To him, defeat is no
more than passing through a tunnel is to a traveller,--he knows he must
emerge again into the sunlight.
The nation that is strongest is the one that is most self-reliant, the
one that contains within its boundaries all that its people need. If,
with its ports all blockaded it has not within itself the necessities
of life and the elements of its continual progress then,--it is weak,
held by the enemy, and it is but a question of time till it must
surrender. Its independence is in proportion to its self-reliance, to
its power to sustain itself from within. What is true of nations is
true of individuals. The history of nations is but the biography of
individuals magnified, intensified, multiplied, and projected on the
screen of the past. History is the biography of a nation; biography is
the history of an individual. So it must be that the individual who is
most strong in any trial, sorrow or need is he who can live from his
inherent strength, who needs no scaffolding of commonplace sympathy to
uphold him. He must ever be self-reliant.
The wealth and prosperity of ancient Rome, relying on her slaves to do
the real work of the nation, proved the nation's downfall.
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