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 class 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 discipleship 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 attitude; 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 championship 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 leadership are in you.
This matter of leadership 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 analysis.