Part 3

All are at one now, the sons of those who wore the blue and the sons of those who wore the gray, and all can unite in paying respect to the memory of those who fell, each of them giving his life for his duty as he saw it; and all should be at one in learning from the deaths of these men how to live usefully while the times call for the performance of the countless necessary duties of everyday life, and how to hold ourselves ready to die nobly should the Nation ever again demand of her sons the splendid ultimate proof of loyalty to her and to the flag.

REMARKS AT THE WASHINGTON MEMORIAL CHAPEL, VALLEY FORGE, PA., JUNE 19, 1904

It is a great pleasure to come here this afternoon and say a word on behalf of the project to erect a memorial chapel on this great historic site. Three weeks ago I was at the field where the bloodiest and most decisive battle of the Civil War was fought, and it is a noteworthy thing that this State of Pennsylvania should have within its borders the places which mark the two turning points in our history—Gettysburg, which saw the high-tide of the Rebellion—Valley Forge, which saw the getting beyond the danger point of the Revolution.

There have been two great crises in our national history—two crises where failure meant the absolute breaking asunder of the Nation—one the Revolutionary War, one the Civil War. If the men who took to arms in ’76 for national independence had failed, then not merely would there never have been a national growth on this Continent, but the whole spirit of nationality for the younger lands of the world would have perished still-born. If the men of ’61 had failed in the great struggle for national unity it would have meant that the work done by Washington and his associates might almost or quite as well have been left undone. There would have been no point in commemorating what was done at Valley Forge if Gettysburg had not given us the national right to commemorate it. If we were now split up into a dozen wrangling little communities, if we lacked the power to keep away here on our own Continent, within our own lines, or to show ourselves a unit as against foreign aggression, then, indeed, the Declaration of Independence would read like empty sound, and the Constitution would not be worth the paper upon which it was written, save as a study for antiquarians.

There have been other crises than those that culminated during the War for Independence and the great Civil War, there have been great deeds and great men at other periods of our national history, but there never has been another deed vital to the welfare of the Nation save the two—the deed of those who founded and the deed of those who saved the Republic. There never has been another man whose life has been vital to the Republic save Washington and Lincoln. I am not here to say anything about Lincoln, but I do not see how any American can think of either of them without thinking of the other too, because they represent the same work. Think how fortunate we are as a Nation. Think what it means to us as a people that our young men should have as their ideals two men, not conquerors, not men who have won glory by wrongdoing; not men whose lives were spent in their own advancement, but men who lived, one of whom died, that the Nation might grow steadily greater and better—the man who founded the Republic and took no glory from it himself save what was freely given him by his fellow-citizens, and that only in the shape of a chance of rendering them service, and the man who afterward saved the Republic, who saved the state, without striking down liberty. Often in history a state has been saved and liberty struck down at the same time. Lincoln saved the Union and lifted the cause of liberty higher than before. Washington created the Republic, rose by statecraft to the highest position, and used that position only for the welfare of his fellows and for so long as his fellows wished him to keep it.

It is a good thing that of these great landmarks of our history—Gettysburg and Valley Forge—one should commemorate a single tremendous effort and the other what we need, on the whole, much more commonly, and what I think is, on the whole, rather more difficult to do—long-sustained effort. Only men with a touch of the heroic in them could have lasted out that three days’ struggle at Gettysburg. Only men fit to rank with the great men of all time could have beaten back the mighty onslaught of that gallant and wonderful army of Northern Virginia, whose final supreme effort faded at the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge on that July day forty-one years ago.

But after all, hard though it is to rise to the supreme height of self-sacrifice and of effort at a time of crisis that is short, to rise to it for a single great effort—it is harder yet to rise to the level of a crisis when that crisis takes the form of needing constant, patient, steady work, month after month, year after year, when, too, it does not end after a terrible struggle in a glorious day—when it means months of gloom and effort steadfastly endured, and triumph wrested only at the very end.

