g element at home. It is
in the power of public spirit to say whether men or money shall control.

If public spirit is in the saddle, the fundamental purpose of all the
people, which is good, will govern. If not, the bosses and the great
private interests will have their way. Without the backing of the public
spirit of good men, even the President himself loses by far the greater
portion of his power. For the power to do what we hope to see
accomplished, we must look most of all to the public spirit of the young
men.

But some one will say that great service is beyond his individual power.
I do not believe that great service is beyond the power of any young
man. This is not a matter in which obstacles decide. The man for whom
all the barriers to success have been broken down is not, as a rule, the
man who succeeds. On the contrary, conflict is the condition of
success. The quality of the man himself decides. The more I study men,
which is the daily occupation of every man in affairs, the more firmly I
am assured that the great fundamental difference between men, the reason
why some fail and some succeed, is not a difference in ability or
opportunity, but a difference in vision and in relentless loyalty to
ideals--vision to see the great object, and relentless, unwavering,
uninterrupted loyalty in its service. What young men determine to do at
whatever cost of effort, self-denial, and endurance, provided that their
objects are good and within the possibility of attainment, they will
surely accomplish in so large a proportion of cases that the failures
are negligible. If all that a man has or is, if his death and his daily
life, are wholly and relentlessly at the service of his ideal, without
hesitancy or reservation, then he will achieve his object. Either by
himself or his successors he will achieve it, for he disposes of the
greatest power to which humanity can attain. Under such conditions there
is no man among us who cannot render high service to our beloved
country.

CHAPTER IX

THE CHILDREN

The success of the conservation movement in the United States depends in
the end on the understanding the women have of it. No forward step in
this whole campaign has been more deeply appreciated or more welcomed
than that which the National Society of the Daughters of the American
Revolution and other organizations of women have taken in appointing
conservation committees.

Patriotism is the key to the success