Looking into the
future we see no hope for rhetoricians; what we do see is a strong,
shrewd, indomitable people, at once clear-sighted and idealistic, going
about its business "in the light of day in the domain of reality." No
signs or wonders blaze out a trail for them. The past sags on their
shoulders and in their veins, a grievous burden and a grievous malady.
They make mistakes during their apprenticeship to freedom, for, as
Flaubert says, men have got to learn everything from eating to dying.
But a few years farther on we see the recuperative powers of the nation
once more triumphant. The past is at last dead enough to be buried, the
virus of oppression has been expelled. The creative impulse in industry,
literature, social habit, working in an atmosphere of freedom, has added
to the wealth of humanity not only an old nation renascent, but a new
and kindlier civilisation. In other words, political autonomy is to us
not the epilogue but the prologue to our national drama. It rings the
curtain up on that task to which all politics are merely instrumental,
namely the vindication of justice and the betterment of human life.
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