"Last summer I stood upon the White Hill at Prague, in Bohemia,
where the thirty years war began and ended. There is no more
suggestive spot in Europe. It recalled a picture of the horrors
and desolation of war unequalled in history. The contest began
when the continent was dominated by the German empire, and ended
with the magnificent creation of Charles V. broken into
numberless petty principalities. Like the contest of the 17th
century, ours was both a civil and religious war. But the
country came out of the conflict not like the old German empire,
but a mighty nation.
"Vapid sentimentalists and timid souls deprecate these annual
reunions, fearing they may arouse old strifes and sectional
animosities. But a war in which 500,000 men were killed, and
2,000,000 were wounded, in which states were devastated and
money spent equal to twice England's gigantic debt, has a
meaning, a lesson and results which are to the people a liberal
education. We cheerfully admit that the Confederate, equally
with the Federal soldier, believed he was fighting for the
right, and maintained his faith with a valor which fully
sustained the reputation of Americans for courage and constancy.
The best and bravest thinkers of the South gladly proclaim that
the superb development which has been the outgrowth of their
defeat is worth all its losses, its sacrifices, and
humiliations.
"In 1860 the developed and assessable property of the United
States was valued at $16,000,000,000. One-half of this enormous
sum was destroyed by the civil war, and yet so prodigious has
been the growth of wealth that the estimate now surpasses the
imperial figure of $60,000,000,000, and the growth at the rate
of nearly $7,000,000 a day. Our wealth approximates one-half of
that of all Europe.
"These unparalleled results can be protected and continued only
by the spirit of patriotism. This is a republic, and neither
Mammon nor anarchy shall be king. The ranks of anarchy and riot
number no Americans."
We realize more fully the future magnitude of our country, when we
look at the wealth of its soil and mines, already developed, and the
magnitude of its still untouched resources. According to the estimates
of Dr. A. B. Hart, of Harvard University, as laid before the American
Statistical Association at their last meeting in the Boston Institute
of Technology, the total territory of the United States contains
3,501,409 square miles. Of this entire amount Dr. Hart believes there
remains unsold in the hands of the government, public lands amounting
to 1,616,101 square miles, or 1,034,330,842 acres, which is almost
one-half of our entire territory. Such a realm as we have could
comfortably sustain between two and three thousand millions of
inhabitants, while the entire population of the globe is at present
less than fifteen hundred millions.
Our present population is over 60,000,000, and if it goes on
duplicating every thirty years, it will be in 1917, 120,000,000; in
1947, 240,000,000; in 1977, 480,000,000; in 2,007, 960,000,000; in
2,037, 1,920,000,000; 2,067, 3,840,000,000. Thus in 180 years we shall
have reached the limit where population, being over 1,000 to the
square mile, must emigrate or be arrested by the difficulty of
obtaining food, and the absolute necessity of reducing to a small
number our stock of horses, cattle, and hogs, that human beings may
have food,--vegetarian diet thus becoming a necessity, and bringing
with it a great diminution of intemperance, and the crimes produced by
the animal passions; for it is well established that vegetarianism
restrains intemperance.