The reformers themselves are, no doubt, far from believing that whatever peril there is cannot be successfully averted.
They make a point of being as patriotically prophetic as the most "old-fashioned Democrat." They proclaim even more loudly their conviction of an indubitable and a beneficent national future.

But they do not and cannot believe that this future will take care of itself.

As reformers they are bound to assert that the national body requires for the time being a good deal of medical attendance, and many of them anticipate that even after the doctors have discontinued their daily visits the patient will still need the supervision of a sanitary specialist.

He must be persuaded to behave so that he will not easily fall ill again, and so that his health will be permanently improved.
Consequently, just in so far as reformers are reformers they are obliged to abandon the traditional American patriotic fatalism.

The national Promise has been transformed into a closer equivalent of a national purpose, the fulfillment of which is a matter of conscious work.
The transformation of the old sense of a glorious national destiny into the sense of a serious national purpose will inevitably tend to make the popular realization of the Promise of American life both more explicit and more serious.