126 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS
- * The writer acknowledges with profound gratitude his debt
to this book, which he read with eager interest, and whose great thought of winning and holding the youth for the church he sought to embody in the first Society of Christian En- deavor. ' * One may perhaps say that the age produced the Society of Christian Endeavor, but is it not true that Francis Edward Clark made to the movement a unique individ- ual contribution t Is it not true that the world's lead- ers always merely interpret their times and help other men to achieve great things? They do not fight the world's battles, nor solve the world's problems alone. Napoleon had his Mar- shal Ney, his Old Guard, his corps of eflScient officers, his regi- ments of trained, enthusiastic soldiers. Behind him he had the vivacity of the French people, stirred to new ambitions through the new liberty ushered in by the terrible French Revolution. Napoleon became the embodiment of conquering instinct, the interpreter of the glory of combat. Washington was the interpreter of a new freedom, the herald of the mod- em republic; the inheritor of centuries of colonial develop- ment toward freedom and self-government, yet the command- ing figure of the American Revolution and of the early days of republican experiment. Edison interprets the electrical age, and Burbank the age of agricultural advancement. Thus Francis E. Clark, though he modestly credits his forerunners and contemporaries and the great currents of thought within and without the church, with the creation of the Society of Christian Endeavor, interpreted more perfectly than any other man or men the young people's movement, and stands forth the conunanding figure at the head of this tremendous force. He is *' Father Endeavor Clark." He is the genius, the per- sonification, of Christian Endeavor. Old and young united in the promotion of the movement which Dr. Clark had organized, because all believed in its fun- damental principles. The closing year of the first quarter century of Christian Endeavor found 67,000 local societies, fostered in 100 denominations, entrenched in 50 nations and important colonies, and worshiping in 80 languages. Many
