Training, Intelligence, and Integrity

We should like here to appeal to young people to keep the record of their lives clear and clean for any opportunity or opening that may ever be offered.

From the earliest years of youth the record does matter—and it matters very much: the school record, the work record, the moral record, the record of all our conduct and acts and utterances and attitudes. People constantly classify us. Our own acquaintances and companions classify us from the earliest age of remembrance. They know whether or not we are clean and honest or otherwise; willing or lazy; dependable or undependable—and they remember. And those who haven’t known us refer to the record when they have reason to, to see if we have the essentials for any trust or office or opportunity.

The essentials for success include, of course, technical qualifications. A lawyer needs to know the law. A doctor needs to know medicine and physical foundation. An accountant needs to know the principles of keeping accounts. Men need to be technically qualified for the work entrusted to them—or able to become qualified. But there are some other essentials of primary importance, including honor and honesty, integrity, dependability, willingness to work, and cleanliness and courage—the kind of courage that comes with good conscience.

And these are not just words. With a bad record or a bad conscience it is difficult for a person to be at his best, difficult to be fully effective and efficient, because a bad conscience is always on the defense. Talent and training are surely essential. But some other things are also at least equally essential to service and safety and effective living of life. And may Heaven help the young to learn while yet they are young, while yet the record is clean and clear, that the record of man’s life lives with him, that the books are open every day.

One of the greatest needs of our time, and one of the most precious things for young people to preserve, is integrity, along with talent and technical training. Urgently and always we need intelligence and integrity in all the public and private relationships of life.