_Gentlemen of the Graduating Class_:
In receiving these diplomas you become men who above almost any
others of the entire Union are to carry henceforth ever-present with
you the sense of responsibility which must come if you are worthy of
wearing the uniform; which must come with the knowledge that on some
tremendous day it may depend upon your courage, your preparedness,
your skill in your profession, whether or not the nation is again to
write her name on the world’s roll of honor or is to know the black
shame of defeat. We all of us earnestly hope that the occasion for war
may not arise, but if it has to come then this nation must win; and
as Dr. Winston has pointed out, in winning the prime factor must of
necessity be the United States Navy. If the navy fails us then we are
doomed to defeat. It should therefore be an object of prime importance
for every patriotic American to see that the navy is built up; and
that it is kept to the highest point of efficiency both in personnel
and material. Above all, it can not be too often repeated to those
representatives of the nation in whose hands the practical application
of the principle lies, that in modern naval war the chief factor
in achieving triumph is what has been done in the way of thorough
preparation and training before the beginning of the war. It is what
has been done before the outbreak of war that counts most. After the
outbreak, all that can be done is to use to best advantage the great
war engines, and the seamanship, marksmanship, and general practical
efficiency which have already been provided by the forethought of
the national legislature and by the administrative ability, through
a course of years, of the Navy Department. A battleship can not be
improvised. It takes years to build. And we must learn that it is
exactly as true that the skill of the officers and men in handling
a battleship aright can likewise never be improvised; that it must
spring from use and actual sea service, and from the most careful,
zealous, and systematic training. You to whom I am about to give these
diplomas now join the ranks of the officers of the United States Navy.
You enter a glorious service, proud of its memories of renown. You
must keep ever in your minds the thought of the supreme hour which
may come when what you do will forever add to or detract from that
renown. Some of you will have to do your part in helping construct the
ships and the guns which you use. You need to bend every energy toward
making these ships and guns in all their details the most perfect
of their kind throughout the world. The ship must be seaworthy, the
armament fitted for best protection to the guns and men, the guns in
all their mechanism fit to do the greatest possible execution in the
shortest possible time. Every detail, whether of protection to the
gun-crews, of rapidity and sureness in handling the ammunition and
working the elevating and revolving gear, or of quickness and accuracy
in sighting, must be thought out far in advance, and the thought
carefully executed in the actual work. But after that has been done it
remains true that the best ships and guns, the most costly mechanism,
are utterly valueless if the men have not been trained to use them to
the best possible advantage. From now on throughout your lives there
can be no slackness in the performance of duty on your part. Much
has been given you, and much will be expected from you. Your duty
must be ever present with you, waking and sleeping. You must train
yourselves, and you must train those under you, in the actual work of
seamanship, in the actual work of gunnery. If the day for battle comes
you will need all that you possess of boldness, skill, determination,
ability to bear punishment, and instant readiness in an emergency.
Without these qualities you can do nothing, yet even with them you
can do but little if you have not had the forethought and set purpose
to train yourselves and the enlisted men under you aright. Officers
and men alike must have the sea habit; officers and men alike must
realize that in battle the only shots that count are the shots that
hit, and that normally the victory will lie with the side whose shots
hit oftenest. Of course you must have the ability to stand up to the
hammering; the courage, the daring, the resolution to endure; but I
take it for granted you will have those qualities. It is less to be
thought to your credit to have them than it would be eternally to
your discredit to lack them. I take it for granted you will have the
courage we have a right to expect to go with American seamanship; that
you will have the daring and the resolution. And I ask that you make
it from now on your object to see that if ever the day should arise,
your courage, your readiness, your eager desire to win fresh renown
for the flag be made good by the training you have given yourselves
and those under you in the practical work of your profession in
seamanship and gunnery.
AT THE BANQUET OF THE SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION, WASHINGTON, D. C., MAY 2, 1902
_Mr. Toastmaster; Mr. President; Compatriots; and Fellow-Americans_:
It is a pleasure to take part in greeting you this evening. Societies
that cultivate patriotism in the present by keeping alive the memory
of what we owe to the patriotism of the past, fill an indispensable
function in this Republic. You come here to-night from every
quarter—from every State of the Republic and from the islands of the
Eastern Seas. The Republic has put up its flag in those islands, and
the flag will stay there.
