hing yet among real men.

"Go back to your home; get out of the exclusive atmosphere of your
perfumed surroundings; join the hardest working political club of
your party in your city; report to the local leader for active work;
mingle with those who toil and sweat.

"Do this until you 'get a standing' among other young men who are
doing things. Thus you will get close to the people whom, after all,
you are going to represent. Also this contact with the sharp, keen
minds of the most forceful fellows in your town will be the best
training you can get for the beginning of your diplomatic career."

"Now let me tell you this," said President Roosevelt to this same
young man: "You may have a small under-secretaryship; 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 fortuna