ignoble use," while the contempt with which self-seeking candidacy and party subserviency, even in a canvass now pending, speaks of disinterested citizens organized to secure good government, as "a modern school of doctrinaires," and as "college professors," startlingly illustrates how confidently arrogant partisanship dares to insult thoughtful and intelligent citizenship.

Since our hope of the perpetual endurance of our government, as the source of priceless benefit to the American people, and as proof of man's right and fitness to govern himself, must rest upon the people's intelligence and patriotism, these should be carefully protected against malign agencies which continually attempt to undermine them; and they should be constantly supported and reenforced by the thoughtful educated men of the land. Already a dangerous advantage has been gained by the forces of recklessness and selfishness, largely through the indifference of those who should have challenged their first advance; and now, when partisanship without giving reasons assumes to lead, and hosts without reason seem willing to follow, and when party organization, which should be the servant of intelligence

and patriotism, proclaims itself their master, and attempts to bind them hand and foot, the time has surely come when all the intelligence and education of our land should hear a call to duty.

To say nothing of actual danger to our institutions, all must see that we cannot gain their most beneficent results, if the best intelligence and the most disinterested patriotism among our people either refuse to enter the field of politics, or allow themselves to be driven from it.

I am not condemning party allegiance founded on reason and judgment. Party men we may all well be; but only with the reservation that thoughtful and patriotic citizens we must be.

In our public life we may be sure that, as a general rule, our servants and agents will be no better than the people who create them. They may be infinitely worse through the people's neglect or betrayal.

Therefore no true American should be willing to endanger the interests involved in his citizenship, nor the pride which every good man has in the maintenance before the world of the high character of his government, by inaction, or a careless indication of

his choice for those to be intrusted with national affairs.

If the popular will in this regard should be voiced by the intelligence and patriotism. of our countrymen, and if they should be alert and exacting in the enforcement of their will, the danger of misgovernment and of a misrepresentation of our national character would pass away. A just people, willing to concede equal rights and privileges to every citizen, would enforce justice and equality in their government; a frugal and economical people would command frugality and economy in public administration; a people who valued integrity and morality would exact them in high places; a people who held sacred the honor of their country would insist upon its scrupulous protection and defense; and a people who love peace would not again suffer the humiliation of seeing dashed from their proud grasp the almost ripened hope of leadership among the nations of the earth, in the high mission of driving out the cruel barbarities of war by the advent of the pacific methods of international arbitration.

Happy is the land where examples of heroism and wise statesmanship abound, but

happier far is the land where the people rule; and fortunate above all are those people when their government is controlled, watched, and defended by the virtue, patriotism, and intelligence of millions of truly selfmade men.

National Duties

ADDRESS DELIVERED BY VICE-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AT MINNESOTA STATE FAIR, SEPTEMBER 2, 1901.

I

*

N his admirable series of studies of twentieth-century problems, Dr. Lyman Abbott has pointed out that we are a nation of pioneers; that the first colonists to our shores were pioneers, and that pioneers selected out from among the descendants of these early pioneers, mingled with others selected afresh from the Old World, pushed westward into the wilderness and laid the foundations for new commonwealths. They were men of hope and expectation, of enterprise and energy; for the men of dull content or more dull despair had no part in the great movement into and across the New World. Our country has been populated by pioneers, and therefore it has in it more energy, more enterprise, more

*From "The Strenuous Life," by permission of The Century Company.