I am glad to meet you here to-night—you, the descendants of the
statesmen and soldiers who fought to establish this country in 1776,
some of the older among whom, and the fathers of the others, fought
with no less valor wearing the blue or the gray in the Civil War. May
we now show our fealty to the great men who did the great deeds of the
past, not alone by word but by deed! May we prove ourselves true to
them, not merely by paying homage to their memory, but by so shaping
the policy of this great Republic as to make it evident that we are
not unworthy of our sires. They did justice, and we will do justice.
They did justice as strong men, not as weaklings; and we will show
ourselves strong men and not weaklings.
Before me I see men who lived in iron times, men who did great
deeds. I see here a delegate from Kentucky who served under Farragut
in the great days of the Civil War. I see a descendant of a man
from Connecticut who was called Brother Jonathan. All around these
tables are gathered men the names of whose ancestors stand not
only for righteousness but also for strength—for both qualities,
gentlemen. Righteousness finds weakness but a poor yoke-fellow. With
righteousness must go strength to make that righteousness of avail.
And in the names of the mighty men of the past I ask each man here to
do his part in seeing that this nation remains true in deed as well
as in word to the ideals of the past; to remember that we can no more
afford to show weakness than we can afford to do wrong. Where wrong
has been done by any one the wrongdoer shall be punished; but we shall
not halt in our great work because some man has happened to do wrong.
Honor to the statesmen of the past, and may the statesmen of the
present strive to live up to the example they set! Honor to the army
and navy of the past! And honor to those gallant Americans wearing the
uniform of the American Republic who in the army and the navy of the
present day uphold gloriously the most glorious traditions of the past!
Another thing, compatriots of the Society of the Sons of the American
Revolution: We are Americans, and that means that we treat Americanism
primarily as a matter of spirit and purpose, and in the broadest sense
we regard every man as a good American, whatever his creed, whatever
his birthplace, if he is true to the ideals of this Republic.
To-day I have been down to Annapolis to see the graduating class of
the Naval Academy; and it would have done your hearts good to have
seen those fine, manly, upstanding young fellows who looked every man
straight in the face without flinching. We may be sure that the honor
of the Republic is safe in their hands.
I was glad to meet those young fellows to-day. I am glad to meet
representatives of the navy like you, Admiral Watson, and of the army
like you, General Breckenridge. I am glad that we as Americans have
cause to be proud of the army and the navy of the United States—of the
men who in the past have upheld the honor of the flag, and of their
successors, the soldiers and sailors of the present day, who during
the last three years have done such splendid work in the inconceivably
dangerous and harassing warfare of the eastern tropics.
AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNERSTONE OF THE McKINLEY MEMORIAL OHIO
COLLEGE OF GOVERNMENT OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
MAY 14, 1902
_Ladies and Gentlemen_:
I am to say but one word. Nothing more need be said than has been said
already by those who have addressed you this afternoon—the statesmen
who worked with McKinley and the pastor under whose ministrations he
sat.
It is indeed appropriate that the Methodists of America—the men
belonging to that religious organization which furnished the pioneers
in carving out of the West what is now the heart of the great
American Republic—should found this great university in the city of
Washington and should build the college that is to teach the science
of government in the name of the great exponent of good and strong
government who died last fall, who died as truly for this country as
Abraham Lincoln himself.
I thank you for having given me the opportunity this afternoon to come
before you and to lay the cornerstone of this building.
AT THE EXERCISES OF THE SOCIETY OF THE ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND,
ATTENDING THE REBURIAL OF MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM STARK ROSECRANS,
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY, WASHINGTON, D. C., MAY 17, 1902
_Speaker Henderson; and you, the Comrades of the Great Chief whose
reburial in the National Cemetery here at Arlington we have met
together to commemorate_:
Speaker Henderson in his address has well said that the builder rather
than the destroyer is the man most entitled to honor among us; that
the man who builds up is greater than he who tears down; and that our
homage should be for the fighting man who not only fought worthily
but fought in a worthy cause. Therefore for all time, not merely the
people of this great reunited country but the nations of mankind
who see the hope for ordered liberty in what this country has done,
will hold you, the men of the great Civil War, and the leaders like
him whose mortal remains are to be put to-day in their final resting
place, in peculiar honor because you were soldiers who fought to
build; you were upbuilders; you were the men to whose lot it fell to
save, to perpetuate, to make stronger the great national fabric, the
foundations of which had been laid by the men who fought under him
whose home at Mount Vernon stands as an equally prized memorial of
the past with Arlington. It is no chance that has made Mount Vernon
and Arlington, here in the neighborhood of Washington, the two great
memorials of the nation’s past. One commemorates the founding and the
other the saving of the nation. If it were not for what Arlington
symbolizes, Mount Vernon would mean little or nothing. If it were not
for what was done by Rosecrans and his fellows, the work of Washington
would have crumbled into bloody chaos and the deeds of the founders
of this Republic be remembered only because they had begun another
of the many failures to make practical the spirit of liberty in this
world. Without the work that you did the work of the men who fought
the Revolution to a successful close would have meant nothing. To
you it was given to do the one great work which if left undone would
have meant that all else done by our people would have counted for
nothing. And you left us a reunited country, and therefore the right
of brotherhood with and of pride in the gallantry and self-devotion
of those who wore the gray, who were pitted against you in the great
struggle. The very fact that we appreciate more and more as the years
go on the all-importance to this country and to mankind of your
victory, makes it more and more possible for us to recognize in the
heartiest and frankest manner the sincerity, the self-devotion, the
fealty to the right as it was given to them to see the right, of our
fellow Americans against whom you fought—and now the reunion is so
complete that it is useless to allude to the fact that it is complete.
