How can President Wilson, in getting the Trusts not to be corrupt, in trying to win them—­how can President Wilson make the law alluring?  How can he make the People have a Low Voice?

A great deal if not nearly everything depends in tempting business men to be good, upon the tone in which they are addressed.  Every government, like every man, soon comes to have its own characteristic tone in addressing the people.  And, as a matter of fact, it is almost always the tone in a government, like the voice in a man, which tells us the most definitely what it is like, and is the most intimate and effective expression of what it wants and is the most practical way of getting what it wants.  Everybody has noticed that a man’s voice works harder for him, works more to the point for him in getting what he wants than his words do.  It is his voice that makes people know him, that makes them know he means what he says.  It is his voice that tells them whether he is in the habit of meaning what he says, and it is his voice that tells them whether he is in habit of getting what he wants, and of knowing what to do with what he wants when he gets it.

A government does not need to say very much if it has the right tone.

The tone of a government is the government.

If President Wilson is going to succeed in tempting business men to be good, he is going to do it, some of us think, by depending on three principles.

These three principles, like all live, active principles, may be stated as three principles or as three personal traits.

First, by being affirmative. (Isaiah, in distinction from Moses.)

Second, by being concrete. (Bathsheba.)

Third, by being specific, by seeing the universal in the particular. 
(Like any artist or man who does things.)

The value of being affirmative and the value of being concrete have already been touched upon.  There remains the value of being specific.

Possibly, in this present happy hour, when our country has grown suddenly sensible and has become practical enough to pick out at last, once more, a President with a real serious working sense of humour, even a sense of humour about himself, it may not be considered disrespectful if I continue a little longer dropping in on the Government, and saying what I have to say in a few plain and homely words.

The trouble with most people in being economical with their money is, that when they spend it, they spend it on something in particular, and when they save it, they try to save it in a kind of general way.  The same principle applies to doing right.  It is because when people do right, they do it in a kind of general pleasant, abstract way, and when they do wrong they always do something in particular, that they are so Wicked.

A man will do almost anything to save his life at a particular place and at a particular time, say at ten o’clock to-morrow morning, if he is drowning, but if he has a year to save it in, a year of controlling his appetites, of daily, detailed mastering of his spirit, of not taking a piece of mince pie, of stopping his work in time and of going to bed early, he will die.