The Bon Homme County independent. [volume] (Tabor, S.D.) 1904-1913, 1910-04-28
ROOSEVELT HOLDS THE
RIGHTS OF MAN ABOVE
RIGHTS OF PROPERTY
Sterility Is Branded by Speaker
as Crime of Magnitude
Against Country.

Roosevelt, former president OF
the United States, delivered his
eagerly awaited lecture or
citizenship in a Republic" ir
the Sorbonne this afternoon
His audience was composed. Of
all of the members of the French
cabinet, students from the uni.
versity of Paris, and many dis.
tinguished persons by whom the
occasion was regarded as the
most important feature of the
distinguished Americans visit
to France.
Mr.. Roosevelt's Speech.
The speaker said in part:
with you here, and with us in my
own home, in the long run, success
or failure will be conditioned upon the
way in which the average man, the
average woman, does his or her duty
first in the ordinary every day affairs
sional crises which call for the heroic
virtues, The average citizen must be
good citizen II our republics are to
succeed The stream will not per-
manently rise higher than the main
source; and the main source of ma
tional power and national greatness is
found in the average citizenship Of the
nation. Therefore, 1t behooves us to
do our best to see that the standard
Of the average citizen Is kept high !;
and the average cannot be kept high
unless the standard Of the leaders is
very much higher.
1T is well IL large proportion of
The leaders In any republic, in any
democracy, are, as a matter Of course,
drawn from the classes represented in
this audience today; but only provided
that those classes possess the gifts of
sympathy with plain people and of de-
votion to great ideals. You and those
like you have received special advant-
ages; you have all Of you had the OPP
portunity for mental training; many
OF you have had leisure; most Of you
have had chance for the enjoyment
OF life far greater than comes to the
majority Of your fellows. To you and
your kind much has been given, and
from you much should be expected.
1T is not the critic who counts; not
the man who points out how the
doer of deeds could have done them
better. The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena,
whose face Is marred by dust and
sweat and blood; who strives valiant
iy; who errs, and comes short again
and again, because there is no effort
without error and shortcoming; but
who does actually strive to do the
deeds who knows the great enthu-
siasm. the great devotions; who spends
himself In worthy cause; who at the
best knows in the end the triumph of
high achievement, and who at the
worst, II he fails, at least fails while
daring greatly. so that his place shall
never be with those cold and timid
souls who know neither victory nor
defeat. Shame on the man OF culti-
waited taste who permits refinement to
develop In fastidiousness that units
him for doing the rough work of a
work-day world.
Among the free peoples who govern
themselves there is but small field
Of usefulness open for the men of
clustered life who shrink from con-
tact with their fellows. still less room
Is there for those who deride or slight
what Is done by those who actually
bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for
those others who always profess that
they would like to take action. If only
the conditions of life were not what
they actually are.
Intellect Not Most Important.
II pay all homage to intellect, and
to elaborate and specialized training
OF the intellect, and yet know I shall
have the assent Of all of you present
when I add that more important still
are the commonplace, every day quail
tiles and virtues.
Such ordinary, everyday qualities
include the Will and the power to work,
to fight at need, and to have plenty of
healthy children. There are a few
people in every country so born that
they can lead lives Of leisure. These
fill useful function If they make IL
evident that leisure does not mean idle
ness. But the average man must earn
his own livelihood. He should be
trained to feel that he occupies a con-
temptible position II he does not do so;
that he Is not an object Of envy If he
Is idle, at whichever end Of the social
scale he stands, but an object Of con-
tempt, an object Of derision.
Whaek at Race Suicide.
Finally, even more important than
ability to work, even more important
than ability to fight at need, is it to
for any nation Is that 1t shall leave it's
seed to inherit the land. It was the
crown Of blessings In Biblical times;
and it is the crown of blessings now.
The greatest Of all curses is the
curse of sterility, and the sever
est of all condemnations should
be that visited upon wilful sterility.
The first essential in any civilization is
that the man and the woman shall be
father and mother of healthy children,
so that the race shall increase and not
decrease. If this Is not so, If through
no fault of the society there is failure
to increase, 1t is a great misfortune.
IF the failure is due to deliberate
and wilful fault, then 1t Is not merely
q misfortune, 1t is one of those crimes
of ease and self-indulgence, of shrink
ing from pain and effort and risk, which
in the long run nature Furnishes more
heavily than any other. If we of the
great republics, II we, the free people
who claim to have emancipated our
selves from the thraldom of wrong and
error, br,ng down on our heads the
curse that comes upon the wilfully bar
rem. then 1t will be an idle waste of
breath to prattle of our achievements,
to boast of all that we have done. No
Of life N 6plipapU "a Sfa