I have spoken only of the great successes; but what I have said applies just as much to the success that is within the reach of almost every one of us.  I think that any man who has had what is regarded in the world as a great success must realize that the element of chance has played a great part in it.  Of course a man has to take advantage of his opportunities; but the opportunities have to come.  If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion you don’t get the great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in times of peace no one would have known his name now.  The great crisis must come, or no man has the chance to develop great qualities.

There are exceptional cases, of course, where there is a man who can do just one thing, such as a man who can play a dozen games of chess or juggle with four rows of figures at once—­and as a rule he can do nothing else.  A man of this type can do nothing unless in the one crisis for which his powers fit him.  But normally the man who makes the great success when the emergency arises is the man who would have made a fair success in any event.  I believe that the man who is really happy in a great position—­in what we call a career—­is the man who would also be happy and regard his life as successful if he had never been thrown into that position.  If a man lives a decent life and does his work fairly and squarely so that those dependent on him and attached to him are better for his having lived, then he is a success, and he deserves to feel that he has done his duty and he deserves to be treated by those who have had greater success as nevertheless having shown the fundamental qualities that entitle him to respect.  We have in the United States an organization composed of the men who forty-five years ago fought to a finish the great Civil War.  One thing that has always appealed to me in that organization is that all of the men admitted are on a perfect equality provided the records show that their duty was well done.  Whether a man served as a lieutenant-general or an eighteen-year-old recruit, so long as he was able to serve for six months and did his duty in his appointed place, then he is called Comrade and stands on an exact equality with the other men.  The same principle should shape our associations in ordinary civil life.

I am not speaking cant to you.  I remember once sitting at a table with six or eight other public officials, and each was explaining* how he regarded being in public life, how only the sternest sense of duty prevented him from resigning his office, and how the strain of working for a thankless constituency was telling upon him, and nothing but the fact that he felt he ought to sacrifice his comfort to the welfare of his country kept him in the arduous life of statesmanship.  It went round the table until it came to my turn.  This was during my first term of office as President of the United States.  I said:  “Now, gentlemen, I do not wish there to be any misunderstanding.