Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/64



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Our Point of View

The Promise of the Neiv Year

third year of the twentieth century opens upon an auspicious out- look. In science, literature, education, religious thoug^ht, and art there is discernable a quickening impulse that promises to make the year 1903 notable. From one end of the continent to the other there are evidences of remarkable progress and develop- ment. The air is full of achievement. A great awakening seems to have taken place in men, and the swing of the new movement, its energy is irresistible. There is a contagious spirit abroad of alertness and enthusiasm that carries everything before it. Not one section, but the nation, the world, is feeling it. This psychological force is one of the great factors that makes for progress and enlightenment. It is per- haps impossible to account fully for the existence of such waves of human en- ergy, but that they do exist and exert a tremendous influence upon histor}^ and progress there can be no doubt. The one that is passing over the world at this time is of unusual significance and power. It is producing a strenuous age, and making it a i»;reat thing to be living now, liv- ing as we are in the midst of a remarkable political and social evo- lution, perhaps the most rapid the world has ever seen. Great things are taking place before our eyes. The time for small things has passed. Men's minds have been broadened and sharpened by the conflict of centuries, and the world is in a condition today to seize the great questions that con front it and solve them in a satisfactory manner. Shakespeare says that **all the world's a stage." It is more and less. The world is simply man, and in its growth and development it is like men — childish at first, boyish and foolish, and then man's estate. We have reached the time, it seems, when the world realizes that it must meet its great problems in a manly way. This spirit is shown in the establishment of the Hague Tribunal, and, in a lesser degree, in the strike commission appointed by President Roosevelt, though the work of the latter may have more far-reaching effects upon political and economic history. Indeed, it may prove to be one of the great outposts in social ad- vancement, and our posterity may point to it as the first step in a new and enlightened economic era. All along the line this wave of energy and progress is clearlv evident.

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