“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 fortunately a small class of citizens in this and every other country who are never for anybody but always against somebody.  Frequently these men are right in their opposition; but their force is dissipated because they are habitually negative.

I know of nothing better for a young man’s character than that he should become the admirer and follower of some noted public man.  Let your discipleship have fervor.  Permit your youth to be natural.  But be sure that the political leader to whom you attach yourself is worthy of your devotion.