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npHE TIMES AND THE 
 ^ MAN, by Dr. Thomas Ed- 
 ward Green, Director of 
 Speaking Service, Ameri- 
 can Red Cross; and Past 
 President, Society of the 
 Sons of the Revolution in 
 the State of Illinois 
 
 An address delivered at 
 the joint celebration of 
 the Patriotic Societies of 
 the District of Columbia 
 on February 22, 1922, in 
 commemoration of the 
 one hundred and ninetieth 
 anniversary of the birth- 
 day of George Washington 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE SOCIETY 
 
 Washington 
 
 1922 
 
T 
 
 HE TIMES AND THE 
 
 MAN, by Dr. Thomas Ed- 
 ward Green, Director of 
 
 It 
 
 Speaking Service, Ameri- 
 can Red Cross; and Past 
 President, Society of the 
 Sons of the Revolution in 
 the State of Illinois 
 
 An address delivered at 
 the joint celebration of 
 the Patriotic Societies of 
 the District of Columbia 
 on February 22, 1922, in 
 commemoration of the 
 one hundred and ninetieth 
 anniversary of the birth- 
 day of George Washington 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE SOCIETY 
 
 Washington 
 1922 
 
EI 3 /^ 
 
 hod', ^ (h.<r-^ 
 
1\ 
 
 NOTE 
 
 This patriotic address, delivered at the 
 Eighth Joint Celebration of the Sons of the 
 Revolution in the District of Columbia, 
 the District of Columbia Daughters of the 
 American Revolution, and the District of 
 Columbia Society of the Sons of the Ameri- 
 can Revolution, held on the one hundred 
 and ninetieth anniversary of the birthday 
 of George Washington, in the auditorium 
 of the Central High School in Washington, 
 D. C, on February 22, 1922, has been 
 printed through the courtesy of its author 
 for the benefit of the members of the So- 
 ciety of the Sons of the Revolution. 
 
 The Joint Committee on Arrangements, 
 under whose auspices this celebration was 
 held, were as follows : 
 
 Brig. -Gen. George Richards, Chairman; 
 Doctor Marcus Benjamin, Mr. Charles P. 
 Light, of the Sons of the Revolution in the 
 District of Columbia. 
 
 Colonel Frederick C. Bryan, Mr. Albert 
 D. Spangler, Mr. William A. Miller, Secre- 
 tary, of the District of Columbia Society 
 Sons of the American Revolution. 
 
 Mrs. Francis A. St. Clair, Mrs. G. 
 Wallace W. Hanger, Mrs. Howard L. 
 Hodgkins, of the District of Columbia 
 Daughters of the American Revolution. 
 
The Times and The Man 
 
 By Thomas Edward Green 
 
 Director Speaking Service, Arnerican Red Cross; 
 
 and Past President, Society of the Sons of 
 
 the Revolution in the State of Illinois. 
 
 We are to think somewhat for a time in this 
 presence of the thing that we call history. Is it 
 the regular unfolding of the chapters in a con- 
 secutive story, or is it merely a haphazard col- 
 lection of episodes? Is it the orderly working 
 out of a manifest purpose, or is it dominated by 
 contending and confusing forces, that, like the 
 wild winds of the ocean, play across the surface 
 of the years? Granting even the utmost dimen- 
 sion to the time of man's existence on this globe, 
 has there been a steady march of progress, or has 
 man's story been but the ebb and flow of attain- 
 ment dominated merely by the chance that tosses 
 dice with circumstance? 
 
 Is there a Vast Intelligence that dominates the 
 Universe, or is this thing of which we are a part 
 but a mad welter of eternal forces, insensate and 
 inexorable? 
 
 Are things as they are because they are, or be- 
 cause they were meant to be ? Is the golden age 
 in the past, or do we still look forward with con- 
 fidence to better things? 
 
 It is against the background of such question- 
 ings as these that we come to consider for a little 
 time a Great Man — admittedly the greatest man 
 in all our history — admittedly one of the greatest 
 men in all the ages of recorded time. 
 
 Carlyle says that "what man has accomplished 
 in the world is at bottom the history of the Great 
 Men who have worked there." 
 
