but one life to give for his country. Such are the beacon-lights of
a pure patriotism that burn forever in men's memories and answer
each other through the illuminated ages."

So long as there are wrongs to be redressed, so long as the strong
oppress the weak, so long as injustice sits in high places, the
voice of the orator will be needed to plead for the rights of
man. He may not, at this stage of the republic, be called upon to
sound a battle cry to arms, but there are bloodless victories to be
won as essential to the stability of a great nation and the
uplifting of its millions of people as the victories of the
battlefield.

When the greatest of modern political philosophers, the author of
the Declaration of Independence, urged that, if men were left free
to declare the truth the effect of its great positive forces would
overcome the negative forces of error, he seems to have hit the
central fact of civilization. Without freedom of thought and
absolute freedom to speak out the truth as one sees it, there can be
no advancement, no high civilization. To the orator who has heard
the call of humanity, what nobler aspiration than to enlarge and
extend the freedom we have inherited from our Anglo-Saxon
forefathers, and to defend the hope of the world?

Edward A. Allen



PIERRE ABELARD (1079-1142)