An American Appreciation "The phrase 'a second-class man' has acquired a tinge of contempt that it does not deserve," says the New York "Outlook." "Much of the best and most permanent work of the world has been done by second-class men.' Only the very exceptional leaders or creators are entitled tobe ranked in the first class, and the very insistence and positiveness of their genius often make them ineffective as adminis: trators.
Most of us are second-class men, Indeed, the United States is a nation of second-class men, and it is, in fact, the glory of the nation that hundreds of thousands of its citizens are in, not the fifth or tenth class, but in the second class.
"Tt is the very function of democracy to create as many second-class mien as possible, not a caste of hereditary, plutocratic, or intellectual aristocrats and a mass of proletariat, but a great body of linen of common capacities, common principles, and common. endeayour, The first-class man is a rare bird in any field of American life, He and his compeers can be counted in terms of simple arithmetic.
""Theodore Roosevelt has put the exse for the second-class man in a way that deserves often to be quoted "There are two kinds of success. One is the very rare kind that comes to the man who has the power to do what no one else has the power to do. That is genius.
Only a very limited amount of the success of life comes to persons possessing genius.
Vinrus or Common Sense.
"Phe average man who is successful—the average statesman, the average public servant, the average soldier, who wins what we call great success—is not genius. He is a man who has merely the ordinary qualities that he shares with his fellows, but who has developed those ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree.... In pub-lie life it is not genius, it is not extraordinary subtlety or acuteness of intellect that is important. The things that are important are the rather commonplace, the rather humdrum virtues that in their sum are designated as character.
"Tf you have in public life men of good ability, not geniuses, but men of good abilities with character—and, gentlemen, you must include common sense as one of the most important elements of character—if you possess such men, the Government will go on very well.'
"These are words of cheer to those of us who know that we are second-class men, and who see only men like ourselves to lead the country out of the slough of despond into which it has been plunge ed by the Great War."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.