must turn as we did when we and our world were Roman, to the serious and
sober task of creating a political and legal structure on which the
eternal spirit of European civilization can resume its work of
extending, deepening, enriching, the common life of Humanity.

It seems as if we--the heirs of their experience--bound to face a more
appalling problem, are bankrupt, even of hopes, having lost both the
ideal of a life worth living on this earth and that of some large and
complex organization rendering this life possible. But this is not so,
for the forces which in Antiquity created and for long maintained a
civilization at first desirable and then strong, are not spent. Still
they make the Greco-Roman civilization which is ours a thing worth
living and dying for; still they hold us together in a unity and concord
deeper than ever plummet can sound, obscured but not destroyed by the
present noise and confusion of battle. Still at heart we care--and not
we only but also our enemies and all neutrals benevolent or
malevolent--for the ends for which civilization exists, for the peace
and order and justice which are their necessary conditions: we still
have minds to devise and wills to execute whatever is necessary to its
progress. Still we are willing to learn of history and resolved to
better its instruction, to know ourselves and our world and adjust our
ideas and our acts to the situation in which we find ourselves. The
civilized world has not lost heart or hope; and will not, so long as the
dreams of its immortal youth and the plans of its immortal manhood are
not lost to its memory or passed beyond its retrospective reflection.

_Note_. The doctrine that all History is contemporary History has
been best set forth by Benedetto Croce, of Naples, from whose
works several expressions have here been borrowed, with a
profound acknowledgement of indebtedness to him.