This week: trace it back

Take the same position as heretofore and visualize a Battleship. See the grim monster floating on the surface of the water. There appears to be no life anywhere about; all is silence. You know that by far the largest part of the vessel is under water out of sight. You know that the ship is as large and as heavy as a twenty-story skyscraper. You know that there are hundreds of men ready to spring to their appointed task instantly. You know that every department is in charge of able, trained, skilled officials who have proven themselves competent to take charge of this marvelous piece of mechanism. You know that although it lies apparently oblivious to everything else, it has eyes which see everything for miles around, and nothing is permitted to escape its watchful vision. You know that while it appears quiet, submissive and innocent, it is prepared to hurl a steel projectile weighing thousands of pounds at an enemy many miles away; this and much more you can bring to mind with comparatively no effort whatever. But how did the battleship come to be where it is; how did it come into existence in the first place? All of this you want to know if you are a careful observer.

Follow the great steel plates through the foundries, see the thousands of men employed in their production. Go still further back, and see the ore as it comes from the mine, see it loaded on barges or cars, see it melted and properly treated Go back still further and see the architect and engineers who planned the vessel. Let the thought carry you back still further in order to determine why they planned the vessel. You will see that you are now so far back that the vessel is something intangible, it no longer exists, it is now only a thought existing in the brain of the architect. But from where did the order come to plan the vessel? The order probably came from the Secretary of Defense. But probably this vessel was planned long before the war was thought of, and that Congress had to pass a bill appropriating the money. Possibly there was opposition, and speeches for or against the bill. Whom do these Congressmen represent? They represent you and me, so that our line of thought begins with the Battleship and ends with ourselves, and we find in the last analysis that our own thought is responsible for this and many other things, of which we seldom think, and a little further reflection will develop the most important fact of all and that is, if someone had not discovered the law by which this tremendous mass of steel and iron could be made to float upon the water, instead of immediately going to the bottom, the battleship could not have come into existence at all.

This law is that, "the specific gravity of any substance is the weight of any volume of it, compared with an equal volume of water." The discovery of this law revolutionized every kind of ocean travel, commerce and warfare, and made the existence of the battleship, aircraft carriers, and cruise ships possible.

You will find exercises of this kind invaluable. When the thought has been trained to look below the surface everything takes on a different appearance, the insignificant becomes significant, the uninteresting interesting; the things which we supposed to be of no importance are seen to be the only really vital things in existence. Look To This Day For it is Life, the very Life of Life. In Its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your existence; The Bliss of Growth; The Glory of Action; The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a Dream, And tomorrow is only a Vision: But Today well lived makes every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, and Every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. Look well, therefore, to This Day! - From the Sanskrit.