he
conflicts and confusions of the Revolution. The men who were able to
surrender themselves and all their interests to the pure and loyal
service of their ideal were the men who made good, the victors crowned
with glory and honor. The men who would not make that surrender, who
sought selfish ends, who were controlled by personal ambition and the
love of gain, who were willing to stoop to crooked means to advance
their own fortunes, were the failures, the lost leaders, and, in some
cases, the men whose names are embalmed in their own infamy. The
ultimate secret of greatness is neither physical nor intellectual, but
moral. It is the capacity to lose self in the service of something
greater. It is the faith to recognize, the will to obey, and the
strength to follow, a star.

Washington, no doubt, was pre-eminent among his contemporaries in
natural endowments. Less brilliant in his mental gifts than some, less
eloquent and accomplished than others, he had a rare balance of large
powers which justified Lowell's phrase of "an imperial man." His
athletic vigor and skill, his steadiness of nerve restraining an
intensity of passion, his undaunted courage which refused no necessary
risks and his prudence which took no unnecessary ones, the quiet
sureness with which he grasped large ideas and the pressing energy with
which he executed small details, the breadth of his intelligence, the
depth of his convictions, his power to apply great thoughts and
principles to every-day affairs, and his singular superiority to current
prejudices and illusions--these were gifts in combination which would
have made him distinguished in any company, in any age.

But what was it that won and kept a free field for the exercise of these
gifts? What was it that secured for them a long, unbroken opportunity of
development in the activities of leadership, until they reached the
summit of their perfection? It was a moral quality. It was the evident
magnanimity of the man, which assured the people that he was no
self-seeker who would betray their interests for his own glory or rob
them for his own gain. It was the supreme magnanimity of the man, which
made the best spirits of the time trust him implicitly, in war and
peace, as one who would never forget his duty or his integrity in the
sense of his own greatness.

From the first, Washington appears not as a man aiming at prominence or
power, but rather as one under obligation to serve a cause. Necessit