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"WILLIE-MASTER IN POLITICS*' 65
I got through college and settled in Sullivan I found myself at once, even before my twenty-first birthday, chairman of my precinct. From that day until 1922 I was never to be without direct participation in the political life of my town, county, state, or nation.
This absorption in political activity is perhaps easier to explain today than it was to account for at the time. The strangest thing about it is probably the fact that I never held any elective political office except a three-year term as city attorney of Sullivan. My activity from precinct committeeman right up to national chairman was a volunteer service, a labor of love. In those days no salary was attached to any of these chairmanships, no matter how much work was entailed. I probably went "up the ladder" because others recognized my willingness to work. To borrow an analogy from athletics, I "maintained my amateur standing"; I never became a "professional." I loved political organization and I threw myself into it with delight, but I never accepted money for doing so and I never considered myself a professional "politician."
This attitude was in line with my deepest personal convictions: faith in God, in folks, in the nation, and in the Republican party. My belief in the ability of men to work together toward common goals made me a "joiner." This is one of the basic elements in political activity, which is the getting together of feo^le. I was also terrifically proud of America and of the record we had made in self-government and in advancing the cause of freedom. The speeches that I made as a young man reflect this emotional element. And I believed then, as I do now, that the morality and the responsibility of the individual citizen are the bulwarks of any government founded on liberty, enlightened by law.
Going one step farther, I early held the belief that as long as a man puts himself wholeheartedly into his convictions it is possible for him to accomplish almost anything he undertakes. I felt this especially because Americans were free to work out their own destiny unhampered by outside limitations or compulsions. Thus, as I try to analyze it now, my belief in individual responsibility, interdependence, and potential accomplishment was the basic thread which ran through the thinking that supported my political activity.
The final conviction which kept me active was my belief in the Republican party. It must be remembered that when I came onto the political scene in 1900 the country had known only two outstanding Democratic presidents— Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland. It was natural that I should relate the nation's progress to the Republican administrations. Our party, dramatically conceived when the national foundations trembled, had heralded its own birth by saving the very life of our nation. As I remember putting it in one of those youthful speeches of mine: "It cared for us and, under its wise guidance, we grew