ROOSEVELT'S BIRTH AND EDUCATION. 57 



was written soon after leaving college. He was not yet twenty-four 

 wlien it was completed. In view of tlie position whicli tlie author 

 afterward held, next to the head of the American Navy, the preface, 

 written before the beginning of our present navy, is of striking 

 interest. He says : "At present people are beginning to realize 

 that it is folly for the great English-speaking republic to rely for 

 defense upon a navy composed partly of antiquated hulks and 

 partly of new vessels rather more worthless than the old." 



IDEAS OF PUBLIC LIFE AND CITIZENSHIP, 



Mr. Roosevelt's ideas of college education, and the results 

 thereof in the making of good citizens, are well defined in his 

 admirable essay on "College and Public Life," written for the 

 Atlantic Mojithly. in which he says: ''The first great question 

 which the college graduate should learn, is the lesson of work 

 rather than of criticism. College men must learn to be as practi- 

 cal in politics as they would be in business or in law. A college 

 man is peculiarly bound to keep a high ideal and to be true to it ; 

 but he must \vork in practical ways to try to realize this ideal, and 

 must not refuse to do anything because he cannot get anything. 

 No man ever learned from books how to manage a governmental 

 system." Yet he never disparaged book knowledge. 



He says further : 



" This obligation (of being good, active citizens) possibly rests 

 even more heavily upon men of means ; of this it is not necessary 

 now to speak. The men of mere wealth never can have, and never 

 should have, the capacity for doing good work that is possessed 

 by the men of exceptional mental training ; but that they may 

 become both a laughing stock and a menace to the community is 

 made unpleasantly apparent by that portion of the New York 

 business and social world which is most in evidence in the papers. 



" Wrongs should be strenuously and fearlessly denounced ; 

 evil principles and evil men should be condemned. The politician 

 who cheats or swindles, or the newspaper man who lies in any 

 form, should be made to feel that he is an object of scorn for all 

 honest men." 



