Napoleon Hill

e downfall of an influence that has menaced civilization for the past four years. The war is over! Soon our boys will be coming back home from the battlefields of France. The lord and master of Brute Force is nothing but a shadowy ghost of the past! 18 Two thousand years ago the Son of man was an outcast, with no place of abode. Now the situation has been reversed and the devil has no place to lay his head. Let each of us take unto himself the great lesson that this world war has taught; namely, only that which is based upon justice and mercy toward all - the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor, alike can survive. All else must pass on. Out of this war will come a new idealism - an idealism that will be based upon the Golden Rule philosophy; an idealism that will guide us, not to see how much we can do our fellow man for; but how much we can do for him that will ameliorate his hardships and make him happier as he tarries by the wayside of life. Emerson embodied this idealism in his great essay, the Law of Compensation. Another great Philosopher embodied it in these words, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The time for practicing the Golden Rule philosophy is upon us. In business as well as in social relationships he who neglects or refuses to use this philosophy as the basis of his dealings will but hasten the time of his failure. And, while I am intoxicated with the glorious news of the war's ending, is it not fitting that I should attempt to do something to help preserve for the generations yet to come, one of the great lessons to be learned from William Hohenzollern's effort to rule the earth by force? I can best do this by going back twenty-two years for my beginning. Come with me, won't you? It was a bleak November morning, probably not far from the eleventh of the month, that I got my first job as a laborer in the coal mine regions of Virginia, at wages of a dollar a day. 19 A dollar a day was a big sum in those days; especially to a boy of my age. Of this, I paid fifty cents a day for my board and room. Shortly after I began work, the miners became dissatisfied and commenced talking about striking. I listened eagerly to all that was said. I was especially interested in the organizer who had organized the union. He was one of the smoothest speakers I bad ever heard, and his words fascinated me. He said one thing, in particular, that I have never forgotten; and, if I knew where to find him, I would look him up today and thank him warmly for saying it. The philosophy, which I gathered from his words, has had a most profound and enduring influence upon me. Perhaps you will say that most labor agitators are not very sound philosophers; and I would agree with you if you said so. Maybe this one was not a sound philosopher, but surely the phil