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But too great reliance on even a great tradition has its disadvantages. I know an American preparatory school that for many college generations has entered its students at a famous university with the highest of examination records, and a reputation for courtesy and cleanness of mind and soundness of body scarcely paralleled elsewhere. I have watched these boys with much interest, and I have seen them in surprising numbers gradually decline from their position of superiority as they faced the rapid changes of college life, as they settled into a new environment with different demands and more complex standards. They leaned too heavily upon their admirable schooling; they were too confident of the strength and worth of their tradition; they looked backward instead of forward, and stood still while less favored men went on. Their fault was the fault of American liberalism, which stands pat with Washington and Roosevelt and Lincoln.

Perhaps the greatest teacher in nineteenth-century American universities was William Graham Sumner. In his day he was called a radical, and unsuccessful efforts were made to oust him from his professorship because of his advocacy of free trade. Now I hear him cited as a conservative by those who quote his support of individualism against socialism, his distrust of coöperation against the league of nations. His friends forget that an honest radical in one age would be an honest radical in another; and that the facts available having changed, it is certain that his opinions would change also, although just what he would advocate, just how decide, we cannot certainly know. Is it probable that Dante, the great advocate of imperial control in a particularistic medieval world, would have been a pro-German in 1914? The American liberal who proclaims himself of the party of Lincoln, and is content with that definition, might have an unpleasant shock if that great reader of the heart of the common man could resume his short-cut life.