"... at the very moment.. "

My mother-- whose 76th birthday is today!-- gave me five or six boxes of stuff to bring back to the Farm. One and one-half boxes of stuffed animals. One box of clothes belonging to the girls about 20 years ago. An adding machine. Three lamps. Miscellaneous glass stuff. And three crappy old books.

Two of the books I understand. One was my father's Airman's Handbook in which is tucked away a mimeographed sheet titled "Welcome to Sonderstrom" (apparently one of the coldest places on Earth). The other is The Service Hymnal which is stamped on the inside front cover, "United Baptist Church Presque Isle Maine." Dad was stationed in Presque Isle. The third is a complete mystery to me. 

Mystery solved. Keep reading for the context of the subject line.

Suppression of the Slave Trade by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, Ph. D. (Harv.) was copyright in 1896 and published by Cambridge Harvard University Press. Upon closer examination of the front matter I see that the title page is embossed with the name of a library and stamped with "DISCARD."  Now it makes sense. Mom likes crappy old books, too.

It looks like an interesting and thoroughly researched book. Fully one-third is devoted to appendices. I skimmed, but read only section 96, the final section, "The Lesson for Americans" which concludes with this paragraph:

p 198

How far in a State can a recognized moral wrong safely be compromised? ... [I]t would seem to warn any nation from allowing, through carelessness and moral cowardice, any social evil to grow.

[snip]

[I]t behooves nations as well as men to do things at the very moment when they ought to be done.

 Here's to moral courage-- on the part of nations and men-- in 2012.