PUBLIC SPIRIT Violent crises in the lives of men and nations usually produce their own remedies.

They grasp the attention and stir the consciences of men, and usually they evolve leaders and measures to meet their imperious needs.
But the great evident crises are by no means the only ones of importance.

The quiet turning point, reached and passed often with slight attention and wholly without struggle, is frequently not less decisive.

Great decisions are made or great impulses given or withheld in the life of a man or a nation often so quietly that their critical character is seen only in retrospect.

It is only the historian who can say just when some unnoticed, yet decisive and irrevocable, step was actually accomplished.
The United States has been in the midst of such a period of decision since the Spanish War called into blossom the quiet growth of years, and we are still face to face with questions of the most vital bearing upon our future.