who wins what we call
great success--is not a genius. He is a man who has merely the
ordinary qualities that he shares with his fellows, but who has
developed those ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree.

Take such a thing as hunting or any form of vigorous bodily exercise.
Most men can ride hard if they choose. Almost any man can kill a lion
if he will exercise a little resolution in training the qualities that
will enable him to do it. [Taking a tumbler from the table, Mr.
Roosevelt held it up.] Now it is a pretty easy thing to aim straight
at an object about that size. Almost any one, if he practises with the
rifle at all, can learn to hit that tumbler; and he can hit the lion
all right if he learns to shoot as straight at its brain or heart as
at the tumbler. He does not have to possess any extraordinary
capacity, not a bit,--all he has to do is to develop certain rather
ordinary qualities, but develop them to such a degree that he will
not get flustered, so that he will press the trigger steadily instead
of jerking it--and then he will shoot at the lion as well as he will
at that tumbler. It is a perfectly simple quality to develop. You
don't need any remarkable skill; all you need is to possess ordinary
qualities, but to develop them to a more than ordinary degree.

It is just the same with the soldier. What is needed is that the man
as soldier should develop certain qualities that have been known for
thousands of years, but develop them to such a point that in an
emergency he does, as a matter of course, what a great multitude of
men can do but what a very large proportion of them don't do. And in
making the appeal to the soldier, if you want to get out of him the
stuff that is in him, you will have to use phrases which the
intellectual gentlemen who do not fight will say are platitudes.
(Laughter and applause.)

It is just so in public life. It is not genius, it is not
extraordinary subtlety, or acuteness of intellect, that is important.
The things that are important are the rather commonplace, the rather
humdrum, virtues that in their sum are designated as character. If you
have in public life men of good ability, not geniuses, but men of
good abilities, with character,--and, gentlemen, you must include as
one of the most important elements of character commonsense--if you
possess such men, the Government will go on very well.

I have spoken only of the great successes; but what I have said
ap