 Philosophers are continually speculating as to 
 the ultimate source of human greatness — whether 
 it lies in the individual character, that by dint of 
 masterful and clearly-defined purpose, makes use 
 of things and plays them with steady hands as 
 points in his accomplishment ; or whether he him- 
 self is the creature of circumstance, molded and 
 dominated by environment, builded into his stat- 
 ure of excellence by the things that surround him. 
 — by the forces that oppose him — by the breaks of 
 fortune that fall to his hand. 
 
Is genius an endowment — the rare gift of for- 
 tune to those whom it isolates and endows, or is it 
 the survival of the fittest — the result of steadfast 
 purpose molded bj' inflexible will — the supreme 
 accomplishment of one who with deliberate in- 
 tent "hitches his wagon to a star" ? 
 
 We are face to face with the mystery of the 
 ages. Our confidence rests in our faith that 
 "through the ages one eternal purpose runs" — 
 that somehow and somewhere in this mighty 
 tangle that makes up human life "there is a power 
 not ourselves that makes for 'righteousness." 
 
 Mr. H. G. Wells in his much read "Outlines 
 of History" says — "human history becomes more 
 and more a race between education and catastro- 
 phe." Shall we call this education, the result of 
 human experience — condensed, crystalized into a 
 prevailing dominant thought or purpose — what 
 we call "The Times" — the atmosphere of a given 
 age? 
 
 And shall we say that when this common con- 
 sciousness of mankind — struggling, contending, 
 reaching forward, comes to where it would 
 achieve — to where it waits for the leadership that 
 shall mold and guide it into lasting accomplish- 
 ment — that when the Times call for their Great 
 Man, and when in answer there steps forth from 
 the secret places of God he on whom the hand 
 of Destiny has fallen — then we have a Turning 
 Point in Human History toward which myriad 
 lines of influence have converged, and out of 
 which goes forth the dynamic that is to write a 
 new chapter in human progress. 
 
 Of such fashion were George Washington and 
 his Times — on such a foundation of faith in the 
 eternal order of things rest our veneration of to- 
 day — and our abiding confidence in the America 
 of tomorrow. 
 
 It is well that we think sometimes of the be- 
 ginnings from which we came and of the men 
 whose brains and hearts and hands fashioned the 
 structure of our nation. They were not merely 
 rebels, rising against what was to them unjust 
 and intolerable oppression. They were the 
 builders of a new sort of community into the 
 world. The modern States of Europe have been 
 evolved, institution by institution, slowly and 
 planlessly out of preceding things. The United 
 States were planned and made. They were the 
 deliberate result of a determination to construct 
 a government directly suited to the needs and the 
 aims of the governed. 
 
The American Revolution and the government 
 which followed were distinct episodes in the race 
 between education and catastrophe. 
 
 For one hundred and fifty years there had been 
 building up on this Western Continent a race of 
 men whose roots had been planted in the wilder- 
 ness where nature had taught them her grandest 
 lessons. Removed from the artificial glitter of 
 courts, they had sensed in the midst of broad im- 
 mensity the freedom that is the birthright of 
 humanity. Nature had taught them the great 
 fundamental virtues. She had taught them sim- 
 plicity, from their necessities. She had taught 
 them self-reliance, by the dangers that menaced 
 them. She had taught them industry, as they 
 turned and tilled a reluctant soil. Best of all 
 she had taught them independence — the love of 
 liberty was in the very air they breathed, and 
 so there had developed here a race of men the 
 like of which the world had never known — men 
 whose indomitable spirit became — 
 
 "The energy sublime, 
 Of a century burst full blossomed 
 On the thorny stem of time." 
 
 They were entirely different from the ordinary 
 factors in ethnic development. They were not 
 the half-tried experiments of a half-barbarous age. 
 They had planted broad and deep the foundations 
 of learning and had made possible a broad and 
 practical education. Through the years of the 
 Eighteenth Century, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, 
 and William and Mary had been planting in the 
 minds of men the fundamentals of expanding 
 freedom. 
 
 And so as the Times swept up to their climax 
 they were dominated by a group of men who in 
 thought, in culture, in civilization — who in 
 everything that makes for the advancement of 
 the world were the equal if not the superiors of 
 the best product of the best age that the world 
 had ever known. 
 
