With the first enthusiasts breathing the living flame abroad, the kindling hope, the widening fires, the deepening dream, there grows a consciousness of the greatness of the goal, of the general duty, of the individual responsibility for higher character, steadier work, and purer motive; and gradually meanness, trickeries, and treacheries are weeded out of the individual and national consciousness: there is a realisation of a time come to restore the nation's independence, and with passion and enthusiasm are fused a fine resolve and nerve.

All the excited doings of the feverish or pallid years are put by as unworthy or futile.

The great idea inspires a great fight; and that fight is made, and, notwithstanding any reverse, must be recorded great.

Whatever concourse of circumstances mar the dream and delay the victory, those brave years are as a torch in witness to the ideal, in justification of its soldiers and in promise of final success.
IV Let us examine now the deadening years that intervene between the great fights for freedom.

We have known something of these times ourselves, have touched on them already, and need not further draw out the demoralising things that corrupt and dishearten us.