"God, Give Us Men!"

With jowls jiggling and eyebrows all but airborne, North Carolina's retiring Democratic Senator Sam Ervin could not resist going out on a quote. As the Senate Watergate committee gathered in the Old Senate Caucus Room for its final news conference, Ervin summed up the meaning of it all with the help of liberal sayings from the Scriptures and the classics, including a ripely solemn phrase from Rudyard Kipling: "For the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one."

As for guarding against future Watergates, Ervin said that he knew of no better guide than a selection from a verse by an all-but-forgotten American poet named Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819-81). Senator Sam may well have been the only man in the United States who could recall the lines he intoned for a spellbound crowd of newsmen, Senate aides and tourists:

God, give us Men! A time like this demands

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;

Men whom the lust of office does not kill;

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;

Men who possess opinions and a will;

Men who have honor; men who will not lie;

Men who can stand before a demagogue

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!

Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog

In public duty and in private thinking.

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