lies it will cross you and you must choose.

Beware lest on any plea you put it by. You cannot elect to do nothing;
the concourse of circumstances would take you to some side; to do
nothing is still to take a side. Priest, poet, professor, public man,
professional man, business man, tradesman--everyone will be called to
answer; in every walk of life the true idea will find the false in
conflict and the battle must be fought out there--the battle is lost
when we satisfy ourselves with an academic debate in our spare moments.
This is a debating club age, and a plea for an ideal is often wasted,
taken as a mere point in an argument; but to walk among men fighting
passionately for it as a thing believed in, is to make it real, to
influence men never reached in other ways; it is to arrest attention,
arouse interest and quicken the masses to advance. And wherever the
appeal for the flag is calling us the snare of the enemy is in wait. Our
history so bristles with instances that a particular concrete case need
not be cited. We know that priests will get more patronage if they
discourage the national idea; that professors will get more emoluments
and honours if they can ban it; that public men will receive places and
titles if they betray it; that the professional man will be promised
more aggrandisement, the business man more commerce, and the tradesman
more traffic of his kind--if only he put by the flag. Most treacherous
and insidious the temptation will come to the man, young and able,
everywhere. It will say, "You have ability; come into the light--only
put that by; it keeps you obscure. And what purpose does it serve now?
Be practical; come." And you may weaken and yield and enter the light
for the general applause, but the old idea will rankle deep down till
smothered out, and you will stand in the splendour--a failure,
miserable, hopeless, not apparent, indeed, but for all that, final. You
may stand your ground, refuse the bribe, uphold the flag, and be rated