And you left us another lesson in brotherhood. To-day you come here,
comrades of the Army of the Cumberland—the man who had a commission
and the man who fought in the ranks—brothers, because each did what
there was in him to do for the right. Each did what he could and all
alike shared equally in the glory of the deed that was done. Officer
and enlisted man stand at the bar of history to be judged not by the
difference of rank, but by whether they did their duties in their
respective ranks. And oh, of how little count, looking back, the
difference of rank compared with the doing of the duty! What was true
then is true now. Doing the duty well is what counts. In any audience
of this kind one sees in the highest official and social position men
who fought as enlisted men in the armies of the Union or in the armies
of the Confederacy. All we ask is, did they do their duty? If they
did, honor to them! Little we care what particular position they held,
save insofar as the holding of exalted position gave the men a chance
to do great and peculiar service.
I shall not try to eulogize the dead General in the presence of his
comrades, in the presence of his countrymen who have come to honor
the memory of the man against whom they were pitted in the past—who
come here because they now, like us, are Americans and nothing else,
devoted to the Union and to one flag. I shall not try to speak of his
services in the presence of those who fought through the Civil War,
who risked the loss of life, who endured the loss of limb, who fought
as enlisted men or came out boys not yet ready to enter college but
able to bear commissions in the army of the United States, as the
result of three or four years of service with the colors. There are
those of each class of whom I have spoken who have addressed or will
address you to-day. They are entitled to speak as comrades of the
great dead. But the younger among us are only entitled to pay to the
great dead the homage of those to whom ordered liberty has been handed
down as a heritage because of the blood, and of the sweat, and of the
toil of the men who fought to a finish the great Civil War. Great were
the lessons you taught us in war. Great have been the lessons you have
taught us in peace since the war. Sincerely and humbly the men who
came after you hasten to acknowledge the debt that is owing to you.
You were the men of the mighty days who showed yourselves equal to
the days. We have to-day lesser tasks; and shame to us if we flinch
from doing or fail to do well these lesser tasks, when you carried to
triumphant victory a task as difficult as that which was set you! Here
in the presence of one of the illustrious dead whose names will remain
forever on the honor roll of the greatest Republic upon which the sun
has ever shone, it behooves all of us, young and old, solemnly and
reverently to pledge ourselves to continue undimmed the traditions you
have left us; to do the work, whatever that work may be, necessary
to make good the work that you did; to acknowledge the inspiration
of your careers in war and in peace; and to remind ourselves once
for all that lip loyalty is not the loyalty that counts. The loyalty
that counts is the loyalty which shows itself in deeds rather than in
words; and therefore we pledge ourselves to make good by our lives
what you risked your lives to gain and keep for the nation as a whole.
AT THE CENTENNIAL MEETING OF THE BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS OF THE
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, CARNEGIE HALL, NEW YORK, N. Y., ON THE EVENING
OF MAY 20, 1902
_Mr. Chairman; and you, my friends—for if this meeting means
anything, it means a commemoration of the embodied spirit of
friendship and righteousness working through the Church through
generations—_
I am glad to have the chance of greeting you to-night. I belong to a
closely allied Church—the Dutch Reformed. I want to tell you a curious
incident which was mentioned to me by one of the two gentlemen who,
on your behalf, met me this evening and brought me up here. Mr. Ogden
mentioned to me that two hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, the
first church of my denomination here in this city was put up under
contract by his ancestors, who then dwelt in Connecticut. It is, I
think, in a sense symbolical of how much the Church has counted in
the life of our people that the descendants of those who worshiped
in that church and of those who under contract put it up, should be
meeting here this evening. I have another bond with you. There are not
very many Dutch Reformed churches in this city; not quite as many as
there should be; and during a considerable portion of my life I have
had to go to a Presbyterian church, because there was not a Reformed
church to attend. All of my early years I went to the Madison Square
Presbyterian Church, which then had as its pastor Dr. Adams. Those of
you who remember him will agree with me that he was one of the very
few men concerning whom it was not inappropriate to use the adjective
by which I shall describe him, for he was in very truth a saintly man.
