Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 527
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[Page 527]
[At the top of this and following pages of this letter is the word "Girls". Not transcribed.]
from South to North, emptying into the Baltic Sea. Minimise as we may the work of the Teuton armies in Poland nothing better or more rapid has been accomplished in history, and nothing comparable has been recorded during the existance of man. It has been great work. The military minds guiding the wonderful armies must be of the first order. Should they not be. Have they not had education of the highest class during their professional lives? Did not most of them commence their education midst the sound of the guns that in 1870 & 1871 A. D., crushed the French people, and made the German Empire?
Was this not a start which might impress any young man? The rulers of the house of Hoenzolleren have during the intervening forty four years directed the energies of the people into the paths of training for which would best fit them for the titanic struggle which all knew to be in the not far distant future, and prepared for the duties of the general staff the select of the sixty millions of their race. Is it wonder then that not one battle has so far been fought upon the land of the empire? Indications give no sign of the time when the Allies will be able to push through the line which encircles the mid European empires. More lambs for here. The tide flows in and out.
The temporary set back which will be put upon us during the ensuing twelve months will be the sequel to the loafing and slacking which has been practised by those who thought that their ideas were modern and to the advantage of the working man. Often in my speeches have I combatted them to the best of my ability. Their imagined new methods have been tried and found to be useless thousands of years ago. They have been revived by many since then, but on each and every occasion with the same unhappy result of bringing disaster to the very persons whom the promoters intended them to benefit, that is the mass of the people.
While the human individual is constituted upon the present model there must be for him leaders in all departments of activities, and upon him who has the most capacity must the rank and file lean. Our friends the socialists, and like dreamers, forget the anatomical basis upon which all action is based, neglecting the evident fact, that God has given to each of us special capacity in some direction, while limiting the power of each in other directions, and he must become dominant, if he applies himself dilligently, in that department of human energy wherein he has the God given capacity.
They also forget, or never knew, that there is but one factor that makes any nation at the head of ruling crowd, and that is the quantity and the quality of the work which is the sum total of the energies put forth each moment by the units which make the whole. For the thoughtful nothing is so self evident