The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2015 51 It takes a special love of country to pursue, with love, and faith, and cheerfulness, work for which no parades will ever march, no crowds will cheer, no bands will play. endangered world, endangered in the grimmest sense of that term: a world endangered by the atom, by the phenomenon of overpopulation, by the lack of uniformity in the economic and social advancement of various branches of the human family, with all the tensions that produces. And finally, by the ideological prejudices in the name of which certain great peoples are today ruled. It is to this pattern of dangers that the foreign policies of our country are, in large part, addressed. There is no country whose policies are, from this standpoint, more important. There is no Foreign Service officer whose work and attitudes do not have something to do with the formulation of these policies. Unless one realizes these things—unless one cares about them—unless one has a real love of life and a belief that there are things worth living for—unless one trembles occasion- ally for the civilization to which he belongs—unless one can contrive to see his work as related, however modestly, to the problem of saving this civilization—unless one consents, accordingly, to recognize that there are things at stake in his work vastly more important than the comforts or the financial enrichment or the career advancement of any single indi- vidual—unless one can do these things, then, my friends, I can give no assurance whatsoever that the strains and drawbacks of the Foreign Service life are ever going to find their compensa- tion. n