200 A Baccalaureate Sermon
than in the observance. In the time of the Judges every
man did that which seemed right in his own eyes, and this
anarchy culminated in the annihilation of the whole tribe of
Benjamin. The history is too sordid to be told from this
platform, but you can read it for yourselves in the last
chapter of the book of Judges.
The Roman is always held up as the ideal of good citizen-
ship because he was ever prepared to make self-sacrifices
on behalf of his State. Are we prepared to make such
sacrifices? I am told that should the occasion arise, volun-
teers would flock in. But procrastination is the thief of
time and to postpone constantly is almost a fatal policy.
Says the Ethics of the Fathers: “Say not, when I shall
have leisure, I shall do. Peradventure thou never wilt have
leisure”; and another adage runs thus: “In a place where
men are lacking, strive thou to be a man”, and some-
times being men we feel that we must voice an unpopular
cause.
I think the words of such national anthems as “The
Star-Spangled Banner”, “The Marseillaise”, and “Rule
Britannia” should be revised because they are jingoistic,
bombastic, and militaristic. Nevertheless, I believe every
citizen should give some years to his country as a soldier,
not to fight mythical enemies at the other end of the world,
but to defend his land from aggressors, to fight fires, storms,
pestilences, vice, to dig from the bowels of the earth, reclaim
swamps, and do any such work for which he may be best
adapted. I believe we shall always need Roman discipline,
but I hope we have outgrown Roman imperialism with its
slogan of “Every man for himself and the devil take the
hindmost”. And it is just because we are free men that the
duty devolves upon us to prove by our lives that liberty is
an unalloyed blessing, but license an unmitigated curse, and