_Officers and Enlisted Men of the United States Navy; and you, Friends
of the Navy, for if you are good Americans, you can be nothing else_:
I made up my mind to-day that, although there were very many
invitations extended to me in addition to that because of which I first
agreed to come here, there was just one which I could not refuse, and
that was to come to this building and meet you here. I do not have
to tell you that I believe in the navy of the United States with all
my heart, and that I believe in that which counts most in the navy,
the officers and enlisted men, the man behind the gun; the man in the
conning tower, in the gun turret, in the engine room, the man, wherever
he is, if he is doing his duty.
We owe a peculiar debt of gratitude to those who have taken the lead
in securing this building. The people of the United States should make
it their especial duty to see to the welfare, moral even more than
physical, of the men upon whose exertions, upon whose skill, training,
and prowess, upon whose character in time of crisis the honor of the
entire Nation will depend. All respect is due to those who, led by Miss
Gould, have erected this building, who have given expression to the
spirit which lies behind the building up of everything of this nature.
It shows that we are fortunately past the period when we are afraid
that if we make a man too decent he will not fight well enough.
I have had a good deal of experience in civil life, and I have never
yet found any job in civil life to which, other things being equal, I
did not prefer to appoint a man who had seen service in the navy or
army of the United States; because he has learned, if he is worth his
salt, certain qualities which double and treble his value in whatever
position he may be put. Therefore, not only for his sake do we owe it
to him to see that he has every chance to lead a wholesome and manly
life, but we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the Nation of which we
are all part, to see that that man’s capacities for good are given the
fullest chance for development. And much though I believe in the Y. M.
C. A., and in kindred organizations generally, I believe in them most
when they take such shape as this.
Now, a special word to you upon whom so heavy a responsibility rests;
because it depends upon the way you do your duty in peace as to whether
or not, should ever the need for war arise, our flag will receive
credit or discredit at your hands, or at the hands of your successors.
I can not too often say, in speaking to civilians, what every naval man
knows, that in battle those win who have prepared best for the battle
beforehand. I have seen to-day men who fought at Manila and men who
fought off Santiago. In both places we won, and we won hands down. We
won because the shots that hit were those that counted; because the men
on our ships knew how to handle them alone and in squadron, knew how
to get the best speed out of them, and how to do decent shooting with
them. I want you to notice I said decent shooting. I did not say it was
first-class. I think most of you are doing first-class shooting now;
and I would be mightily ashamed of you if you did not do better than
was done seven years ago; and I shall be ashamed of you if you don’t do
even better in the future.
Nothing has given Americans a better right to satisfaction than the
way in which the target practice of the average American ship has
improved, until I think we can fairly say that there are certain gun
crews and certain individual gun pointers who have reached as high a
degree of excellence as it is possible for any man to reach. The gun
crew counts for more than its individual pointer. You might have all
the individual shots you could gather, and they would not be worth
a rap if they could not act together, if they did not act so as to
subordinate in the mind of each man the success of that particular man
to the success for which they all stood.
More and more our people are waking up to the need of a navy. I think
in view of events now happening all over the world that we can count
upon having Congress continue to build up our navy. It is all-important
that we should have ships, the best in hull, the best in armor, the
best in armament, of any nation in the world. But there is something
that is more important still, and that is the character of you men to
whom I am speaking here, and of your comrades in the navy. You can
do nothing without the proper training, but the training will not do
very much if there is not the right stuff in you to train. I wish a
big navy; but I wish still more a navy first class for its size. Every
warship which is not first class in efficiency becomes in battle not a
help to the Nation, but a menace to the national honor. If the officers
and enlisted men are not trained to the highest point, then the best
ships are useless; and it is better to have none than to have useless
ships.