Here at Valley Forge Washington and his Continentals warred not against the foreign soldiery, but against themselves, against all the appeals of our nature that are most difficult to resist—against discouragement, discontent, the mean envies and jealousies, and heart-burnings sure to arise at any time in large bodies of men, but especially sure to arise when defeat and disaster have come to large bodies of men. Here the soldiers who carried our national flag had to suffer from cold, from privation, from hardship, knowing that their foes were well housed, knowing that things went easier for the others than it did for them. And they conquered, because they had in them the spirit that made them steadfast, not merely on an occasional great day, but day after day in the life of daily endeavor to do duty well.

When two lessons are both indispensable, it seems hardly worth while to dwell more on one than on the other. Yet I think that as a people we need more to learn the lesson of Valley Forge even than that of Gettysburg. I have not the slightest anxiety but that this people, if the need should come in the future, will be able to show the heroism, the supreme effort that was shown at Gettysburg, though it may well be that it would mean a similar two years of effort, checkered by disaster, to lead up to it. But the vital thing for this Nation to do is steadily to cultivate the quality which Washington and those under him so pre-eminently showed during the winter at Valley Forge—the quality of steady adherence to duty in the teeth of difficulty, in the teeth of discouragement, and even disaster, the quality that makes a man do what is straight and decent, not one day when a great crisis comes, but every day, day in and day out, until success comes at the end.

Of course, all of us are agreed that a prime national need is the need of commemorating the memories of the men who did greatly, thought highly, who fought, suffered, endured, for the Nation. It is a great thing to commemorate their lives; but, after all, the worthy way to do so is to try to show by our lives that we have profited by them. If we show that the lives of the great men of the past have been to us incitements to do well in the present, then we have paid to them the only homage which is really worthy of them. If we treat their great deeds as matters merely for idle boasting, not as spurring us on to effort, but as excusing us from effort, then we show that we are not worthy of our sires, of the people who went before us in the history of our land. What we as a people need more than aught else is the steady performance of the everyday duties of life, not with hope of reward, but because they are duties.

I spoke of how we felt that we had in Washington and Lincoln national ideals. I contrasted their names with the names of many others in history, names which will shine as brightly, but oh! with how much less power and light. I think you will find that the fundamental difference between our two great national heroes and almost any other men of equal note in the world’s history, is that when you think of our two men you think inevitably not of glory, but of duty, not of what the man did for himself in achieving name, or fame, or position, but of what he did for his fellows. They set the right ideal and also they lived up to it in practical fashion. Had either of them possessed that fantastic quality of mind which sets an impossible, and, perhaps, an undesirable ideal, or which declines to do the actual work of the present because forsooth the implements with which it is necessary to work are not to that man’s choice, his fame would have been missed, his achievement would have crumbled into dust, and he would not have left one stroke on the book which tells of effort accomplished for the good of mankind.

A man, to amount to anything, must be practical. He must actually do things, not talk about doing them, least of all cavil at how they are accomplished by those who actually go down into the arena, and actually face the dust and the blood and the sweat, who actually triumphed in the struggle. The man must have the force, the power, the will to accomplish results, but he must have also the lift toward lofty things which shall make him incapable of striving for aught unless that for which he strives is something honorable and high—something well worth striving for.

I congratulate you that it is your good fortune to be engaged in erecting a memorial to the great man who was equal to the great days—to the man and the men who showed by their lives that they were indeed doers of the word and not hearers only.

ADDRESS AT OYSTER BAY, N. Y., JULY 27, 1904, IN RESPONSE TO THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO NOTIFY HIM OF HIS NOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY

_Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the Notification Committee_:

I am deeply sensible of the high honor conferred upon me by the representatives of the Republican party assembled in convention, and I accept the nomination for the Presidency with solemn realization of the obligations I assume. I heartily approve the declaration of principles which the Republican National Convention has adopted, and at some future day I shall communicate to you, Mr. Chairman, more at length and in detail a formal written acceptance of the nomination.

