_Mr. Mayor; My Fellow-Citizens_:
I know that the rest of you will not grudge my saying that most of
all I am touched by the sight of the men who wore the gray in the
great war, parading here to-day. I have just been presented by Judge
Semmes with this beautiful badge. I passed by the statue of Admiral
Semmes as we drove up hither. Admiral Semmes had under him on the
“Alabama” one of my uncles, and it was another uncle that built the
“Alabama.” The Judge’s sister, the Admiral’s daughter, is the wife of
that distinguished ex-Confederate who by his rule as Governor of the
Philippines has held aloft the record of American rule for integrity,
efficiency, and firmness.
In speaking before the citizens of this great seaport of the Gulf I
naturally wish to say a word about the Panama Canal. I hold that as
a matter of public policy whatever helps part of our country helps
the whole; and I did my best to bring about the construction of the
canal in the interest of all our people; but if there is any one
section to be most benefited by it, it is the section that includes the
Gulf States. Originally I had been for the Nicaragua canal; but when
Congress acted I abode by the decision of Congress. It became evident
that we should either have no canal or the Panama Canal; and I am for
a canal. If we had not acted as we have, all chance of building that
canal would have vanished for half a century to come; and as it is we
now are assured of having that canal within a comparatively short time.
Gentlemen, I want to warn you not to be misled by interested clamor.
Every man who had to do with bringing about the construction of the
canal knows that for decades it was opposed and successfully opposed
by great commercial interests which did not wish to see it completed,
which did not wish to see a canal speedily dug through the Isthmus and
communication between the Atlantic and Pacific established. It seems to
me evident from certain things I see in a portion of the daily press
that those enemies are still active, and that they are going to try
to becloud the issue, with the hope of putting off for ten or fifteen
years or over the digging of that canal. Their weapons will be and are
every form of misrepresentation. But, gentlemen, they will fail. You
need not have the slightest alarm. Uncle Sam has started to dig that
canal and it will be dug, and soon. The people who, largely by the
circulation of false rumors and by direct misstatement, are seeking
to create confusion such as will defer the building of the canal
will be disappointed. We have as a people the right to feel genuine
satisfaction with the progress that has already been made. Let me point
out something of which you here will appreciate the significance: the
sanitation of the Isthmus. Do you remember that a couple of years ago
men said that you could not dig that canal because yellow fever was
epidemic there? We are digging it, and with a cleaner bill of mortality
than the Isthmus has ever known before. I am happy to be able to tell
you that from information received this very day, I find that those who
have just returned from the Isthmus are not only pleased but astonished
at the excellent trim in which the project is; that it is going on
well, and that it will go along even better in the future.
Of all the things said about me to-day in the over-kind allusions to
me, I was especially pleased by what the Colonel said as to my attitude
toward crooked public servants. I will take advice about appointing
men; but if I find they are crooked I do not take any advice at all
about removing them. We have Scriptural authority for saying that
“offences must come”; but the Good Book adds, “woe to them through whom
they come.” I can not guarantee, and no human being can, that there
will not be an occasional man of an improper kind appointed, or an
occasional well-meaning man who after being appointed goes wrong; but I
can say that every effort within the power of the Government will be
made to hunt such a man out of the public service and to punish him to
the full extent of the law.
Here in this seaboard city I want to say another word, and that is
about the United States Navy. Again, Judge Semmes, in passing by the
monument of your illustrious father I felt the thrill of pride that
all Americans must feel that the names of the combatants in that
famous ship duel are commemorated in the names of the “Kearsarge” and
“Alabama” in the United States Navy now, and that if ever they have
to go into action they will go into action side by side, manned by
Americans, against a common foe. I know that an audience composed as
this audience is of men who either themselves fought or whose fathers
fought in the Civil War, appreciate to the full the sound national
policy (if I may use the vernacular) of never bluffing unless you
mean to make good. We undertook to build the Panama Canal because we
said that owing to our position and interest and standing we were the
only nation that could or should do it. That means that we have got
to protect it and police it ourselves. We do not ask anybody else to
help us do the work we have allotted to ourselves. We must therefore
bring up and keep up our navy to the highest point of efficiency. We
can afford to have a small army; although we must insist upon its being
kept up to the high point of efficiency that I am glad to say our
regular army in its individual units has now attained. In the event of
war, however, which I hope will never come, the American people in
the future as in the past must on land rely mainly upon its volunteer
soldiery. But while it is a comparatively simple task to turn a man of
the proper character, physique and intelligence into a good soldier,
you can not improvise either a battleship or the crew of a battleship.
At sea the battle has to be fought with the ships and the crews that
have been prepared before the war begins; and we wish to profit by the
lessons of history by seeing that our navy is always kept adequate
to our needs. It is not necessary to have a very large navy; but it
is necessary that ship for ship it should be just a little the most
efficient navy in the world. In battle the shots that count are the
shots that hit. There are plenty of gallant fellows who will go down
with their ships. That is all right; if there is nothing else to be
done, go down with the ships rather than surrender. But try to make the
other fellow’s ship go down first! I want our people to feel that in
assuming to dig the Isthmian canal, in assuming the position we have
assumed as regards this Western Hemisphere and in the Oriental seas,
we bind ourselves to keep our navy at such a point of efficiency that
there shall be no chance of humiliation at the hands of any foreign foe.