It is a pleasure on behalf of the people of the United States to greet
you and bid you welcome on this hundredth anniversary of the beginning
of organized home missionary work by the Presbyterian Church. In one
sense of course all earnest and fervent church work is a part of home
missionary work. Every earnest and zealous believer, every man or
woman who is a doer of the word and not a hearer only, is a lifelong
missionary in his or her field of labor—a missionary by precept,
and, by what counts a thousandfold more than precept, by practice.
Every such believer exerts influence on those within reach, somewhat
by word and infinitely more through the ceaseless, wellnigh unfelt
pressure—all the stronger where its exercise is unconscious—the
pressure of example, broad charity, and neighborly kindness.
But to-night we celebrate one hundred years of missionary work done
not incidentally, but with set purpose; a hundred years of effort
to spread abroad the Gospel and lay the moral foundation upon which
all true national greatness must rest. The century that has closed
has seen the conquest of this continent by our people. To conquer a
continent is rough work. All really great work is rough in the doing,
though it seems smooth enough to those who look back upon it, or to
the contemporaries who overlook it from afar. We need display but
scant patience with those who, sitting at ease in their own homes,
delight to exercise a querulous and censorious spirit of judgment
upon their brethren who, whatever their shortcomings, are doing
strong men’s work as they bring the light of civilization into the
world’s dark places. The criticism of those who live softly, remote
from the strife, is of little value; but it would be difficult to
overestimate the value of the missionary work of those who go out to
share the hardship, and, while sharing it, not to talk, but to wage
war against the myriad forms of brutality. It is such missionary work
that prevents the pioneers from sinking perilously near the level of
the savage race against which they war. Without it the conquest of
this continent would have had little but an animal side. Without it
the pioneers’ fierce and rude virtues and sombre faults would have
remained unlit by the flame of pure and loving aspiration. Without it
the life of this country would have been a life of inconceivably hard
and barren materialism. Because of it, because of the spirit that lay
under those missionaries’ work, deep beneath and through the national
character runs that power of firm adherence to a lofty ideal upon
which the safety of the nation will ultimately depend.
Honor, thrice honor to those who for three generations, during the
period of this people’s great expansion, have seen that the force of
the living truth expanded as the nation expanded! They bore the burden
and heat of the day, they toiled obscurely and died unknown, that we
might come into a glorious heritage. Let us prove the sincerity of our
homage to their faith and their works by the way in which we manfully
carry toward completion the work they so well began.
Friends, I made up my mind coming up here that I would speak to you
of something that has taken place to-day and of something else that
has taken place within the last ten days. First of the action of
this nation which has culminated on this Tuesday, the twentieth of
May, nineteen hundred and two, in starting a free Republic on its
course. That represented four years’ work. There were blunders and
shortcomings in the work, of course; and there were men of little
faith who could only see the blunders and shortcomings. But it
represents work triumphantly done. And I think that we as citizens
of this Republic have a right to feel proud that we kept our pledge
to the letter, and that we have established a new international
precedent. I do not remember (and I have thought a good deal about
it, ladies and gentlemen) another case in modern times where, as a
result of such a war, the victorious nation has contented itself
with setting a new nation free and fitting it as well as could be
done to start well in the difficult path of self-government. Mere
anarchy and ruin would have fallen upon the island if we had contented
ourselves with simple victory in the war and then had turned the
island loose to shift for itself. For over three years the harder
work of peace has supplemented the hard work of war; for over three
years our representatives in the island (representatives largely of
the army, remember—I sometimes hear the army attacked; gentlemen, I
have even heard missionaries attacked. But it is well for us that when
there comes a great work in peace or in war we have the army as an
instrument for it), our representatives in Cuba have steadily worked
to build up a school system, to see to sanitation, to preserve order
and secure the chance for the starting of industries; to do everything
in our power so that the new government might begin with the chances
in its favor. And now as a nation we bid it Godspeed. We intend to see
that it has all the aid we can give it, and I trust and believe that
our people will, through their national legislature, see to it very
shortly that Cuba has the advantage of entering into peculiarly close
relations with us in our economic system.
