Within a week this country has lost a great statesman, who was also a great man of letters; a man who occupied a peculiar and unique position in our country; a man of whose existence we could each of us be proud; for the United States as a whole was better because John Hay lived. John Hay entered the public service as a young man just come of age, as the secretary of President Lincoln. He served in the war and was a member of the Loyal Legion. He was trusted by and was intimate with Lincoln as hardly any other man was. He then went on rendering service after service; yet always able (this was one of his great advantages and great merits) at any moment to go back to private life unless he could continue in public life on his own terms. As the climax of his career he served as Secretary of State under two successive administrations, and by what he did and by what he was he contributed in no small degree to achieving for this Republic the respect of the nations of mankind. Such service as that could not have been rendered save by a man who had before him ideals as far apart as the poles from those ideals which have in them any taint of what is base or sordid. Now I wished to secure as John Hay’s successor the man whom I regarded as of all the men in the country that one best fitted to be such successor. In asking him to accept the position of Secretary of State I was asking him to submit to a very great pecuniary sacrifice; and I never even thought of that aspect of the question, for I knew he would not either. I knew that whatever other considerations he had to weigh for and against taking the position, the consideration of how it would affect his personal fortune would not be taken into account by Elihu Root; and he has accepted. I am not speaking of Hay and Root as solitary exceptions. On the contrary, I am speaking of them as typical of a large class of men in public life. When we hear so much criticism of certain aspects of our public life and of certain of our public servants, criticism which I regret to state is in many cases deserved, it is well for us to remember also the other side of the picture, to remember that here in America we have and always have had at the command of the Nation in any crisis, in any emergency, the very best ability to be found within the Nation; and this ability has been given with the utmost freedom, given lavishly and generously, although at great pecuniary loss to the man giving it.