Part 23

I want to say just one word more on an entirely different subject. I have always taken a very great interest in the National Guard in this country. It is our pride that we have the smallest possible regular army. There is not another first-class power, there is not a second or third class power in the world that has not got relatively to its population and wealth a very much larger regular army than we have. We do not need anything but a small regular army. We need and must and shall have the very best regular army of its size that is to be found anywhere. We do not need a large regular army, because of the possibilities of our people in raising volunteer troops. Those possibilities are largely conditioned upon the excellence of the National Guard. Since I have been in Texas, at almost every stopping place there have been members of the National Guard, companies of the National Guard out to do duty in connection with keeping the crowds in order, in preventing any trouble of any kind, keeping the whole proceedings orderly and proper. I have been immensely struck with their soldier-like efficiency. It is only what I ought to expect. When I was last in Texas I was engaged with certain others in raising a volunteer regiment, and as I think I know a good thing when I see it, I got just as many Texans as possible in that regiment.

Your whole history, from the days of Austin and Houston and Davy Crockett, right to the present time, shows what fighting material the average Texan makes. But I do not care how good the material, it is not going to amount to much if it is not given a chance. It is a most important thing for all of us, if we desire to keep the regular army small, that we shall have the militia, the National Guard of the several States, kept up to a proper point. Last year, I am happy to be able to say, that, at the manœuvres of the regulars, your Texan troops did admirably. I have been told again and again how well they did. I want to congratulate you upon the excellent law for the administration of the National Guard that has recently been passed by the Texas Legislature. With that law backed up by a sufficient appropriation to make it available, you can count upon having the Texas National Guard a model for the National Guard of the country.

I feel very much at home here: I have been Governor, and I have served in the Legislature, so I have a good deal of fellow-feeling with all of you. I have had for a good many years to grapple with just about the problems you are grappling with from time to time here; and I know, as any man who has taken part in active work must know, how easy it is for the outsider to say that everything should be managed perfectly, and how difficult it is in practice to get even fairly good results. There is a heap of difference between the critic, the onlooker on one side, and on the other the doer, the man who does the job.

OUTSIDE OF CAPITOL BUILDING, AUSTIN, TEX., APRIL 6, 1905

_Mr. Governor; and you, My Fellow-Citizens_:

I have been particularly pleased to be greeted wherever I have gone by the great masses of school children, the children from the public schools and the children from the higher institutions of learning, State and private. It is a mere truism to say that the prime work of any State should be to keep up and raise ever higher its standard of citizenship. Texas has a right to be proud of its industrial development and of its wonderful natural resources, but I tell you the best crop for any State to rear after all is the crop of men and women. I believe in the future of Texas so heartily because I believe that you are steadily taking measures for the uptraining of the children, for the uptraining of the generations that in a very few years will take our places and rule the destinies of the State.

No State can be great without paying the penalty of responsibility that comes with greatness. That is true of the Nation; it is true likewise of the States that go to make up the Nation. You have here in Texas a commonwealth which in area and diversification of resources already stands unequaled, which in population and wealth will soon be one of the three or four first in the entire land. That means that besides feeling exaltation about it you ought to have a very heavy sense of responsibility entailed upon you thereby. No man can do any work worth doing except at the cost of effort, of self-restraint, of forcing himself to achieve things. No State can do anything except by possessing just those qualities, because the State is of course simply the aggregate of the individuals within it. If Texas fails in any way the failure will be felt by the entire country, because its influence and its power are so great. There is no royal road to good government; and I think all those interested in managing your public affairs will agree with me that what we need in our public officials is not genius, not even brilliancy, so much as the exercise of the ordinary rather commonplace qualities of honesty, courage, and common-sense—the qualities that make a man a good husband, a good father, a good neighbor; that make it advantageous to have dealings with him in business, or make it worth while having him as a friend. These are the qualities which are fundamental, which should be shown by the man who has to do with public life; and do not forget that each one of you here has to do his share in governing this commonwealth. It is not a figure of speech, it is the literal fact that in the United States every man is a sovereign. Remember that the fate of the sovereign who does not do his duty is to get dethroned; and if the average man who is sovereign does not do his duty he will get ousted from his sovereignty. If a man can not govern himself he will find a boss or some one else who can govern him, and then do not blame the boss, blame yourself for not having the self-control, the resolution, the forethought, and the sense of civic duty which would make you do your full part in the work of governing this country. We will not lose our birthright of citizenship unless by our own fault. If the average man keeps his head and his wits, and if he takes a little pains, he will be governed just about the way he desires to be governed. If he is not governed that way do not let him sit down and blame the politicians, let him blame himself, for it is in his power to get any government that he seriously desires to have. My fellow-citizens, together with expressing the exultation that we have a right to express about our country, we need to have impressed upon us a sense of our own responsibility, and of the shortcomings of which we are guilty if we do not rise level to that responsibility. It is a very good thing that we should gather together on state occasions, on the 4th of July, and at public festivals, and hear speakers say how big a country we have. But it is a better thing if we will go home and think over certain of the shortcomings that all of us have and make up our minds to remedy them in the future. What I ask of you and what I most firmly believe you will give is a patriotic perseverance in doing each his average round of duties, in doing the duties both of private life and as a citizen in public affairs each day. Do not wait for some special time when heroism will be called for, but do unweariedly the humdrum work that comes to every man. If we will do that, we will find that the affairs of state will be settled as we desire to have them settled. There is no use sitting at home finding fault with the way in which public affairs are handled, and then every four years, in a burst of animosity against some person, voting to turn him out. What you need to do is, month in and month out, year in and year out, to do your ordinary political duties as those political duties come up, and only under such conditions can you get really good public servants.