That is the deed that was consummated to-day; now for the other.
Ten days or a fortnight ago an appalling calamity befell another
portion of the West Indies; befell islands not in any way under our
flag—islands owning allegiance to two European powers. But their
need was great and our people met that need as speedily as possible.
Congress at once appropriated a large sum of money and through private
gifts great additions were made to that appropriation; and I found, as
usual, the army and navy the instruments through which the work could
be done. I wanted to get men whom I could call on instantly to drop
whatever their work was and go down, with the certainty that neither
pestilence nor the danger from volcanoes or anything else would make
them swerve a half inch—men upon whose absolute integrity and capacity
I could count, as well as on their courage. When I wanted these men
and wanted them at once I turned to the army and the navy. I am sure
that we all feel proud that ships bearing the American flag should
have been the first to carry relief to those who had been stricken
down by so appalling a disaster.
It seems to me that while there is much evil against which we need to
war with all the strength there is in us, and while there are many
tendencies in the complex forces about us which are fraught with
peril to the future welfare of the Republic and of mankind, yet it
is a fine thing to see at the opening of this century such omens of
international brotherhood, of a future when the sense of duty to
one’s neighbor will extend beyond national lines. They are good omens
for the future, these actions: that action which culminated to-day in
establishing the free Republic of Cuba; that action which made our
country the first to reach out a generous and helping hand to those
upon whom calamity had fallen, without regard to what the flag was to
which they paid allegiance.
AT THE OVERFLOW MEETING OF THE CENTENNIAL OF PRESBYTERIAN HOME
MISSIONS, CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK, N. Y., MAY 20, 1902
_Mr. Chairman; Ladies and Gentlemen_:
I am glad to have the chance of saying a word to you this evening,
and I know you will pardon me if it is but a word, for I did not
anticipate that there would be another meeting at which to speak.
Of course, the very first thing that any nation has to do is to keep
in order the affairs of its own household; to do that which is best
for its own life. And as has been so well and truthfully said, Dr.
Van Dyke, by you this evening, the vital thing to a nation is the
spiritual, not the material. Napoleon said that in war the moral was
to the material as ten to one; and it is just exactly as true in
civil and social life. I do not mean for one moment to undervalue the
material. We must have thrift, business energy, business enterprise
and all that spring from them, as the foundation upon which we are
to build the great national superstructure. But it is a pretty poor
building if you have nothing but the basement. It is an admirable
thing to have material development, great material riches, if we do
not misestimate the position that that material well-being should
occupy in the nation. It is an admirable thing to have wealth if we
use it aright and understand its relative value compared to the things
of the spirit. Now that sounds like preaching. But it is only an
expression of a political truism if you look at it in the right way.
We have spread during the last century over this whole continent. One
hundred years ago the home missionary work was begun. Do you realize
that at that time any one who went west of the Mississippi went into
a foreign land? He did; and as late as 1846 any one who went, in this
latitude, to the Pacific Coast, went into a foreign land. But as we
expanded nationally, so it was our good fortune that there should go
hand in hand with such expansion the expansion of the church work,
and of all that goes with church work. I do not think we can realize
the all-importance of the way in which the vital need was met by the
men who went out as missionaries, and pastors, and workers in the
little raw, struggling communities whose people were laying deep the
foundations of the great States that to-day fill the valley of the
Mississippi and stud the Pacific Coast. The men who went out have
by their efforts given to what would otherwise have been the merely
material development of our people the spiritual lift that was vital
to it—the spiritual lift that made in the end a great nation instead
of merely a nation of well-to-do people. We want well-to-do people,
but if they are _only_ well-to-do people, they have come far short
of what we have a right to demand. A giant work looms up before the
churches in this country, and it is work which the churches must
do. Our civilization has progressed in many ways for the right; in
some ways it has gone wrong. The tremendous sweep of our industrial
development has already brought us face to face on this continent with
many a problem which has puzzled for generations the wisest people of
the old world. With that growth in the complexity of our civilization,
of our industrialism, has grown an increase in the effective power
alike of the forces that tell for good and of the forces that tell
for evil. The forces for evil, as our great cities grow, become more
concentrated, more menacing to the community, and if the community is
to go forward and not back they must be met and overcome by forces for
good that have grown in corresponding degree. More and more in the
future our churches must realize that we have a right to expect that
they shall take the lead in shaping those forces for good.
