your words must be born again every time
they are spoken, then they will not suffer in their utterance, even
though perforce committed to memory and repeated, like Dr. Russell
Conwell's lecture, "Acres of Diamonds," five thousand times. Such
speeches lose nothing by repetition for the perfectly patent reason
that they arise from concentrated thought and feeling and not a mere
necessity for saying something--which usually means anything, and that,
in turn, is tantamount to nothing. If the thought beneath your words is
warm, fresh, spontaneous, a part of your _self_, your utterance will
have breath and life. Words are only a result. Do not try to get the
result without stimulating the cause.
Do you ask _how_ to concentrate? Think of the word itself, and of its
philological brother, _concentric_. Think of how a lens gathers and
concenters the rays of light within a given circle. It centers them by a
process of withdrawal. It may seem like a harsh saying, but the man who
cannot concentrate is either weak of will, a nervous wreck, or has never
learned what will-power is good for.
You must concentrate by resolutely withdrawing your attention from
everything else. If you concentrate your thought on a pain which may be
afflicting you, that pain will grow more intense. "Count your blessings"
and they will multiply. Center your thought on your strokes and your
tennis play will gradually improve. To concentrate is simply to attend
to one thing, and attend to nothing else. If you find that you cannot do
that, there is something wrong--attend to that first. Remove the cause
and the symptom will disappear. Read the chapter on "Will Power."
Cultivate your will by willing and then doing, at all costs.
Concentrate--and you will win.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Select from any source several sentences suitable for speaking aloud;
deliver them first in the manner condemned in this chapter, and second
with due regard for emphasis toward the close of each sentence.
2. Put into about one hundred words your impression of the effect
produced.
3. Tell of any peculiar methods you may have observed or heard of by
which speakers have sought to aid their powers of concentration, such as
looking fixedly at a blank spot in the ceiling, or twisting a watch
charm.
4. What effect do such habits have on the audience?
5. What relation does pause bear to concentration?
6. Tell why concentration naturally helps a speaker to change pitch,
tempo, and emphasis.
7. Read the following selection through to get its meaning and spirit
clearly in your mind. Then read it aloud, concentrating solely on the
thought that you are expressing--do not trouble about the sentence or
thought that is coming. Half the troubles of mankind arise from
anticipating trials that never occur. Avoid this in speaking. Make the
end of your sentences just as strong as the beginning. _CONCENTRATE._
_WAR!_
The last of the savage instincts is war. The cave man's club
made law and procured food. Might decreed right. Warriors were
saviours.
In Nazareth a carpenter laid down the saw and preached the
brotherhood of man. Twelve centuries afterwards his followers
marched to the Holy Land to destroy all who differed with them
in the worship of the God of Love. Triumphantly they wrote "In
Solomon's Porch and in his temple our men rode in the blood of
the Saracens up to the knees of their horses."
History is an appalling tale of war. In the seventeenth century
Germany, France, Sweden, and Spain warred for thirty years. At
Magdeburg 30,000 out of 36,000 were killed regardless of sex or
age. In Germany schools were closed for a third of a century,
homes burned, women outraged, towns demolished, and the untilled
land became a wilderness.
Two-thirds of Germany's property was destroyed and 18,000,000 of
her citizens were killed, because men quarrelled about the way
to glorify "The Prince of Peace." Marching through rain and
snow, sleeping on the ground, eating stale food or starving,
contracting diseases and facing guns that fire six hundred times
a minute, for fifty cents a day--this is the soldier's life.
At the window sits the widowed mother crying. Little children
with tearful faces pressed against the pane watch and wait.
Their means of livelihood, their home, their happiness is gone.
Fatherless children, broken-hearted women, sick, disabled and
dead men--this is the wage of war.
We spend more money preparing men to kill each other than we do
in teaching them to live. We spend more money building one
battleship than in the annual maintenance of all our state
universities. The financial loss resulting from destroying one
another's homes in the civil war would have built 15,000,000
houses, each costing $2,000. We pray for love but prepare for
hate. We preach peace but equip for war.
Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camp and court
Given to redeem this world from error,
There would be no need of arsenal and fort.
War only defers a question. No issue will ever really be settled
until it is settled rightly. Like rival "gun gangs" in a back
alley, the nations of the world, through the bloody ages, have
fought over their differences. Denver cannot fight Chicago and
Iowa cannot fight Ohio. Why should Germany be permitted to fight
France, or Bulgaria fight Turkey?
When mankind rises above creeds, colors and countries, when we
are citizens, not of a nation, but of the world, the armies and
navies