trade-mark, and fame to the dear General Electric. One of the most valuable personalities in all this age of science was Steinmetz, the Great American Foreigner. He left a heritage in control and power to his compatriots which far exceeded any other fortune since America began.

Yet he could not have passed Ellis Island today. He would have been sent back. We are engaged just now in the interesting tomfoolery of trying to clarify a polluted water-supply system by proportionately cutting down on the total flow. We are not yet wise enough to examine the reservoir for the sources of corruption.

And I smile a bit as I hear comparatively useless, unlearned, boasting men snarl at immigrants and say to Steinmetz: "I am American. You are not! I am in, but you are forever out!" Judged by any standard of spirit and life, if Steinmetz is not an American, there is no such animal.

Fight the enemies of our dear land with a will. You will find me with you, zealously fighting them.

They are treacherous enough, threatening enough, to challenge the whole strength of every one who truly loves our America. And they are imperiling our very existence.

Contend with secret enemies secretly if you must. I deplore the necessity, while I have no argument against it.

But do not generalize on your enemies. Do not classify your hate. Do not lump men and scorn them in a lump. You will scorn a Steinmetz some day, and your scorn will be a judgment on yourself, not on him.

Do not generalize about foreigners. We cannot be as bad as our enemies paint us. In your own private judgment, strip off the rude labels of unthinking minds and give each man a chance, in the spirit of love.

VI

THANK GOD FOR TODAY

SUPPOSE that we all duly resolve to be unanimously thankful. Suppose that we seek some blessing on which our thanks can be enthusiastically united. We must discover some gift which all of us share. For we dare not, by our gratitude, make hideous the lack felt by some one else who worships with us.

Obviously we must not mention riches, for there are many here who are poor. Men have entered the church tonight who are desperately hard-pressed and whose courageous exterior hides great fears and hideous doubts about tomorrow. There are women here who have concealed behind brave smiles the tragedy of pinching poverty. Some there may be who have brought with them the pangs of a terrible hunger which gnaws away at their bodies as they listen and pray. How would they feel if we determined to thank God for our wealth?

Even if all of us were rich, I should hesitate about joining in a hymn of thanksgiving for our prosperity. For I have come to understand that wealth is a doubtful blessing at best. I have seen many rich men with whom I should never willingly change places. It is no easy thing to manage a fortune-to balance investments against new opportunities, to build with money and avoid compromising high ideals, to train your children to be simple and kind when they know that they are rich and indepen

dent, to turn aside from pleading appeals for help, to harden the heart against crafty and malicious schemes for tapping benevolence, to hear lies smoothly told for the sake of unmerited help, to recognize an honest need when it comes along and to help without violating another's self-respect, to keep oneself gentle and kindly and sympathetic, and withal at the last to die and leave it all, for others to dissipate, or abuse, or mercilessly handle it is no easy thing.

If thou art rich, thou art poor.

For like a burro whose back with ingots bends,
Thou bearest thy heavy burden but a season,

And death unloads thee.

No, we dare not thank God that we are rich.

Health, then? Health is a glorious thing, but so fleeting! And there are well men here whose very vitality seems almost to mock the background of another's pain. They would gladly surrender all their bounding strength if they could share it with their dear ones.

Victory, then? For those who are on the high wave of glorious vanquishing, perhaps. But all of us do not feel like conquerors. The sting of defeat is upon many hearts. We are bowed under the crushing load of dark disappointment. And our anguish is made more poignant by the gleeful shouts of those who for the time being are rejoicing in their all-too-transitory triumph.

Is there any gift then for which we can join our thanks? Has God given us any common cause of exultation? Is there a token of his love from which no one of us can be deprived? What can unite our hearts on this day of thanksgiving?

1

Let us thank God for today! Today is ours! No one is without it. We share it in a unity of gladness. Thank God for today!

But it seems so small a bounty-a tiny trinket of time which looks infinitesimally small when fairly examined. This day is to one year as four minutes would be to a day. This day is a minute portion of a century, as small as two seconds seems in a day. This day is lost to sight in the reaches of a thousand years, for it compares with one thousand years as one-fifth of a second compares with a day. When we remember the vast spaces of recorded unfolding history, and the mighty reaches of the future eternity-this little day of ours seems like the fitful sudden gleam of a firefly whose radiance dies away upon the darkness as soon as it is seen, and is gone.

Even if a day as such were a considerable trophy, my share in any one day reduces it to a fragment of littleness. There are almost 200,000 people in Syracuse. My share of this city's today is 1/200,000. Surely not enough to grow excited over. Of America's today, I possess only 1/100,000,000, and of the world's today, I can claim no more than a billionth part.

On a tiny planet, in the midst of a sea of immeasureable darkness, lost in a void of unbelievable star-spaces hundreds of light-years away, I am daring to ask you, one of earth's billion swarming humans, to thank God for a microscopic token like today.

But think for a moment what a wonderful thing this despised gift is!

For this purpose it is not necessary to be unfair to yesterday. There are countless contributions from the

past without which our today would seem tragically poorer. There are bothersome questions which we need never investigate, ghosts of fantastic lies which we need never bother to fight or fear. Other men have blazed the trail through the intricate forests of mathematics, and have given us an imperishable chart of their journeyings. Other generations have laid the broad and deep foundation piles of physics and chemistry and a score of other sciences, and we have entered into their labor; other minds have turned fantastic astrology into the ordered beauty and truth of astronomy, have transformed superstition into the fine courage of religious faith, have conquered for us a thousand gruesome fears which enslaved our ancestors.

There are countless devices ready for our use which we need never take the trouble to invent. The telegraph makes us fellow citizens, the telephone makes us neighbors, and the radio changes our world into an echoing whispering-gallery, all without any effort on our part. Light leaps to do our bidding, shelter and warmth are our servants, food finds its way to us from the ends of the earth. These comforts have been willed to us by the brotherhood of yesterday's mankind.

There are threatening enemies whom we need never stop to fight. Slavery, which once made men pawns in the power of their masters, has been banished forever, and no one of us need be a chattel-brute. Drink has been forced to draw in its savage fangs, and retreat from our boys back to the hellish wilderness from which it came. Fiendish war, with huge orgies of blood-lust expressed in the bestiality of hand-to-hand conflict, is being forced back so that it may never assault our human