Three years ago I became President because of the death of my lamented predecessor. I then stated that it was my purpose to carry out his principles and policies for the honor and the interest of the country. To the best of my ability I have kept the promise thus made. If next November my countrymen confirm at the polls the action of the convention you represent, I shall, under Providence, continue to work with an eye single to the welfare of all our people.

A party is of worth only in so far as it promotes the national interest, and every official, high or low, can serve his party best by rendering to the people the best service of which he is capable. Effective government comes only as the result of the loyal co-operation of many different persons. The members of a legislative majority, the officers in the various departments of the Administration, and the Legislative and Executive branches as toward each other, must work together with subordination of self to the common end of successful government. We who have been intrusted with power as public servants during the past seven years of administration and legislation now come before the people content to be judged by our record of achievement. In the years that have gone by we have made the deed square with the word; and if we are continued in power we shall unswervingly follow out the great lines of public policy which the Republican party has already laid down; a public policy to which we are giving, and shall give, a united, and therefore an efficient, support.

In all of this we are more fortunate than our opponents, who now appeal for confidence on the ground, which some express and some seek to have confidentially understood, that if triumphant they may be trusted to prove false to every principle which in the last eight years they have laid down as vital, and to leave undisturbed those very acts of the Administration because of which they ask that the Administration itself be driven from power. Seemingly their present attitude as to their past record is that some of them were mistaken and others insincere. We make our appeal in a wholly different spirit. We are not constrained to keep silent on any vital question; we are divided on no vital question; our policy is continuous, and is the same for all sections and localities. There is nothing experimental about the Government we ask the people to continue in power, for our performance in the past, our proved governmental efficiency, is a guarantee as to our promises for the future. Our opponents, either openly or secretly, according to their several temperaments, now ask the people to trust their present promises in consideration of the fact that they intend to treat their past promises as null and void. We know our own minds and we have kept of the same mind for a sufficient length of time to give to our policy coherence and sanity. In such a fundamental matter as the enforcement of the law we do not have to depend upon promises, but merely to ask that our record be taken as an earnest of what we shall continue to do. In dealing with the great organizations known as trusts, we do not have to explain why the laws were not enforced, but to point out that they actually have been enforced, and that legislation has been enacted to increase the effectiveness of their enforcement. We do not have to propose to “turn the rascals out,” for we have shown in very deed that whenever by diligent investigation a public official can be found who has betrayed his trust he will be punished to the full extent of the law without regard to whether he was appointed under a Republican or a Democratic Administration. This is the efficient way to turn the rascals out and to keep them out, and it has the merit of sincerity. Moreover, the betrayals of trust in the last seven years have been insignificant in number when compared with the extent of the public service. Never has the administration of the Government been on a cleaner and higher level; never has the public work of the Nation been done more honestly and efficiently.

Assuredly it is unwise to change the policies which have worked so well and which are now working so well. Prosperity has come at home. The national honor and interest have been upheld abroad. We have placed the finances of the Nation upon a sound gold basis. We have done this with the aid of many who were formerly our opponents, but who would neither openly support nor silently acquiesce in the heresy of unsound finance; and we have done it against the convinced and violent opposition of the mass of our present opponents who still refuse to recant the unsound opinions which for the moment they think it inexpedient to assert. We know what we mean when we speak of an honest and stable currency. We mean the same thing from year to year. We do not have to avoid definite and conclusive committal on the most important issue which has recently been before the people, and which may at any time in the near future be before them again. Upon the principles which underlie this issue the convictions of half of our number do not clash with those of the other half. So long as the Republican party is in power the gold standard is settled, not as a matter of temporary political expediency, not because of shifting conditions in the production of gold in certain mining centres, but in accordance with what we regard as the fundamental principles of national morality and wisdom.

