CALVIN COOLIDGE
of 1914, I had not been transported on a bed of roses. It was the result of many hard struggles in which I had made many mistakes, was to keep on making them up to the present hour, and expect to continue to make them as long as I live. We are all fallible, but experience ought to teach us not to repeat our errors,
My progress had been slow and toilsome, with little about it that was brilliant, or spectacular, the result of persistent and painstaking work, which gave it a foundation that was solid. I trust that in making this record of my own thoughts and feeling in relation to it, which necessarily bristles with the first personal pronoun, I shall not seem to be overestimating myself, but simply relating experiences which I hope may prove to be an encouragement to others in their struggles to improve their place in the world.
It appeared to me in January, 1914, that a spirit of radicalism prevailed which unless checked was likely to prove very destructive. It had been encouraged by the opposition and by a large faction of my own party.
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