came in to ask you if you would n't help a young man who wants to get into the public employment. He is a fine fellow, has got all the qualifications. All he needs is influence to get him a place. Without influence you cannot do anything." The fight will be over the day the American people get that notion out of their heads, not before. They can drop it now, for it is all that really is left. Roosevelt won them the right to do that. He won his father's fight that he had made his own. I know how much that meant to him. The country got more out of it: it got a man to whom great tasks and great opportunities were to come with the years, trained in the school of all schools to perfect skill in dealing with men, in making out their motives and their worth as fighting units. The devious paths of diplomacy have no such trainingschool for leadership as he found in Washington fighting for a great principle, touching elbows every day with men from all over the country, with the leaders in thought and action, in politics, in every phase of public life. He went there, a fearless battler for the right, and came away with all his ideals bright and unsullied. It was in the Civil Service Commission's office the cunning was fashioned which, without giving offense, put the Kishineff petition into the hands of the Czar and his Ministers before they had time to say they would not receive it, and gave notice to the Muscovite world that there was a moral sense across the sea to be reckoned with; of which fact it took due notice. Still more did the country get out of that Six Years' War: from end to end of the land the men with ideals, young and old, the men and women who would help their fellows, help their cities, took heart from his example and his victory. Perhaps that was the greatest gain, the one that went farthest. It endures to this day. Wherever he fights, men fall in behind and fight on with new hope; they know they can win if they keep it up. And they will, let them be sure of it. All the little defeats are just to test their grit. It is a question of grit, that is all. |