I believe in the navy of the United States, primarily because I
believe in the intelligence, the patriotism, and the fighting edge of
the average man of the navy. Often it needs a tragedy to bring out
the qualities that are in a man. You remember the dreadful accident
aboard the battleship “Missouri” a year ago. Lamentable and terrible
though it was, there were things connected with it that should make
every American feel a sense of proud confidence in the officers and
enlisted men in whom Uncle Sam confides his honor. When that accident
occurred in the turret there were some twenty minutes when every man
of that ship knew that any moment the ship might sink. But there was
not a touch of nervousness among the crew. The men went quietly to
their quarters and stayed there and waited, cool and resolute, to meet
whatever was in store for them; while those whose duty had put them in
the turret, or called them thither, showed genuine heroism. Each man
showed the quality which makes us reasonably confident that in war the
men at the quickfire guns can hit a torpedo boat; and which makes me
reasonably confident that the greater the punishment suffered on the
ship, the straighter you would shoot back. In other words, I believe
you have the coolness, the courage, the endurance, the fighting edge.
When the accident occurred on the “Missouri” it was the turn of the
“Texas” to go out to target practice. The “Texas” sent her boats over
to find out if the “Missouri” needed help, and found that she did not;
then she steamed out to target practice and made the best record at
target practice that had been made by any ship in our fleet at that
time. The men aboard her were not rattled; what had happened merely
keyed them to a higher pitch of effort.
I feel that too much can not be said to impress upon you the
all-importance of the work that you are doing. Even if you yourselves
never go into battle, you create the spirit which makes those who come
after you on the ships able to do their duty in battle. The time of
peace is the time when we must make ready for war, should war come. I
do not think we will have any war if we have a good enough navy; and
I could appeal to any peace society in the land for support upon the
ground that every first-class record of target practice in the American
navy is a positive provocative of peace and not of war. I am speaking
to the men who, more than any others in this country, do most for
peace. You are doing it and you will continue to do it only by fitting
yourselves in every way to be ready for war, if war should come.
AT THE GRADUATING EXERCISES OF THE COLLEGIATE DEPARTMENT OF CLARK
UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS., JUNE 21, 1905
While it is incumbent upon every citizen of this country to do the
best that is in him, not only for his own sake, and the sake of
those immediately connected with him, but for the sake of the people
as a whole, it is especially incumbent upon the graduates of such
an institution of learning as this. Every man that graduates here
has received something, and something big, for which he has made no
return, and for which he can never make any return to the men giving
it. It is given in part by those who are dead and in part by those
who are living, but who can not ever receive any reward for that they
have themselves done. You graduates can not pay back directly to
the founder, to the trustees, to the president, to the professors,
what they have done in money and effort for you. There is just one
way and only one way in which you can give back to the college, to
the university, what you have received from the college, from the
university, and that is by so leading your lives in point of purpose
and in point of efficiency as to reflect honor upon those who did so
much for you, to show that they were right in doing what they did, and
that their effort was not wasted when they gave you this great chance.
Every college man owes a debt of gratitude to his college, which he can
pay in but one way, and that is by the way in which through his life he
makes that college stand in the estimation of the public.
It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer
must also be a great dreamer. Of course, if the dream is not followed
by action, then it is a bubble; it has merely served to divert the man
from doing something. But great action, action that is really great,
can not take place if the man has it not in his brain to think great
thoughts, to dream great dreams. As has been so well pointed out
to-day, the marvelous rise of Germany in the world of industry and of
commerce, no less than of art and of letters, has been due to the fact
that the German is trained to have high ideals, and yet to treat these
ideals in practical fashion. I was immensely struck, as I think all of
us must have been struck, by the way in which, a few weeks ago, our
fellow-citizens of German birth or descent took part in commemorating
the life and writings of Schiller. I feel strongly, as the president
of Amherst has phrased it, that here in this country, where we are
amalgamating into one people many different peoples of many different
tongues, one of the great works to which we should devote our attention
is trying to keep what each of these peoples can give of value to our
composite national life. Each race that comes here, each element, can
contribute something of value, can usually contribute very much of
value; and it would be a good thing for all of our people if we should
shape our development so that it would seem as natural to us as it does
to the people of Germany to recognize the incalculable debt of a nation
to a writer like Schiller, to a man who has done work for the public,
for the nation, for all mankind, upon which no price can be put. From
Germany this country has learned much. Germany has contributed a great
element to the blood of our people, and it has given the most marked
trend ever given to our scholastic and university system, to the whole
system of training students and scholars. In taking what we should
from Germany, from this great kindred nation, I wish that we could take
especially the idealism which renders it natural to them to celebrate
such an event as Schiller’s life and writings; and also the keen,
practical common-sense which enables them to turn their idealistic
spirit into an instrument for producing the most perfect military and
industrial organizations that this world has ever seen.
