“I know you must believe in recreation for people who are working, since you are yourself indulging in it now.”
“Oh, yes, one must have some change. A man who has no outdoor exercise is likely to wear himself out in short order. I love to be out of doors. I always have, and that is one thing that has helped me to do some things that I have. I go out for a time every day when I am here at home. I enjoy being in the open air.”
“I know you think that the young man of to-day has a better chance to make a success in life than those who lived twenty-five years ago.”
“Certainly. The young man of to-day has greater opportunities for advancing himself and achieving a real success than any men have ever had before. Everything offers better chances, and all a boy needs is education enough to appreciate them when they are here. That is one of the chief values of a good education. It aids a young man in many things that would be invisible to the uneducated fellow. It helps him to weigh things in his mind before deciding what to do. It is mind-training that we need. The power to think is almost absolutely necessary to success. Without it, a man is sure to be unequal to the great struggle for supremacy that is going on constantly in certain professions and lines of business.”
In a contributed article President Roosevelt gave his views of what constitutes good citizenship. An extract from this article is given herewith:
THE CITIZENSHIP THAT COUNTS.
“After honesty as the foundation of the citizenship that counts, in business or in politics, must come courage. You must have courage not only in battle, but also in civic life. We need physical and we need moral courage. Neither is enough by itself. You need moral courage. Many a man has been brave physically who has flinched morally. You must feel in you a fiery wrath against evil. When you see a wrong, instead of feeling shocked and hurt, and a desire to go home, and a wish that right prevailed, you should go out and fight until that wrong is overcome. You must feel ashamed if you do not stand up for the right as you see it; ashamed if you lead a soft and easy life and fail to do your duty. You must have courage. If you do not, the honesty is of no avail.
“But honesty and courage, while indispensable, are not enough for good citizenship. I do not care how brave and honest a man is; if he is a fool, he is not worth knocking on the head. In addition to courage and honesty, you must have the saving quality of common sense. One hundred and ten years ago, France started to form a republic, and one of her noted men—an exceedingly brilliant man, a scholar of exceptional thought, the Abbe Sieyés,—undertook to draw up a constitution. He drew up several constitutions, beautiful documents; but they would not work. The French national convention resolved in favor of liberty; and, in the name of liberty, they beheaded every man who did not think as they did. They resolved in favor of fraternity, and beheaded those who objected to such a brotherhood. They resolved in favor of equality, and cut off the heads of those who rose above the general level. They indulged in such hideous butcheries, in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as to make tyranny seem mild in comparison;—and all because they lacked common sense, as well as morality.
“Two or three years before that, we, in America, had a body of men gathered in a constitutional convention to make a constitution. They assembled under the lead of Washington, with Alexander Hamilton, Madison, and many other eminent men. They did not draw up a constitution in a week, as the brilliant Sieyés did, but just one constitution, and that one worked. That was the great point!
“It worked, primarily, because it was drawn up by practical politicians,—by practical politicians who believed in decency, as well as in common sense. If they had been a set of excellent theorists, they would have drawn up a constitution which would have commended itself to other excellent theorists, but which would not have worked. If they had been base, corrupt men, mere opportunists, men who lacked elevating ideals, dishonest, cowardly, they would have drawn up a document that would not have worked at all. On the great scale, the only practical politics is honest politics. The makers of our constitution were practical politicians, who were also sincere reformers, and as brave and upright as they were sensible.”