 Here were men who had at their finger ends 
 the well-digested knowledge of the centuries. 
 Here were men who knew the Pandects of Justin- 
 ian — the beginnings of English jurisprudence — 
 the story of the struggle for representative gov- 
 ernment in all the ages of the past. Naj^ — more 
 than that, these men were the very embodiment of 
 broad culture; their daily speech was in the pol- 
 ished accents of Elizabethan English; they spoke 
 the same language that Shakespeare wrote ; that 
 Bacon thought — the same speech that you find in 
 
your King James Bible, or that rolls its matchless 
 sonority through the syllables of your English 
 Prayer Book. 
 
 And when in answer to their call their Great 
 Man came, and their aspirations took shape and 
 struggled into form, with their first articulate 
 speech these nation-makers created a Constitu- 
 tion, enacted edicts, declared laws that not alone, 
 mark you, were the best the world then possessed, 
 but that after one hundred and fifty years of ex- 
 panding, orbing time, still stand today with the 
 necessity of scarcely a verbal correction or emen- 
 dation — confessedly the most magnificent monu- 
 ment of statecraft and erudition in the possession 
 of the world. 
 
 In the story of civilization this world has noth- 
 ing that for perspicacity, for far-seeing vision, for 
 consummate idealism can compare with that most 
 majestic of state papers — the American Declara- 
 tion of Independence. 
 
 And lest we lose ourselves in the dangerous 
 atmosphere of self-congratulation, I quote Wil- 
 liam E. Gladstone, certainly no biased critic 
 when he says — 
 
 "The American Constitution is so far as I can 
 see the most wonderful work ever struck off at 
 a given time by the brain and the purpose of 
 man." 
 
 Such then were the Times and such the men 
 that were watching for their Leader — for their 
 Great Man who should mold and guide these ti- 
 tanic forces into permanent organization and 
 stable life — and in answer to their call he came. 
 
 In recounting the deeds of great men we are 
 mostly accustomed to tell of early disadvantages 
 and hardships. We say most often, that "in 
 spite of lowly birth, of poverty and of grinding 
 toil, they rose to greatness." Perhaps in view of 
 the world's experience we should reverse that 
 judgment and should say that ia most cases it 
 has been by the blessing of lowly birth, grim 
 poverty, earnest endeavor and indomitable will 
 — that in spite of handicap and hindrances, they 
 rose to greatness. 
 
 •For the Leader of a free people seeking liberty 
 of action, and enunciating great and democratic 
 principles of equality and opportunity, no man 
 was ever born apparently less suited to his duty 
 than George Washington. 
 
 He was handicapped by family, by wealth, by 
 religion, and by the social institutions of which 
 he was a part. He had no need of honor and 
 distinction, for they were all his. He had no 
 
need of wealth, for the broad acres of Virginia 
 had made him independent. He had little need 
 of effort, for scores of slaves were at his bid- 
 ding. He belonged to a State Church whose 
 temporal head was the King of England and 
 whose fundamental tenet was obedience to the 
 powers ordained of Heaven. He was the last 
 man, as we judge men, to be chosen to the posi- 
 tion in which he rose to such supreme heights 
 that he belongs — not alone to us, but to all the 
 world. Like Moses at the Court of Egypt, he 
 had been training for a work and for a mighty 
 mission that he dreamed not of — and when the 
 hour came and the Times called, he was ready 
 for the work that destiny had laid upon him. 
 
 Where the most eloquent lips of the world 
 have marshalled their proudest periods in tri- 
 bute and praise, what need is there that we at- 
 tempt a new tribute ? Where shall we seek the 
 secret of his unique greatness? 
 
 It was not in superior erudition, for he was 
 surrounded by men, many of whom excelled him 
 in education and intellectual culture. It was not 
 perhaps in surpassing military genius, although 
 critics have always varied as to the rank to be 
 assigned him among the great captains of the 
 world. It was something different and distinct 
 from all these. It was the ineffable, indescrib- 
 able type of moral excellence — a grandeur of 
 character — a sublimity of soul that made him 
 such a unique place among men that Lord 
 Brougham should have written — 
 
 "Till time shall be no more, a test of progress 
 which our race has made in wisdom and virtue 
 will be derived from the veneration paid to the 
 immortal name of WASHINGTON." 
 
 Men sometimes fail in the atmosphere of close 
 acquaintanceship, but Thomas Jefferson said of 
 him — "His integrity was most pure — his justice 
 ' the most inflexible I have ever known. No 
 motives of interest, of friendship or of hatred 
 were able to bias his decision. He was in every 
 sense of the word a wise, a good and a great 
 man." 
 