Mr. Mabie has said that character counts most; of course it counts
most. I believe in a sound body, I believe in a sound mind. I believe
in character a great deal more than in either; and I believe in both
the body and the mind chiefly as the foundation for the character.
I remember when I was Governor, and had some correspondence with
President Hall, I found to my great pleasure that he took the views
that I did on the subject of boxing, he feeling as strongly as I felt
that we did not want to produce in institutions of learning a race of
nice, clever, well-bred young men, who can not hold their own in the
rough work of the world. I do not give a snap of my finger for the
young fellow who is afraid of being hurt physically, or in any other
way; he is not going to amount to anything in after life. Each of you
as you lead your lives will be hurt a good deal; if you have any pluck
in you at all you will face the punishment, take it, and win out in
spite of it. I want to see the physical development, more because of
its moral side than for any other reason. I want to see the intellect
developed only in so far as it is controlled by conscience, by a sense
of right and wrong. The better educated a man is the more dangerous he
is if he has no conscience. In these universities the benefit comes
from the education of a man’s character as well as of his intellect.
I hope most earnestly for the day when we shall see peace prevail among
the nations of mankind; and peace, industrial as well as military,
prevail within the nations themselves. No man in public position can,
under penalty of forfeiting the right to the respect of those whose
regard he most values, fail as the opportunity comes to do all that
in him lies for peace. But peace of a valuable type comes not to the
man who craves it because he is afraid, but to the man who demands it
because it is right. The peace granted contemptuously to the weakling
and the coward is but a poor boon after it has been granted.
We must keep our minds upon the essentials and not upon the
non-essentials. In 1861 there were people who cried peace, peace,
who said that any peace, no matter how shameful, was preferable to
the worst of all wars—a fratricidal war; and if those people had had
their way we should now be hanging our heads in shame. We should now
be feeling that the country founded by Washington, the country that at
that time was perpetuated by Lincoln, had gone down in the wreck of
irretrievable disaster. We got peace then, peace forever, as I believe,
in this country, because there were a sufficient number of men who felt
as President Wright felt and went to the war to fight for permanent
peace. I have scant patience with the brawler, the quarreler, the
swashbuckler, and I have a little less for the anæmic person, either of
body or soul, who believes that a nation any more than an individual
can afford to put peace before justice. Put justice first; it will
generally lead to peace; but follow it wherever it leads.
In closing, let me say just one more thing. The same homely virtues
apply in managing the life of a nation as in managing an individual’s
life. All the statesman needs to do is to exercise common-sense and
stick as close to the Decalogue and the Golden Rule as imperfect human
nature will permit. In other words, he needs to carry himself in
public life as he would in private life, and never permit the mistake
being made of divorcing public from private morality any more than of
divorcing domestic from business morality. The man is a poor citizen,
no matter how high he stands in the church, whose allegiance to the
teachings of the church is limited to his home and to Sunday, and is
not carried into his work or his business. The man is a poor citizen
who does not do his best to see that the affairs of his country, both
as regards the country’s attitude to other nations, and as regards
the country’s dealings with matters vital to its own citizens within
its limits, are managed along the same lines—the old simple lines of
honesty, courage, and common-sense.