I appreciate immensely this mighty outpouring of people. The Mayor
in his most gratifying and touching speech spoke of the fact of
our agreement on the fundamental questions, without regard to our
differences on what are really matters only of political detail. The
things that count are the things upon which we are all agreed and must
be all agreed in our civic life. Whether President, Governor, Mayor,
Congressman, or State Legislator, there are certain basic principles to
which we must prove true if we are to make this country what it shall
be made. We can perfectly well afford to differ about the currency or
the tariff; but we can not afford to differ about such questions as
honesty in public life, decency and cleanliness in private life. Those
qualities and others like them go to the root of the whole question of
citizenship. I believe in the future of this country; I believe that
this great self-governing Republic will rise to a height never even
dreamed of by any other nation, because I believe that the average
American citizen, North or South, East or West, has the right stuff
in him; that the average American citizen has the three fundamental
virtues of honesty, courage, and common-sense.
AT THE ALABAMA CONFERENCE FEMALE COLLEGE, TUSKEGEE, ALA.,
OCTOBER 24, 1905
_Mr. Mayor; and you, My Friends and Fellow Americans_:
It is indeed a peculiar pleasure to be here this morning and be greeted
as you have greeted me. Mr. Mayor, I feel that those gathered here to
greet me symbolize what we most like to think of as typically American
in our national life. When you brought me here, Mr. Mayor, I was met
on the platform by the pastors of the Methodist and Baptist churches
in the shade of an institution of the higher learning, in the presence
of these students and of the children of the public schools; while
at the same time I see the industries of the nation typified both
by cotton being picked as I came up and also by the fact that I am
speaking on the most valuable platform I have ever spoken on (cotton
bales); and finally, I have as a guard of honor members of the National
Guard, whom, as I look at, I feel to be my own comrades, for they
are just the type I had in my own regiment in the Spanish war. These
elements, as I say, typify what we hope and believe are the elements
representing what is most vital in American life: the deep religious
feeling of our people, the understanding of our people that material
prosperity amounts to nothing if behind it and under it there is not
the spiritual sense, the sense of moral obligation, the fealty to an
ideal; the realization that in addition we must have, as the foundation
of national prosperity, industry, energy, and thrift, and their fruits.
There must be devotion to the arts and practices of peace, devotion
to civic duty, and yet the readiness of the man who does his duty in
civil life to do it in military life if ever the need arises; and
finally the recognition of the fact that though a great many crops are
important, the most important crop is the crop of children; and the one
thing that this Nation can not afford to neglect is the education of
the nation of the future. The Nation of the future will rise higher or
not just as the boys and girls of the present are or are not trained
to do their duty as men and as women. So I take a particular pleasure
in being here and greeting the children of the public schools and
those past childhood who are studying in this college itself. The one
all-essential thing in America, the thing that underlies everything
else, is to have the average American a good man or a good woman. If
there is any one thing that I respect more than a good man it is a good
woman. I think she is just a trifle more useful, and she has a harder
time in life; and so she is a little more entitled to our respect
than even the best man; and there is not a man here who is worth his
salt who does not agree with me. Of course it is a mere truism to say
that the ultimate factor in determining the welfare of the nation is
the life of the home; that is, the way in which the ordinary man,
the ordinary woman, performs his or her ordinary duties of the most
sacred and intimate kind. If the man is a good father, a good husband;
if he is decent and clean in his domestic life; if he does his duty
by his neighbor; if he is the kind of a man whom we are glad to have
as a neighbor and to do business with, that man is a good citizen.
It is just the same with the woman. If the woman is a good wife and
mother, she is a good citizen; and not merely a good citizen, but she
is the very best kind of citizen that this country can produce. What
we need is not merely desire to perform heroic feats under altogether
exceptional circumstances; but the steadfast determination to perform
the rather commonplace duties of every day, day by day, as they arise.
Speaking broadly, the man who does that is the man whom you can trust
if the need for heroism arises. Each of you boys here should remember
that the way to fit yourself to be of the utmost possible use is so
to act that your family likes to have you at home, instead of feeling
a relief when you are gone; and it is the same way with the girl. We
all of us know an occasional foolish mother who says, “I have had to
work hard; I have had a pretty hard time, my daughter shall not have
to work.” That is not kindness to the daughter. It is doing the very
worst thing that can be done for her. Do not bring up your boys and
girls to be useless, to avoid trouble, to get around trouble, to shirk
work. The man or the woman who counts in life is the man or the woman,
not who flinches from a task, but who does the task, who overcomes the
obstacle. The boy or girl won’t turn out that kind of a man or woman if
not brought up in that spirit from the beginning.