Even the few months that have elapsed have enabled both the
over-hopeful and the despairing to recover their lost balance, and to
take up again their little share of the immemorial task of humanity,
to struggle onward, ever onward and upward.

What had become of the movement of the workers, that they could have
permitted a war of so many nations, in which the workers of every
country involved must be the chief sufferers?

The labor movement, like every other idealist movement, contains a
sprinkling of unpopular pessimistic souls, who drive home, in season
and out of season, a few unpopular truths. One of these unwelcome
truths is to the effect that the world is not following after the
idealists half as fast as they think it is. Reformers of every kind
make an amount of noise in the world these days out of all proportion
to their numbers. They deceive themselves, and to a certain extent
they deceive others. The wish to see their splendid visions a reality
leads to the belief that they are already on the point of being
victors over the hard-to-move and well-intrenched powers that be. As
to the quality of his thinking and the soundness of his reasoning, the
idealist is ahead of the world all the time, and just as surely the
world pays him the compliment of following in his trail. But only in
its own time and at its own good pleasure. It is in quantity that he
is short. There is never enough of him to do all the tasks, to be
in every place at once. Rarely has he converts enough to assure a
majority of votes or voices on his side.

So the supreme crises of the world come, and he has for the time to
step aside; to be a mere onlooker; to wait in awe-struck patience