Let me say one more word of warning. In public life you will sometimes encounter a man who will endeavor to lead you to do something which down at bottom you doubt being right, which he tells you will be to your advantage to do, usually something that looks like wronging some one else. But the man who will wrong some one else for your advantage will, when the chance comes, be sure to wrong you for his own advantage.

My fellow-citizens, my fellow-Americans, I address you here under the shadow of your beautiful capitol of this great and wonderful State, with its heroic memories of Austin, of Sam Houston, of Davy Crockett, of all the men who in picture or in statue are commemorated on these walls; and my strongest feeling is that, proud though you are of Texas, you can not be prouder of it than I am. One of the great and splendid features of our American life is that each American has a right to be proud of the deeds of every other American, no matter from what part of the country his fellow-American may come. Your honor, your glory, are the honor and the glory of every man of our great country. All that is necessary for our people is that they should get to know one another in order to appreciate how slight are the divergencies and how vital and fundamental is the union among them.

IN FRONT OF THE ALAMO, SAN ANTONIO, TEX., APRIL 7, 1905

_Mr. Mayor; Mr. Kirkpatrick; and you, My Fellow-Americans of this mighty Commonwealth_:

I thank you for the way in which I have been greeted to-day. You can hardly imagine how much it means to me to come back to San Antonio in this way, and to be received as you have received me. I know that the rest of you will not grudge my saying a special word of acknowledgment to two sets among your citizens; first to the men of the great war, to the men who wore the blue or wore the gray in the days that tried men’s souls. My fellow-citizens, infinitely more important than any President, infinitely more important even than the reception to any President, is what is symbolized by seeing the men who fought in the Union army and the men who fought in the Confederate army standing mingled together, fellow-Americans, one in devotion and honor and loyalty to the country, shoulder to shoulder as fellow-citizens of the mightiest republic upon which the sun has ever shone. Indeed the man would have a poor heart, a poor spirit, who would not be thrilled by such a meeting as this, by such a sight as you accord me to-day, you of the gray, you of the blue, all one under the flag of this reunited country.

I suppose you must know it, but I want to tell you that it was of course the memory of the valor, the self-sacrifice, the endurance you displayed in the great war, that made us of the younger generation feel that when the lesser war came we wished to emulate your course. The regiment which I had the honor to command, and which was raised and organized in this city, took part in what were only skirmishes compared with the campaigns in which you did your share; and all that we claim is that while it was not given to us to have the chance to do great deeds, yet we hope we made you feel that the old spirit was not altogether lost. This regiment served under men who had themselves fought in the Civil War, both under Grant and under Lee. The commander of the cavalry division was that gallant ex-Confederate soldier, Major-General Joseph Wheeler; and our immediate commander, our brigade commander, was an ex-Union soldier, who entered the Union army as a private, and to whom for my great good fortune it befell me to sign the commission as Lieutenant-General of the army of the United States—Lieutenant-General Young. Afterward at San Juan the cavalry served under General Sumner, from whom I took my orders.

I can not say how much it meant to me to be able to take part in raising that regiment under the shadow of the Alamo. My admiration for Texas and Texans is no new thing. Since I have been a boy and first studied the history of this country my veins have thrilled and tingled as I read of the mighty deeds of Houston, of Bowie, of Crockett, of Travis, of the men who were victorious at the fight at San Jacinto, of the even more glorious men who fell in the fight of the Alamo, of which it was said, “Thermopylæ had its messengers of death, but the Alamo had none.”

I remember so well seven years ago when we were raising this regiment, riding in here one day to see the Alamo, and going away feeling that come what would I was going to try to handle myself so that there should no disgrace come to the memory of the Americans who died there. I want you to remember that ours was a volunteer regiment and a small war, and that we do not claim any credit for what we did more than falls to the lot of any number of other people. All we ask of you is to believe that we tried to show the spirit which would have made us do the kind of a job that you of the Civil War did, if the need had arisen.

