Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/85

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66 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS the foe of intemperance in private life, and has recognized the necessity of legislation designed to promote temperance. His hatred of gambling has likewise had a potent influence in shaping his economic doctrines. This hostility underlies his opposition to the system of private monopoly, which closes the door of equal opportunity and leaves the masses little more than a gambler's chance in the struggle for prosperity. His faith in the divine is reflected in his reverence for and his belief in the sacredness of humanity. It is this faith which, in the last analysis, furnishes the key to his social philosophy. Out of the deep springs of character has issued the remark- able power that has placed Mr. Bryan among the great, and given him an abiding place in the hearts of his countrymen. WiUiam Jennings Bryan has given this generation a new ideal of citizenshp. He has defined patriotism not in the language of war but in the terms of peaceful service. He has caught the new spirit of an awakened social conscience, and has taught that to live for one's country is nobler than to die for one's country. He has found the measure of national greatness not in the evidences of material grandeur, but in the sublime manifestations of spiritual worth. By the eloquence of example he is calling men and women to lay aside the con- tentions of party strife that they may unite in a nobler army as soldiers of the common good. As never before in the long march from monad to man, from savagery to civilization, men are revising their outworn creeds and doctrines; as never be- fore they are learning that there is nothing so impractical as wrong, nothing so practical as right. In another century when the impartial decrees of truth are recorded, the histo- rian will speak in grateful praise of the service rendered his country by the leader, the orator, the statesman, William Jen- nings Bryan. BIBLIOGRAPHY PERIODICALS Character Sketch. By W. A. White. McClure's 15:232. English View of Mr. Bryan. By Sydney Brooks. North American Review 198 :27.