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No Place For Complacency.

It is not so very long since the abolition of slavery, and the freedom enjoyed by progressive countries is not so very old, but liberty has come to be regarded, by the nature of its “usualness,” as an almost negative gift. We expect it and claim it as complacently as we claim the air we breathe and the sun that shines. And complacency is always dangerous. Throughout history it has been the forerunner of disaster, the breeder of smugness and lethargy, the sentinel who sleeps at his post. Complacency is an ingrate who sluggishly ignores the sacrifices which have made Liberty possible.

Liberty is the child of tears which yet privileges us to warm our minds in the sunlight of tranquillity. Liberty vouchsafes man the leisure to pursue the intangible verities of his being and to voice his conclusions without fear of the rubber truncheon or the headman's axe.