I wish to express my acknowledgments for the greeting which I have received here in San Antonio and which I have received throughout the length and breadth of Texas. This is the third time I have visited this beautiful city—and it is such a beautiful city. I wonder if you yourselves, proud though you are of it, appreciate the charm it has to an outsider coming here. It is fifteen years ago that I first came here, simply passing through as any number of other travelers pass through, and saw it. Seven years ago when I came here I was here strictly on business. When we got back that year from Santiago I said to the officers of the regiment, “Now we have got to have a reunion of the regiment in San Antonio.” All kinds of things happened in between. I have led a middling busy life myself since; and now at last the chance has come to make good the promise and to have those of the regiment who are able to come together here in the city where the regiment was raised to greet one another and talk over the past. In a sense we can claim that that regiment was a typical American body. The men composing it were raised chiefly in the Southwest, but some from the North, some from the East, so that we had the Northerner and the Southerner, the Easterner and the Westerner in that regiment; we had men in it who worshiped their Creator some according to one creed, some according to another, for almost every religious body of any size in the United States was represented within our ranks. We had men who had been born abroad and men who were born here, whose ancestors came to what is now the United States at the time of the landing of the first colonists at the mouth of the James or at Plymouth. We had men of inherited wealth and men who all their lives long had earned each day’s bread by that day’s toil. We had men of every grade socially; men who worked with their heads; men who worked with their hands; men of all the types that our country produces; but each of them glad to get in on his worth as a man only, and content to be judged purely by what he could show himself to be.

It has always seemed to me that one of the greatest lessons taught by the Civil War was the lesson of brotherhood. You, my friends, who wore the blue; you, my friends, who wore the gray, what each of you when he went forward to battle was concerned with about the man on his right hand and the man on his left was not what that man’s ancestry was, not as to how he worshiped his Maker, not as to what his profession was, or his means; what you wanted to know was whether he would stay put. If he did you were for him, and if he did not you were against him.

The same thing that was true in the great war is true in time of peace. This Government is emphatically a government by the people, for the people, of the people. Now, besides applauding that sentiment, let us live up to it. It has two sides to it. In the first place, it applies in a dozen different directions. It applies, for instance, in reference to creed. We have a right to ask that our neighbor do his duty toward God and man; but we have no business to dictate to him how he shall worship his Maker, and no business to discriminate for or against him because of the way in which he does it. In the same way, if a man is a decent citizen, he is a decent citizen, whether rich or poor. To judge from some of the talk you occasionally hear, a man can not be a square man if he is rich. Remember always that you listen at your peril to any man who would seek to inflame you against your fellow-citizen because he is better off. Again, in the Civil War, come back to the consideration about your bunkie. You did not care whether he was a banker or bricklayer. If he was a banker he was all right if he was a good fellow, if he did his duty in camp, if he did not straggle on the march, if he did not drop his share of the joint provisions on the march, and then expect you to share yours with him at the end of the day. You wanted him to do his part, and if he did it you were for him. Now, apply that in civil life. If the rich man does not his duty, cinch him, and I will help you just as far as I can. But don’t cinch him because he is a rich man. If you do you are a mighty mean creature yourself; you are not a good American yourself. Give him a perfectly fair show. If he is a poor man and does his duty, help him, stand by him. If he whines about his poverty and says that he ought to be carried, you may just as well make up your mind to drop him then and there. Every man of us stumbles at times. Every man of us at times needs a helping hand stretched out to him; and shame to any man who will not stretch out that helping hand to his brother if that brother needs it. But if the brother lies down, you can do mighty little in carrying him. You can help him up; but once up he has got to walk himself. The only way in which you can ever really help any man is to help him to help himself.

That brings me to the second set of people here whom I have been most especially glad to see and to greet—the children. In the first place, I believe in them, as you know, and judging by the showing that San Antonio has made to-day, San Antonio is all right as regards both quality and quantity. As I like your stock I am glad that it does not seem likely to die out. In passing through Texas I have been more impressed than by anything else by the evident care you are giving to education, the evident care given to training your children, the school facilities, both for primary and higher education, and the way in which those facilities are being taken advantage of. Of course it is a mere truism to say that the care of the children is the most important task of any generation. You have a wonderful empire here in Texas. It is literally larger than most Old World empires. Your diversification of soil and climate, the marvelous fertility of your soil, your natural advantages, ensure you a phenomenal future agriculturally and industrially, ensure this State a wonderful growth in population and wealth. All that is essential. You must have the material basis upon which to build as a foundation, but I need not say to you to remember that it is only a foundation. The material counts for nothing if you do not build upon it the spiritual, if you do not build upon it the things of the soul, of the mind.

Let me again take an example from the war. We need arms and equipment, but the best rifle ever made does not make a soldier if it has not got the right man behind it. You may take the finest modern weapon, put it in the hands of a weakling or a coward, and a good man will beat him with a club. If the other man is a good man too, you want a mighty good weapon, or you will get beaten. But the weapon does not in any shape or way serve as a substitute for the spirit of the soldier. That is what counts in the last resort. Tactics change, weapons change, but the soul that drives a man forward to victory does not change as the ages go by. The men of the Civil War, alike the men who wore the gray and the men who wore the blue, made a record which remains forever a heritage of honor and of glory for all this people. They did that because they had in them the spirit which from time immemorial has made the soldiers of whom the world is proud, the spirit for the lack of which no other quality in man or in nation will atone. We of to-day, we who, if a war should come, will have to fight under new conditions, with new arms, will win (as assuredly I believe we shall win) only because our men still have in them the spirit that made their forefathers do well in battle. So you must train your children up so that in addition to having what counts for material prosperity in a State, you must have the things that tell most for greatness, the things that make for the soul of the Nation.