Religion, the Sole Solution 159
George Hermann—and I have seen him frequently with
the mud of the prairies upon his boots—had no university
education, but he dreamed of bringing healing on the wings
of even to this community, and he threw green trees and
God’s sunshine out here next to this wonderful institution.
Education does not make dreamers. Character makes
dreamers and makes dreams come true. Others may give
them form, but it is the content that counts, and it counts
because “he that loves not abideth in death.” They will
live on in successive generations, and the young, like you,
will draw from the beauty of the one’s educational vision
and the beauty of the other’s charitable and uplifting vision,
delight and pleasure, and, let us all hope, the desire of
imitation. I do not believe that anybody could come into
these precincts who did not get something of inspiration
and the desire to imitate.
This message of the beloved disciple sounds strange in
the ears of those who are caught up with the passing
philosophy of the day—the philosophy of the fool who
said in his heart, “There is no God. Eat, drink, and be
merry, for to-morrow ye die.” I believe that the future
historian will label this period, cynical and selfish, as “No-
Man’s Time,” when egoism manifested itself superbly,
when man became indifferent to what happened to others,
when only self mattered. And how sudden the transi-
tion came. The gospel of solidarity was preached by the
Great War, the individual was sacrificed in the common
cause, and this concept of John, “We ought to lay down
our lives for the brethren,” fired the imagination and
nerved the soul of millions, and some of us dreamed that
the simple truth that mankind is one and indivisible had
penetrated into the universal conscience. Versailles was a
rude awakening. The voice that thrilled the world was