We have been deciding, and the decision is not yet fully made, whether the future shall suffer the long train of ills which everywhere has followed, and must always follow, the abuse of the forest, or whether by protecting the timberlands we shall assure the prosperity of all of the users of the wood, the water, and the forage which our forests supply.  Nothing less than the whole agricultural and commercial welfare of the country is in the balance.  No other conservation question compares with this in the vital intimacy of its touch on every portion of our national life.

Other great questions only less vital I cannot even refer to, but one of the central ones remains—­our whole future is at stake in the education of our young men in politics and public spirit.  The greatest work that Theodore Roosevelt did for the United States, the great fact which will give his influence vitality and power long after we shall all have gone to our reward, greater than his great services in bringing peace, in settling strikes, in preaching the crusade of honesty and decency in business and in daily life, is the fact that he changed the attitude of the American people toward conserving the natural resources, and toward public questions and public life.  The time was, not long ago, when it was not respectable to be interested in politics.  The time is coming, and I do not believe it is far ahead, when it will not be respectable not to be interested in public affairs.  Few changes can mean so much.

Among the first duties of every man is to help in bringing the Kingdom of God on earth.  The greatest human power for good, the most efficient earthly tool for the future uplifting of the nations, is without question the United States; and the presence or absence of a vital public spirit in the young men of the United States will determine the quality of that great tool and the work that it can do.  This is the final object of the best citizenship.  Public spirit is the means by which every man can help toward this great end.  Public spirit is patriotism in action; it is the application of Christianity to the commonwealth; it is effective loyalty to our country, to the brotherhood of man, and to the future.  It is the use of a man by himself for the general good.

Public spirit is the one great antidote for all the ills of the Nation, and greatly the Nation needs it now.  In a day when the vast increase in wealth tends to reduce all things, moral, intellectual and material, to the measure of the dollar; in a day when we have with us always the man who is working for his own pocket all the time; when the monopolist of land, of opportunity, of power or privilege in any form, is ever in the public eye—­it is good to remember that the real leaders are the men who value the right to give themselves more highly than any gain whatsoever.