The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-21
POLITICAL DUTY
 OF THE CITIZEN
Secretary Root on the ori- gin of the Spells
 System.
THIRD DODGE LECTURE
New York Streets Good Ex- ample of Results of Po-
 litical Labor.

Secretary of State Elihu Root deliv- cred the third lecture in the Dodpa series of lectures on "Citizenship" at Lampson hall last night. Ills topic was The Duties of the Citizen as Member of Political Party" He spoke as follows:
 It is quite simple end easy for any intelligent young man to take part in the activities of 8 political party in the United States. He has only to select the party the ascendency of which he considers most desirable. ana let the recognized party officials of his own home know that he is willing to work. He will promptly find hinseIf admitted to membership in whatever may be the simplest form of poltioal organization or association in the local lty' and win find himself provided with plenty of work to do, He cannot be- gin by leadership or by dictating party policies and he probably cannot as- sume in the beginning any such posi- ton of superiority as he may think hia education and intelligence entitle him to have.
 l have often noticed at the bar thai the advocate who is thinking about making a fine speech never makes d lodgment in the mind of either the court or the jury; they may admire the speech, but they are neither convinced nor persuaded. This is true at tt1a bar, in the pulpit, and in the lecture room. It is equally true of literary style; all obtrusively fine writing is irl- effective. And this is true in politics.
 The man who engages in political work with the primary idea of getting office may succeed in getting the of- flee; but he is likely to lose what is M far greater value than any office--tF,e ] good opinion of the community if which he lives-for the people of self governing communities ordinarily pos sess a strangely unerring Insight which detects the spirit in which such a man works and clasities him as a mere pol ltlcian in the bad sense of the term and stigmatizes him as an office seeker.
 The career and influence of such a man, moreover, tend to promote the kind of political activity which is the most injurious and demoralizing in popular government.
 It appears from what I have already said that there are three quite distinct stages in the development of self-goy- ernment. The first and lowest is that in which the people of acountry divide with sole reference to their partisan- ship for particular persons whom they desire to put into power. In it's worst form this kind of partisanship is so completely exclusive of Consideration for public good that the contest for personal ascendency often merges into violence and Civil war and continuous revolutionary attempts The condition was once widely characteristic of Lat in-American republics, and some of them are still at that low stage of de- velopment, although many of them and the most important have happily pass ed out of that stage and have come to regard the choosing of officers as the means of giving effect to policies rath CT than as beng itself the object of popular government. Those countries have had one pre-eminently great and nosle example-Jose de San Martin. He dlsd misunderstood and in exile. To the generals and politicians who were 1 plunging the South American republics into continual bloodshed for their own seliieh ambitions, and to their adher- ents. the spirit of seE-assertion which demands power and fame seemed ad- mirsble and the spirit of self-efface- ment for a cause seemed weakness. But as the people of those countries have risen to higher plane Of duty and honor, there has come the realization that the great South American-the