The upward path
was intended to be exceedingly hard. This is a law of biology.
Why this is so I may not know. I only know that no better and surer
way could have been discovered to train a race of heroes. For no man
ever becomes a hero who has not learned to battle with the world and
himself. Does it not look as if God loved a heroic soul as much as
men worship one, and as if he intended that man should attain to
it? Man was born and bred in hardship that he might be a hero.
"Careless seems the great avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied."
The Crown Prince of Prussia has less spending money than many a
young fellow in Berlin. He is trained to economy, industry,
self-control. He is to learn something better than habits of luxury,
to rule himself, and thus later the German Empire.
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