ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 375 



to instill, both by your lives and by your teachings, these ideals into 

 the minds of those who in the next generation will, as the men and 

 women of that generation, determine the position which this nation is 

 to hold in the history of mankind. 



And now, in closing, I want to speak to you of certain things that 

 have occurred during the last week and of how those things emphasize 

 what I have just said to you as to the importance of this country having 

 within its limits men who put the realization of high ideals above any 

 form of money making. During this week our country has lost a great 

 statesman who was also a great man of letters, a man who occupied a 

 peculiar and unique position in our community, a man of whose exist- 

 ence we could each of us be proud because his life reflected upon each of 

 us ; for the United States as a whole was better because John Hay lived. 

 John Hay entered the public service as a young man just come of age, 

 as the secretary of President Lincoln. He served in the war, he was 

 a member of the Loyal Legion. He was trusted by and was intimate 

 with Lincoln as hardly any other man was. He then went on rendering 

 service after service, and of his merits this was one of them : He had 

 the great advantage and great merit of always being able at any moment 

 to go back to private life unless he could continue in public life on his 

 own terms. He went on rendering service after service to the country 

 until as the climax of his career he served for some six years as secretary 

 of state in two successive administrations, and by what he did and by 

 what he was contributed in no small degree to achieve for this republic 

 the respect of the nations of mankind. Such service as that could not 

 have been rendered save by a man Avho had before him ideals as far 

 above as the poles from those ideals which have in them any taint of 

 what is base or sordid. 



I wished to get for John Hay's successor the man whom I regarded 

 as of all the men in the country that one best fitted to be such successor. 

 In asking him to accept the position of secretary of state I was asking 

 him to submit to a very great pecuniary sacrifice, and I never even 

 thought of that aspect of the question, for I knew he wouldn't, either. 

 I knew that whatever other consideration he had to waive for and 

 against taking the position, the consideration of how it would affect 

 his personal fortune would not be taken into account by Elihu Eoot. 

 And he has accepted. 



And now I am not speaking of Hay and Eoot as solitary exceptions. 

 On the contrary, I am speaking of them as typical of a large class of 

 men in public life, and when we hear so much criticism of certain 

 aspects of our public life and of certain of our public servants, criticism 

 which I regret to state is in many cases deserved, it is well for us to 

 remember also the other side of the picture, to remember that here in 

 America we now have and alwavs have had at the command of the 