I am not going to verge on the domain of theology, and still less
of dogma. I do not think that at the present time there will be any
dissent from the proposition that after all in this work-a-day world
we must largely judge men by their fruits; that we can not accept a
long succession of thistle crops as indicating fig trees; and that we
have a right to look to the churches for setting the highest possible
standard of conduct and of service, public and private, for the whole
land; that the church must make itself felt by finding its expression
through the life work of its members; not merely on Sunday, but on
week days; not merely within these walls, but at home and in business.
We have a right to expect that you will show your faith by your works;
that the people who have the inestimable advantages of the church-life
and the home-life should be made to remember that as much has been
given them, much will be expected of them; that they must lead upright
lives themselves and be living forces in the war for decency among
their surroundings; that we have a right to expect of you and those
like you that you shall not merely speak for righteousness, but do
righteousness in your own homes and in the world at large.
ON THE OCCASION OF THE UNVEILING OF THE SOLDIERS’ AND SAILORS’
MONUMENT AT ARLINGTON, UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF
THE COLONIAL DAMES OF AMERICA, MAY 21, 1902
_Mrs. President, and members of the Society, and you, my comrades,
and, finally, officers and men of the Regular Army, whom we took as
our models in the war four years ago_:
It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon to accept in the name of
the nation the monument put up by your society to the memory of those
who fell in the war with Spain; a short war; a war that called for
the exertion of only the merest fraction of the giant strength of
this nation; but a war, the effects of which will be felt through the
centuries to come, because of the changes it wrought. It is eminently
appropriate that the monument should be unveiled to-day, the day
succeeding that on which the free republic of Cuba took its place
among the nations of the world as a sequel to what was done by those
men who fell and by their comrades in ’98.
And here, where we meet to honor the memory of those who drew the
great prize of death in battle, a word in reference to the survivors:
I think that one lesson every one who was capable of learning anything
learned from his experience in that war was the old, old lesson that
we need to apply in peace quite as much—the lesson that the man
who does not care to do any act until the time for heroic action
comes, does not do the heroic act when the time does come. You all
of you remember, comrades, some man—it is barely possible some of
you remember being the man—who, when you enlisted, had a theory that
there was nothing but splendor and fighting and bloodshed in the war,
and then had the experience of learning that the first thing you had
to do was to perform commonplace duties, and perform them well. The
work of any man in the campaign depended upon the resolution and
effective intelligence with which he started about doing each duty as
it arose; not waiting until he could choose the duty that he thought
sufficiently spectacular to do, but doing the duty that came to hand.
That is exactly the lesson that all of us need to learn in times of
peace. It is not merely a great thing, but an indispensable thing that
the nation’s citizens should be ready and willing to die for it in
time of need; and the presence of no other quality could atone for the
lack of such readiness to lay down life if the nation calls. But in
addition to dying for the nation you must be willing and anxious to
live for the nation, or the nation will be badly off. If you want to
do your duty only when the time comes for you to die, the nation will
be deprived of valuable services during your lives.
I never see a gathering of this kind; I never see a gathering
under the auspices of any of the societies which are organized to
commemorate the valor and patriotism of the founders of this nation;
I never see a gathering composed of the men who fought in the great
Civil War or in any of the lesser contests in which this country has
been engaged, without feeling the anxiety to make such a gathering
feel, each in his or her heart, the all-importance of doing the
ordinary, humdrum, commonplace duties of each day as those duties
arise. A large part of the success on the day of battle is always due
to the aggregate of the individual performance of duty during the
long months that have preceded the day of battle. The way in which
a nation arises to a great crisis is largely conditioned upon the
way in which its citizens have habituated themselves to act in the
ordinary affairs of the national life. You can not expect that much
will be done in the supreme hour of peril by soldiers who have not
fitted themselves to meet the need when the need comes, and you can
not expect the highest type of citizenship in the periods when it
is needed if that citizenship has not been trained by the faithful
performance of ordinary duty. What we need most in this Republic
is not special genius, not unusual brilliancy, but the honest and
upright adherence on the part of the mass of the citizens and of
their representatives to the fundamental laws of private and public
morality—which are now what they have been during recorded history. We
shall succeed or fail in making this Republic what it should be made—I
will go a little further than that—what it shall and must be made,
accordingly as we do or do not seriously and resolutely set ourselves
to do the tasks of citizenship—and good citizenship consists in doing
the many small duties, private and public, which in the aggregate make
it up.