Part 3

Our days have fallen, for our good fortune, in times of peace. We have not had to show the qualities that you showed in the dark years that closed in the sunburst of Appomattox; but if we are to leave undimmed to our children the heritage that you left to us, we must show in peace, and, should the need ever arise, in war also, the qualities that you showed; the qualities that make it now the pleasantest of all tasks for a public servant who appreciates the greatness of America to come on an occasion like this and see the people of a great city dedicate a monument in honor of a great citizen, who, at every point of his career, illustrated what the name American should be when it is used in its highest, its deepest, and its best significance.

AT THE NAVAL BRANCH, Y. M. C. A., BROOKLYN, N. Y., MAY 30, 1905

_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.

AT HOLY CROSS COLLEGE, WORCESTER, MASS., JUNE 21, 1905

_Father, Bishop, Alumni of Holy Cross, and you, My Fellow-Citizens, men and women of Worcester, of Massachusetts_:

It is a pleasure to me to be the guest of Holy Cross. It is eminently characteristic of your State, and of all our Nation, that we should have institutions of learning like this, in which the effort is constant to train not merely the body and the mind, but the soul of the man, so that he may be a good American, a good citizen of our great country.

In this country of ours we are developing a new type of nationality, a type kin to each of the various Old World races from which it in part springs, and yet separate from all. Each stock that comes here can furnish something of permanent value to the country as a whole; and from each stock we have the right to expect the furnishing of that element. Here in Holy Cross College I want to say one word spoken I trust to ears willing to hear it. During the last three years I have happened, by chance, to grow peculiarly interested in the great subject of Celtic literature, and I feel that it is not a creditable thing to the American Republic, which has in its citizenship so large a Celtic element, that we should leave it to the German scholars and students to be our instructors in Celtic literature. I want to see in Holy Cross, in Harvard, in all the other universities where we can get the chairs endowed, chairs for the study of Celtic literature. A century and over ago the civilized world, which had been looking down upon old Norse poetry as the production of a barbarous race, suddenly awoke to the wealth of beauty contained in the Scandinavian sagas. If I am not greatly in error we are now about to see a similar awakening to the wealth of beauty contained in the Celtic sagas; and I wish to see American institutions of learning take the lead in that awakening.

AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE, WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS., JUNE 22, 1905

_Mr. President, and you of Williams_:

It is a high honor that I have received at your hands, and I deeply appreciate it. I appreciate it particularly because it is my good fortune to find on the platform with me so many men to whom I am knit by the bonds of personal friendship and of work for a common end. I have listened with real pleasure to the three discourses to-day; and of course the first was in my line of business.