Under the financial legislation which we have enacted there is now ample circulation for every business need; and every dollar of this circulation is worth a dollar in gold. We have reduced the interest-bearing debt, and in still larger measure the interest on that debt. All of the war taxes imposed during the Spanish War have been removed with a view to relieve the people and to prevent the accumulation of an unnecessary surplus. The result is that hardly ever before have the expenditures and income of the Government so closely corresponded. In the fiscal year that has just closed the excess of income over the ordinary expenditures was nine millions of dollars. This does not take account of the fifty millions expended out of the accumulated surplus for the purchase of the Isthmian Canal. It is an extraordinary proof of the sound financial condition of the Nation that instead of following the usual course in such matters and throwing the burden upon posterity by an issue of bonds, we were able to make the payment outright and yet after it to have in the treasury a surplus of one hundred and sixty-one millions. Moreover, we were able to pay this fifty millions of dollars out of hand without causing the slightest disturbance to business conditions.

We have enacted a tariff law under which during the past few years the country has attained a height of material well-being never before reached. Wages are higher than ever before. That whenever the need arises there should be a readjustment of the tariff schedules is undoubted; but such changes can with safety be made only by those whose devotion to the principle of a protective tariff is beyond question; for otherwise the changes would amount not to readjustment, but to repeal. The readjustment when made must maintain and not destroy the protective principle. To the farmer, the merchant, the manufacturer this is vital; but perhaps no other man is so much interested as the wage-worker in the maintenance of our present economic system, both as regards the finances and the tariff. The standard of living of our wage-workers is higher than that of any other country, and it can not so remain unless we have a protective tariff which shall always keep as a minimum a rate of duty sufficient to cover the difference between the labor cost here and abroad. Those who, like our opponents, “denounce protection as a robbery” thereby explicitly commit themselves to the proposition that if they were to revise the tariff no heed would be paid to the necessity of meeting this difference between the standards of living for wage-workers here and in other countries; and therefore on this point their antagonism to our position is fundamental. Here again we ask that their promises and ours be judged by what has been done in the immediate past. We ask that sober and sensible men compare the workings of the present tariff law, and the conditions which obtain under it, with the workings of the preceding tariff law of 1894 and the conditions which that tariff of 1894 helped to bring about.

We believe in reciprocity with foreign nations on the terms outlined in President McKinley’s last speech, which urged the extension of our foreign markets by reciprocal agreements whenever they could be made without injury to American industry and labor. It is a singular fact that the only great reciprocity treaty recently adopted—that with Cuba—was finally opposed almost alone by the representatives of the very party which now states that it favors reciprocity. And here again we ask that the worth of our words be judged by comparing their deeds with ours. On this Cuban reciprocity treaty there were at the outset grave differences of opinion among ourselves; and the notable thing in the negotiation and ratification of the treaty, and in the legislation which carried it into effect, was the highly practical manner in which without sacrifice of principle these differences of opinion were reconciled. There was no rupture of a great party, but an excellent practical outcome, the result of the harmonious co-operation of two successive Presidents and two successive Congresses. This is an illustration of the governing capacity which entitles us to the confidence of the people not only in our purposes but in our practical ability to achieve those purposes. Judging by the history of the last twelve years, down to this very month, is there justification for believing that under similar circumstances and with similar initial differences of opinion, our opponents would have achieved any practical result?

We have already shown in actual fact that our policy is to do fair and equal justice to all men, paying no heed to whether a man is rich or poor; paying no heed to his race, his creed, or his birthplace.

We recognize the organization of capital and the organization of labor as natural outcomes of our industrial system. Each kind of organization is to be favored so long as it acts in a spirit of justice and of regard for the rights of others. Each is to be granted the full protection of the law, and each in turn is to be held to a strict obedience to the law; for no man is above it and no man below it. The humblest individual is to have his rights safeguarded as scrupulously as those of the strongest organization, for each is to receive justice, no more and no less. The problems with which we have to deal in our modern industrial and social life are manifold; but the spirit in which it is necessary to approach their solution is simply the spirit of honesty, of courage, and of common-sense.

In inaugurating the great work of irrigation in the West the Administration has been enabled by Congress to take one of the longest strides ever taken under our Government toward utilizing our vast national domain for the settler, the actual homemaker.