undying honor, which will grow with the growing centuries, of having saved the "little child that shall lead them yet." No other statesman but Wilson could have done it. And he did it.
It was the human spirit itself that failed at Paris. It is no use passing judgments and making scapegoats of this or that individual statesman or group of statesmen. Idealists make a great mistake in not facing the real facts sincerely and resolutely. They believe in the power of the spirit, in the goodness which is at the heart of things, in the triumph which is in store for the great moral ideals of the race. But this faith only too often leads to an optimism which is sadly and fatally at variance with actual results. It is the realist and not the idealist who is generally justified by events. We forget that the human spirit, the spirit of goodness and truth in the world, is still only an infant crying in the night, and that the struggle with darkness is as yet mostly an unequal struggle. . . . Paris proved this terrible truth once more. It was not Wilson who failed there, but humanity itself. It was not the statesmen that failed, so much as the spirit of the peoples behind them.
Gen. Jan Christian Smuts—Letter, Jan. 8, 1921. Printed in N.Y. Evening Post, March 2, 1921.
Rules of conduct which govern men in their relations to one another are being applied in an ever-increasing degree to nations. The battlefield as a place of settlement of disputes is gradually yielding to arbitral courts of justice.
William Howard Taft—Dawn of World Peace. In U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin. No. 8. (1912)
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{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>The development of the doctrine of international arbitration, considered from the standpoint of its ultimate benefits to the human race, is the most vital movement of modern times. In its relation to the well-being of the men and women of this and ensuing generations, it exceeds in importance the proper solution of various economic problems which are constant themes of legislative discussion or enactment.
William Howard Taft—Dawn of World Peace. In U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin. No. 8. (1912)
WORSHIP
| seealso = (See also Religion)
| topic =
| page = 918
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>It is the Mass that matters.
Augustine Birrell—What, Then, Did Happen at the Reformationt Pub. in Nineteenth
Century, April, 1896. Answered, July, 1896.
Ah, why
Should we ; in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd and under roofs
That our frail hands have raised?
Bryant—A Forest Hymn. L. 16.
He wales a portion with judicious care;
And "Let us worship God!" he says, with solemn
air.
Burns—The Cotter's Saturday Night. St. 12.
Isocrates adviseth Demonicus, when he came
to a strange city, to worship by all means the
gods of the place.
| author = Burton
| work = Anatomy of Melancholy.
| place = Pt. III.
Sec. IV. Memb. I. Subsec. 5.
| seealso = (See also Montaigne, also Ambrose under Rome)
The heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old!—
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.
| author = Byron
| work = Manfred. Act III. Sc. 4.
Man always worships something; always he
sees the Infinite shadowed forth in something
finite; and indeed can and must so see it in any
finite thing, once tempt him well to fix his eyes thereon.
Carlyle—Essays. Goethe's Works.
And what greater calamity can fall upon a
nation than the loss of worship.
Emerson—An Address. July 15, 1838.
I don't like your way of conditioning and contracting with the saints. Do this and I'll do
that! Here's one for t'other. Save me and I'll
give you a taper or go on a pilgrimage.
Erasmus—The Shipwreck.
What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile:
In vain with lavish kindness
The gifts of God are strown;
The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone.
Bishop Heber—From Greenland's Icy Mountains. Missionary Hymn.
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod.
They have left unstained, what there they
found—
Freedom to worship God.
Felicia D. Hemans—The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.
As the skull of the man grows broader, so do his creeds.
And his gods they are shaped in his image and mirror his needs.
And he clothes them with thunders and beauty,
He clothes them with music and fire,
Seeing not, as he bows by their altars,
That he worships his own desire.
{{Hoyt quote
| num = | text = <poem>For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds
are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow too;
