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4.

inadequate Civil Service, but that parliamentary government
justly declined in prestige. Moreover, the immense strides
which, during these years, America was making in material prosperity
naturally attracted the ablest youth into business. So with this
combination, discredited politics and glorified business, it was
very difficult to enlist the best talent of the United States in its
country's service. A tradition was created definitely hostile to the
service of the State.

What has been the result? The time came when "rugged individualism"
was no longer possible, when the horizon of
individual enterprise, narrowed, and when the immense importance of
the State revealed itself with blinding clearness to those who had
forgotten all about it. Men turned their eyes to the State, and they
found the State machine unready and inadequate, lacking, both in its
Civil Service and in its legislative apparatus, the support of all the
best talent in the countryh. Well, in United States in recent years has been compelled
to improvise a new tradition. She is a great country and I have
not a doubt but that she will succeed. But it is not very easy to
improvise a tradition. A tradition should be a thing in the warp
and woof of the national character. it is by no smooth and facile road that
America will attain to full State-consciousness.

I have given you these instances from two great peoples -
one of good fortune and one of ill fortune. The moral is that if we
neglect the State for our private interests there will most certainly
come a day when this neglect will react most seriously upon these
private interests. This is not abstract idealism, but a matter of
plain business. The well-being of the nation, the honest and effie-