Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/382

376 nation in any crisis, in any emergency, the very best ability to be found within the nation, and that ability given with the utmost freedom, given lavishly and generously, although to the great pecuniary loss of the man giving it. There is not in my cabinet a man to whose financial disadvantage it is not to sit in the cabinet. There is not in my cabinet one man who does not have to give up something substantial, very largely substantial sometimes, that it is a very real hardship for him to give up, in order that he may continue in the service of the nation, and have the only reward for which he looks or for which he cares, the consciousness of having done service that is worth rendering.

And I hope more and more throughout this nation to see the spirit grow which makes such service possible. I hope more and more to see the sentiment of the community as a whole become such that each man shall feel it borne in on him, whether he is in public life or in private life—mind you, some of the very greatest public services can be best rendered by those who are not in public life—that the chance to do good work is the greatest chance that can come to any man or any woman in our generation, or in any other generation. That if such work can be well done it is in itself the amplest reward and the amplest prize.