When novels reveal unknown vistas of beauty and delight, or present ideas that jog our thoughtless complacency, they are of the stuff that intensifies and glorifies existence. They keep a man’s mind from being commonplace and mongrel. Let us all be Kentucky thoroughbreds in the way we look upon the world. Chafe at your bit, stamp the ground and be eager to get away at the front when the barrier goes up. Anyone can be an "also ran." A good story is often tonic enough to turn an "also ran" into a winner!
We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.—BACON
One of the greatest evils into which a democracy may inadvertently slide is an indifference upon the part of the populace to the political issues of the day. We have upon several occasions in our history passed through periods of almost unlimited commercial prosperity during which everyone has been too much absorbed in the pursuit of power and riches to give a thought to the affairs of government, with the result that our state and national affairs have lapsed into disgraceful conditions of inefficiency and moral laxity. Such periods have paved the way to corrupt boss rule and throttling machine politics.
Ignorance, which always comes with indifference, and yet is most pernicious when most active, is another extreme and vital danger. It must be evident to every thinking man or woman, that a nation whose political destinies are in the hands of the people with their almost universal franchise should be made up of voters who are alive and thinking. "Read and reflect on history; it is the only true philosophy," wrote Napoleon Bonaparte in his instructions pertaining to the education of his only son, the King of Rome. The great Emperor must have realized that his phenomenal success in ruling men and establishing law had as an important part of its foundation his knowledge of the affairs of men in the past. Without suggesting that we should all be Napoleons, it seems true that our political fabric would be infinitely more stable, if the rank and file of American citizens should feel it a duty "to read and reflect on history."
With our ever-increasing number of ignorant Southern European immigrants, who have come from countries where republican forms of government are practically unknown, it seems that our inherited tradition of a republican democracy will be undermined through ignorance, unless, indeed, these new citizens be given an understanding of our history and the meaning of our systems.