AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE

Senator Albert J. Beveridge spoke in the Living Room of the Union last night, outlining in one of the most forcible and interesting addresses of the year. "The Obligations of American "Public Life."

A servant of the people, he said, must be one of them to appreciate their needs, to understand their feelings, and to be able to represent them honestly. The best test of a man's real worth for public capacity, and one of its most broadening influences, is contact with common life, for the intellectual and moral force of the American people is the greatest that the world has ever seen. The American soldier, standing as the does for self-sacrificing devotion to the republic, is a good example of the attitude that should be taken in public life. It is work, after all, hard, continuous work, that makes public men great.

During the last century it has been the politician rather than the statesman who has been developed, because the problems have been few and domestic. This type of man and the older man who has spent his energies on private enterprise and whose opinions have been narrowed, are not the men to make righteous law for these ninety, millions of people. It is before the student statesman with true character and willingness to give himself up entirely to the public good, to deal with the greater and broader questions which have arisen in the last few years.

The statesman must be absolutely frank with the people take a firm position which seems honest in his eyes, and not dodge the question or be two-sided about it. He must look at all questions from the vie-point of the nation and not from that of the locality, for what is good for the whole country must be good for a part of it. State and sectional interests should combine. Our whole history is the story of people working as a whole and against separations and groupings, and the national idea has won. It was the provincial idea that started the Civil War, and the national force which was victorious, and so it has ever been.

The last elemental obligation which rests on every man in public capacity is that he shall not represent any interest but the interest of the people. The conception of the real relation between business and the people is just coming into view. It is cause of the republic that should be upheld above private interest no matter what it is.

There is a greater opportunity, the Senator concluded, in this republic and at this time for young men in public life than ever before in the world's history. There is so much to be done, so many strong, clean, trained hands needed to do it. But it must be remembered that present day public life means sacrifice and it is battle from beginning to end. Each victory means a contest farther on, but after all there is no effort so much worth while as for this national republic of free and righteous men.