Take such a thing as hunting or any form of vigorous bodily exercise.
Most men can ride hard if they choose. Almost any man can kill a lion
if he will exercise a little resolution in training the qualities that
will enable him to do it. [Taking a tumbler from the table, Mr.
Roosevelt held it up.] Now it is a pretty easy thing to aim straight
at an object about that size. Almost any one, if he practises with the
rifle at all, can learn to hit that tumbler; and he can hit the lion
all right if he learns to shoot as straight at its brain or heart as
at the tumbler. He does not have to possess any extraordinary
capacity, not a bit,--all he has to do is to develop certain rather
ordinary qualities, but develop them to such a degree that he will
not get flustered, so that he will press the trigger steadily instead
of jerking it--and then he will shoot at the lion as well as he will
at that tumbler. It is a perfectly simple quality to develop. You
don't need any remarkable skill; all you need is to possess ordinary
qualities, but to develop them to a more than ordinary degree.
It is just the same with the soldier. What is needed is that the man
as soldier should develop certain qualities that have been known for
thousands of years, but develop them to such a point that in an
emergency he does, as a matter of course, what a great multitude of
men can do but what a very large proportion of them don't do.
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