Points of Friction
the rich can waste more, and he is still dissatisfied. There is no especial appeal to manhood in a silk shirt, no approach to sweetness and light. It represents an ape-like imitation of something not worth imitating, a hopeless ignorance of the value and worth of money.
A universal reluctance to practise economy indicates a weakness in the moral fibre of a nation, a dangerous absence of pride. There is no power of the soul strong enough to induce thrift but pride. There is no quality stern enough to bar self-indulgence but the overmastering dictates of self-respect. There is no joy that life can yield comparable to the joy of independence. A nation is free when it submits to coercion from no other nation. A man is free when he is the arbiter of his own fate. National and individual freedom have never come cheap. The sacrifice which insures the one insures the other; the resolution which preserves the one pre-
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