THE MAN AND THE HOUR


The Secretary of State, although he sought to maintain an air of
official reserve, showed that he was deeply impressed by what he had
just heard.

"Well, young man, you are certainly offering to undertake a pretty
large contract."

He smiled, and continued in a slightly rhetorical vein--the Secretary
was above all things first, last, and always an orator.

"In my many years of public life," he said, "I have often had occasion
to admire the dauntless spirit of our young men. But you have forced
me to the conclusion that even I, with all my confidence in their
power, have failed to realize how inevitably American initiative and
independence will demand recognition. It is a quality which our form
of government seems especially to foster and develop, and I glory
in it as perhaps the chief factor in our national greatness and
pre-eminence.

"In what other country, I ask you," he flung out an arm across the
great, flat-topped desk of state, "would a mere boy like yourself ever
conceive such a scheme, or have the incentive or opportunity to bring
it to perfection? And, having conceived and perfected it, in what
other country would he find the very heads of his Government so
accessible and ready to help him?"

The young man leaned forward. "Then am I to understand, Mr. Secretary,