 And but as yesterday Lord Bryce, revered and 
 sincerely mourned in our America as in England 
 overseas, said : 
 
 "Washington stands alone and unapproach- 
 able, like a snow peak rising above its fellows 
 in the clear air of the morning, with a dignity, 
 a constancy and purity which have made him the 
 ideal type of civic virtue to succeeding genera- 
 tions." 
 
As a General, he led his brave though impover- 
 ished army to success, and so gained our price- 
 less heritage of freedom. As a private citizen he 
 persuaded and guided his distracted countrymen 
 to a lasting Union. As President he directed an 
 inexperienced Government along lines of in- 
 tegrity, economy and patriotism, and left for the 
 years to come a legacy of unselfishness and of de- 
 votion that may well form our highest ideal. 
 
 Guizot, the great French historian, says of 
 him — 
 
 "He did the two greatest things in statesman- 
 ship a man can have the privilege of attempting 
 — he maintained by peace that independence of 
 his country which he had acquired by war. He 
 founded a free Government in the name of the 
 principles of order, and by re-establishing their 
 sway. Of all great men he was the most vir- 
 tuous and the most fortunate. In this world God 
 has no higher favors to bestow." 
 
 And it was Abraham Lincoln, he who spoke 
 few words and weighed them well when he ut- 
 tered them, who said — 
 
 "To add brightness to the sun or glory to the 
 name of Washington is alike impossible. Let 
 none attempt it. In simple awe pronounce the 
 name, and in its naked, deathless splendor leave it 
 shining on." 
 
 I have said in the beginning that when the 
 Times call for their Great Man destiny answers 
 to their cry. Shall we say then as we close, that 
 the need of the Times is not the advent of a Great 
 Man in an unready world, but that the challenge 
 of the day is that the mass of men shall hold 
 themselves ready for leadership and for obedience 
 to his challenge when he comes. 
 
 Through all the ages prophets have spoken to 
 unhearing ears, and high ideals, proclaimed to a 
 selfish and an ignoble generation, have been 
 pearls cast before swine. The world is strug- 
 gling now toward another turning point where 
 either humanity, caught by the consciousness of 
 a mighty vision, shall sweep onward into fresh 
 achievement and wider happiness; or, clutched in 
 the grip of catastrophe, shall go hurtling down 
 into the abyss. 
 
 We are calling for our Great Man. We in 
 America, who coming last and suffering least in 
 the mighty cataclysm that selfishness had wrought 
 in the world, still find ourselves adrift upon a 
 storm-tossed sea of confusion and uncertainty. It 
 is my thought that when the Times are right our 
 Great Man will come — that when as a people 
 
 10 
 
our minds are so enlightened, our conscience is 
 so secure, our ideals, and our purposes are so clean 
 and pure, that we can stand unflinching in the 
 presence of the White Light that gleams around 
 the Infinite, and say — "We are ready in devo- 
 tion, in service and in sacrifice"; then the bell of 
 destiny will strike, the Man and the Times will 
 meet in the Providence of God, and this Nation 
 "of the people, by the people and for the people" 
 shall leap forward in that supreme development 
 that Washington saw in times of old. 
 
 This month of February is a holy time in our 
 commemoration. It brings the anniversaries of 
 two of those great souls "of whom the world was 
 not worthy," who having done all and dared all, 
 stand in the clear light of Eternal Honor. 
 Washington, the founder, the sage — he who laid 
 broad and deep the fundaments of our nation — 
 and Lincoln, the Emancipator, the preserver — 
 firm in his faith, steadfast in his purpose "to do 
 the right as God gives us to see the right." 
 
 And because of them and of their trust, let 
 there come to us an abiding faith in this nation 
 founded by destiny, guided by God, entrusted 
 with concerns and influence today of which they 
 little dreamed. As we revere their rnemory, may 
 we absorb some measure of their virtue; may we 
 catch the spirit of their sacrifice and of their de- 
 votion ; and may our lives be pledged anew to the 
 Service of the Nation that we love — 
 
 "Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State! 
 Sail on, O Union, strong and great! 
 Humanity with all its fears. 
 With all its hopes for future years, 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate! 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. 
 Our faith triumphant o'er our fears. 
 Are all with thee — are all with thee!" 
 
 11 
 
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