"From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have rendered the other of small value."

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Each child represents either a potential addition to the protective capacity and enlightened citizenship of the nation or, if allowed to suffer from neglect, a potential addition to the destructive forces of a community. . . . The interests of the nation are involved in the welfare of this array of children no less than in our great material affairs.

— Theodore Roosevelt