How to Face Life

How to face life, how to prepare for life, are questions that must be answered by those who believe, as Lecky put it, that the "e; map of life "e; must be marked out, that in the words of Emerson there is such a thing as the "e;conduct of life"e; which man is free to determine.We are assured incessantly in these days that we must enter upon a great programme of preparedness for war, - back of which urging lies the assumption that a maximum of preparedness must be arranged in order to secure our land against the menace of aggression or invasion. If a programme of preparedness, which in the last analysis involves destruction and desolation, be impossible without the fullest planning, how much less possible is it to shape a constructive life-upbuilding programme without most careful and adequate preparedness.Into the mind of youth must penetrate the ideal of self-preparedness, - not of external preparation for the outward life, but of inmost preparedness for the inner life. Whether or not the preparedness programme be, as some hold, more menacing to the soul of America than foreign foe can ever become because it marks an immediate invasion of the American soul rather than a possible aggression upon American soil, it is certain that life cannot worthily be lived save after preparedness in the fullest sense of the term....