Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/233

 GAMBETTA the time necessary, in order that it may become a lasting work. If it need ten years, if it need twenty years, then we must devote to it ten or twenty years. But we must begin at once, that each year may see the advancing life of a new generation, strong, intelligent, as much in love with science as with the Fatherland, having in their hearts the double sentiment that he serves his country well only when he serves it with his reason and his arm.

We have been educated in a rough school. We must therefore cure ourselves of the vanity which has caused us so many disasters. We must realize conscientiously where our responsibility exists, and, seeing the remedy, sacrifice all to the object to be attained—to remake and reconstitute France! For that, nothing should be accounted too good, and we shall ask nothing before this. The first demand must be for an education as complete from base to summit as is known to human intelligence. Naturally, merit must be recognized, aptitude awakened and approved, and honest and impartial judges freely chosen by their fellow citizens, deciding publicly in such a way that merit alone shall open the door. Reject as authors of mischief those who have put words in the place of action; all those who have put favoritism in the place of merit; all those who have made the profession of arms not a means for the protection of France, but a means of serving the caprices of a master, and sometimes of becoming accomplices in his crimes.