Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/31

 that we may stand fast and be strong in the strength and chastening of God!

Now I have put it—this matter of our need of discipline—in the most personal and individual way, but it is our great national and corporate need. The body of a nation can only exist through the ordered discipline of its members and the spirit of a nation like the spirit of a man needs to be cleansed of all the lusts of willfulness and self-indulgence. The spirit of our American nation needs such cleansing. Mr. Kipling has drawn us his picture of it:

"Through many roads, by me possessed, He shambles forth in cosmic guise; He is the Jester and the Jest,  And he the Text himself applies.

"His easy unswept hearth he lends From Labrador to Guadaloupe; Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,  He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.

"Calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown, Or panic-blinded stabs and slays: Blatant he bids the world bow down,  Or cringing begs a crust of praise;

"Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart, He dubs his dreary brethren Kings. His hands are black with blood—his heart  Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.

"But, through the shift of mood and mood, Mine ancient humour saves him whole— The cynic devil in his blood  That bids him mock his hurrying soul;