Have you
forgotten the personal history of George Washington? Do you not know
that he struggled as poor boys now struggle for a meager and imperfect
education; that he worked at his surveyor's tasks in the lonely forests;
that he knew all the roughness, all the hardships, all the adventure,
all the variety of the common life of that day; and that if he stood a
little stiffly in this place, if he looked a little aloof, it was
because life had dealt hardly with him? All his sinews had been
stiffened by the rough work of making America. He was a man of the
people, whose touch had been with them since the day he saw the light
first in the old Dominion of Virginia. And the men who came after him,
men, some of whom had drunk deep at the sources of philosophy and of
study, were, nevertheless, also men who on this side of the water knew
no complicated life but the simple life of primitive neighborhoods. Our
task is very much more difficult. That sympathy which alone interprets
public duty is more difficult for a public man to acquire now than it
was then, because we live in the midst of circumstances and conditions
infinitely complex.
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