Part 25 (2/2)

”Now let me tell you this,” said President Roosevelt to this same young man: ”You may have a small under-secretarys.h.i.+p; but let me tell you this,” said he; ”do not take it just yet. You are only out of college. Take a postgraduate course with the people. Get down to earth. See what kind of beings these Americans are. Find out from personal contact.

”If you belong to exclusive clubs, quit them, and spend the time you would otherwise spend in their cold and unprofitable atmosphere in mingling with the people, the common people, merchants and street-car drivers, bankers and working men.

”Finally, when you get your post, do as John Hay did--resign in a year, or a couple of years, and come home to your own country, and again for a year or two get down among your fellow Americans. In short,” said he, ”be an American, and never stop being an American.”

That is it, young man--that is the whole law and the gospel of this subject. Be an American. And do not be an American of imagination. You cannot be an American by seeing visions and dreaming dreams. You cannot be an American by reading about them. Professor Munsterberg's volume will not make you an American any more than a study of tactics out of a book will make you a soldier.

It is the field that makes you a soldier. It is marching shoulder to shoulder with other soldiers that makes you a soldier. It is mingling with other Americans that makes you an American. Our eighty millions will make you American. Keep close to them. The soil will make you American. Keep close to it.

Utilize your enthusiasms. Do not neutralize them by permitting them to be vague and impersonal. Be for men and against men. Be for policies and against policies. And remember always that it is far more important to be for somebody and something than to be against.

There is an excellent though fortunately a small cla.s.s of citizens in this and every other country who are never for anybody but always against somebody. Frequently these men are right in their opposition; but their force is dissipated because they are habitually negative.

I know of nothing better for a young man's character than that he should become the admirer and follower of some noted public man. Let your disciples.h.i.+p have fervor. Permit your youth to be natural. But be sure that the political leader to whom you attach yourself is worthy of your devotion.

Usually this will settle itself. Public men will impress you not only by their deeds, words, and general att.i.tude; but also through a sort of psychic sense within you which illumines and interprets all they say and do, and makes you understand them even better than their spoken words.

This subconscious intelligence which the people come to have of a public man is seldom wrong.

Somehow or other the people know instinctively those who really are unselfishly devoted to the Nation's interest. _In the end_ they never fail to know the man who is honest.

This instinctive estimate of the qualities of mind and soul of public men will probably select for you the captain to whom you are to give your allegiance. Be faithful and earnest in your champions.h.i.+p of him.

In this way you make your political life personal and human.

You give to the policies in which you believe the warmth and vitality of flesh and blood. And, best of all, you increase within yourself human sympathies and devotions, and thus make yourself more and more one of the people who in due time, in your turn, it may be your duty to lead, if the qualities of leaders.h.i.+p are in you.

This matter of leaders.h.i.+p among public men is becoming more and more important, because personality in politics is meaning more every day.

Obeying generally, then, your instinct as to the public men whom you intend to follow, subject your choice to the corrective of cold and careful a.n.a.lysis.

It is probably true that the greatest danger of our future is the peril of cla.s.ses, and inseparably connected with cla.s.ses the menace of demagogy. The last decade has revealed signs that the demagogue, in the modern meaning of that word, is making his appearance in American civic life.

Such men always seize the most attractive ”cause” as argument to the people for their support. They are quite as willing to pose as the especial apostles of righteousness and purity as they are to enact the character of the divinely appointed tribunes of patriotism. Whatever the political fas.h.i.+on of the day may be, your demagogue will appeal to it. It makes no difference what methods he finds necessary to use, so that he can achieve the power and consequence which is his only purpose.

If the ruling tendency be for honesty, these men will make that serve their purpose, or commercialism, or expansion, or war, or peace, or what not. There is no conviction about them. Sometimes such a man will represent himself as a great conservative. He does this not because he is conservative (sometimes he does not even know what that word really means), but because he thinks by a.s.sociating his name with this word he can capture the ”solid” elements among the people, business men and the like.

These ill.u.s.trations can be multiplied without limit. They are as numerous as the ”issues” which can be used to influence the people.

Beware of the demagogue in whatever guise he presents himself. Look out for the play-actor in politics. Whether he wear the cloth of the pulpit, the uniform of the soldier, the garment of the reformer, he is always the same at heart, never for the people, always for himself; never for the Nation and the future, always for power and the present.

Make sure, then, that the captain whom you elect to follow is above all other things sincere. Insist upon his being genuine. See to it that he is intellectually honest. I do not mean that he should be honest in money matters alone, or in telling the truth merely. I mean that he should be square with himself, as well as with you and the world. When a public man is honest and in earnest, you know it--know it without knowing why.

It is safe to follow such a man as this even when you do not agree with all of his public views. You know that he is honest about them; and a man who is honest _within himself_ will change his views, no matter how dear they may be to him, when he finds that he is mistaken about them. The first and last essential of the men who are to voice the opinion and enact the purposes of the American people is an honesty so perfect that it is unconscious of itself.

”He does not deserve the least credit for being square,” said Dr.

Albert Shaw, the eminent editor, scholar, and publicist, concerning a public man; ”he was born that way. His mind is so upright that he cannot help saying what he thinks. It would be impossible for him to tell you or the people a falsehood. He is truth personified. His honesty works as naturally as his heart beats, quite free from the influences of his will.”

That is the kind of a political leader you ought to attach yourself to, while your young days last and your political and civic character is forming. But follow no man who is striving merely to advance his personal interests. What are they to you? Be sure that the man you choose for your chief is trying to do something for the Nation rather than for himself.

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