The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-05-17

him down"
 them as you would tie to the voices of conscience if you could be sure that you always heard them.
 | Men who have no axes to grind. Men who love America so that they would give their lives for it and never lcare whether anybody heard that they had given their lives for it; willing to die in obscurity, if only they might serve. Those are the men, and na- tions like those men are the nations, that are going to serve the world and save it.
 | Weight and Character. l There never was a time in the his tory of the world when character, just sheer character all by itself, told more than it does now. A friend of mine says that every man who takes office i in Washington either grows or swellS, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he | is swelling or growing. The mischief Iof, it is that when they swell they do not swell enough to burst. If they | would only swell to the point where you might insert a pin and let the gases out, it would be a, great delight I do not know any pastime that would be more diverting, except that the gases are probably poisonous so that we would have to stand from under I But the men who grow, the men who think better a year after they are put in office than they thought fwhen they were put in office. are the balance wheel of the whole thing. I They are the ballast that enables the craft to carry sail and to make port in the long ruin, no matter what the 1 weather is.
 l 50 I have come willing. to make this narrative of Experience to you. I 1 have come through the fire since I talked to you last Whether the metal is purer than it was, God only knows; but the fire has been there, the fire has penetrated every part of it, and if lI may believe my own thoughts, have less partisan feeling, more i1npa- tience of party manoeuvre, more en- l thusiasm for the right thing, no mat ter whom it hurts, than ever had be- fore in my life.
 A Profound Contempt
 And have something that it is no doubt dangerous to have, but that I Ecannot help having. have a pro found intellectual contempt for men who cannot see the signs of the times. I have to deal with some men who know no more of the modern processes of politics than if they were living in >>le- eighteenth century, and for them have a profound and comprehen- sive intellectual contempt. They are blind They are hopelessly blind, and the worst of it is have to spend hours of my time talking to them when know before I start as much as after IT have finished that it is absolutely useless to talk to them. am talking in vacuo.
 e'The business of every one of us. gentlemen, is to realize that if we are correspondents of papers who have not yet heard of modern times we ought to send them as many intima- tions of modern movements as thev I are willing to print.
 I There is a, sinni1e that was used by a very interesting English writer that has been much in my mind Like my self, he had often been urged not to try to change so many things. I re- member when I was president of a university man said to me: Good heavens, man, why don't you leave something alone and let it stay the way it is?' and I said, If you will guarantee to me that it will stay the way it is I will let it alone. but if you knew anything you would know that if you leave live thing alone it will not, stay where 1t is. It will develop and will either go in the wrong direction or decay
 reminded him of this thing about that the English writer said. that if you want to keep a white post white you cannot let it alone. It will get
 black. You have to keep doing some thing to it. In that instance you have got to paint it white very frequently in order to keep it white, because there are forces at work that will get the better of you. Not only will it turn black, but the forces of moisture and the other forces of nature will penetrate the white paint and. get at the fibre of the wooc, and decay will set in, and the next time you try to paint it you will find that there is nothing but punk to paint.
 Then you will remember the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland or Alice Through the Looking Glass'-I forget which, it has been so long since read them-who takes Alice by the haed and they rush along at a great pace, and then, when they stop, Alice looks around and says, But we are just where we were when we started Yes says the Red queen, you have to run twice as fast as that to get any where e1se.'
 Must Run Twice as Fast.
 That is also true, gentlemen of the l world and of affairs. You have got to run fast merely to stay where you are, and in order 70 get anywhere, you have got to run twice as fast as that. That is what people do not realize, that is the mischief Of these ] hopeless dams against the stream known as reactionaries and stand lpateers, and other words of obloquy.