Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1916-02-01

member, and in Rotary he will be
helped to reestablish himself and he
Will be given more practical help and
less talk about it than in anything
else. In all the $4,000 members OF
Rotary there is not single one who
can be read failure. Membership in
Rotary brings a larger capacity in
business and partly on that account
election to Rotary membership is not
always given to men who have reach
ed the summit of their professions,
for the reason that these men are
usually about to retire; they rarely
need the fellowship or the help that
Rotary produces and we would rather
use the man that we can make the
leading member of the bar in Wiscon-
SIN than have for a member the man
who is already the leading member
of the bar.
Every Rotary session is a kind of
a melting process in the course of
which as out of a common crucible
there comes a common amalgam of
business training for us all. Rotary
can be regarded as the largest bust
ness man can have apart from his
! own desk or place of business. Now
If this was all Rotary did it might
justify itself but not to me. l would
consider it very poor school and I
doubt if it would lay a great claim
upon my time, but Rotary does some
thing infinitely bigger and better than
that. Having helped teach the man
to be more competent in his business
and no man is worth helping in his
business whose business does not
comprise a certain service to the COM
munity-it becomes a day school for
earnest, capable, gingery young bus
mess men in which to learn the fun
damentals of civics. We are teaching
each other that if life has been made
and can be made good for us, the AL
mighty in His wisdom requires it to be
made good for those not so fortunate
as we are. We are far removed from
the old, old method of the bodies that
would make of their organizations
great machine for a definite and spe-
cific object. If it be that your streets
need cleaning and there is no other
agency available to clean the streets
it becomes your duty to see to it they
are cleaned. AS we have only one
member from each group of interests
in our Rotary we can have only one
member from your Chamber of Com
merce but your Chamber of Commerce
in Wausau ought to have thirty such
men, but there is something vitality
wrong with the Rotary Club if in
every session it doesn't train every
member to be a better member of his
Chamber of Commerce.
So it is with our cities: We do not
undertake to find out what is the mat
ter with our water supply, but if there
is anything wrong with it we will be
alert to find out what is the matter
with our water supply, and it would
be a poor Rotary Club which did not
undertake to see that one hundred
per cent. of its members went to the
polls. 1 wonder if you realize how
practically few exercise their right to
vote. l suppose that Wisconsin is
like Minnesota-and sometimes 1 both
hope and fear that you are like US
in Minnesota if you were to make a
poll of the voters that had cast their
votes you would find that ninety per
cent. of the qualified voters did not
vote, nor eighty per cent, nor seven
" per cent, nor sixty per cent, nor
even fifty per cent. In most of the
cities of the Union the elections were
determined by 48 voters out of every
100 voters. We are determined to de-
velop responsibility and especially
that form of civic responsibility that
will make us too proud to stay away
from the election booth; there is no
device that will excuse us from that
responsibility. We will not undertake
to state what particular form of gov
ernment must be maintained in the
state, but we would rather teach the
interesting lesson that there is no de-
vice ever yet produced that would pro-
vide good government. Government is
the reflex of the men who make it.
Government in Wisconsin and in Wau-
sau will be just as good as the men in
Wisconsin and Wausau intend it to be
but never better, and no device could
ever relieve a single partner in this
American Republic of his own part
ner, responsibility, so that in Rotary
we find our belief in efficiency moving
its great mass towards the establish
ment of a governmental bureau on
the basis of Civil Service, and we as
Rotarians, would look for the technic-
ally trained men to do technical SER
vice for the government of Wausau.
The matter of national preparedness
has its limitations, but it is imprudent
to have the country at the mercy of
men like Huerta, and Villa and Castro
and others like them in Central or
South America. But this does not
mean that we are to make of Rotary a
great machine in behalf of national
preparedness. But there is one field
in which we can go ahead without re-
restraint or restriction. 1t is
strange field. Rotarians have every
where learned that each man that sits
beside him shares with him the joys
and idealisms and his aspirations are
the same. Now and then it seems too
unreal to be true that l, Allen D. AL
bert, a great dreamer, perhaps i'm
practical, should sit between my clo-
thier and my lawyer and find that they
have the same thoughts and aspira-
tions even to the farthermost of my
hopes. IL refer with some embarass-
ment at first to some inmost thought;
l may say that l take my religion ser
iously and a hand reaches under the
table to my hand and squeezes it; l
have dared to say it because 1 have
learned that his thoughts are the
same, and soon you come to the point
where he dares talk about it. That
is more nearly the complete key to
Rotary, making the acquaintanceship
of our better selves. 1t is the spirit
ual thing that lives; the wonder is
that it needs to be said again and yet
in every community it is the same, it
/ is the spiritual thing that lives. 1t
doesn't seem possible does it, but here
/ is a man with a yearning in his heart,
an impalpable. indefinite thing which
perhaps he cannot even articulate,
which he cannot make vocal, but it
| is so strange that it is almost mir
acle that this will outlive every ma
terial achievement of that mans life.
l will illustrate by a curious his
torical fact; There are those in this
room who profess and call themselves