se qualities which direct the efficiency into
channels for the public good. He is useless if he is inefficient.
There is nothing to be done with that type of citizen of whom all that
can be said is that he is harmless. Virtue which is dependent upon a
sluggish circulation is not impressive. There is little place in
active life for the timid good man. The man who is saved by weakness
from robust wickedness is likewise rendered immune from the robuster
virtues. The good citizen in a republic must first of all be able to
hold his own. He is no good citizen unless he has the ability which
will make him work hard and which at need will make him fight hard.
The good citizen is not a good citizen unless he is an efficient
citizen.

But if a man's efficiency is not guided and regulated by a moral
sense, then the more efficient he is the worse he is, the more
dangerous to the body politic. Courage, intellect, all the masterful
qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are used merely
for that man's own advancement, with brutal indifference to the rights
of others. It speaks ill for the community if the community worships
these qualities and treats their possessors as heroes regardless of
whether the qualities are used rightly or wrongly. It makes no
difference as to the precise way in which this sinister efficiency is
shown. It makes no difference whether such a man's force and ability
betray themselves in the career of money-maker or politician, soldier
or orator, journalist or popular leader. If the man works for evil,
then the more successful he is the more he should be despised and
condemned by all upright and far-seeing men. To judge a man merely by
success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually
so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked
man triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the last
analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and
that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for
liberty.

The homely virtues of the household, the ordinary workaday virtues
which make the woman a good housewife and house-mother, which make the
man a hard worker, a good husband and father, a good soldier at need,
stand at the bottom of character. But of course many others must be
added thereto if a State is to be not only free but great. Good
citizenship is not good citizenship if exhibited only in the home.
There remain th