Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

We have the right to ask every decent American citizen to rally to the support of the law if it is ever broken against the interest of the rich man; and we have the same right to ask that rich man cheerfully and gladly to acquiesce in the enforcement against his seeming interest of the law, if it is the law. Incidentally, whether he acquiesces or not, the law will be enforced, and this whoever he may be, great or small, and at whichever end of the social scale he may be.

I ask that we see to it in our country that the line of division in the deeper matters of our citizenship be drawn, never between section and section, never between creed and creed, never, thrice never, between class and class; but that the line be drawn on the line of conduct, cutting through sections, cutting through creeds, cutting through classes; the line that divides the honest from the dishonest, the line that divides good citizenship from bad citizenship, the line that declares a man a good citizen only if, and always if, he acts in accordance with the immutable law of righteousness, which has been the same from the beginning of history to the present moment, and which will be the same from now until the end of recorded time.

FROM ADDRESS AT COLUMBIA GARDENS, BUTTE, MONT., MAY 27, 1903

_Mr. Chairman, and you, my Fellow-Citizens_:

It would have been a great pleasure to come to Butte in any event; it is a double pleasure to come here at the invitation of the representatives of the wage-workers of Butte. I do not say merely workingmen, because I hold that every good American who does his duty must be a workingman. There are many different kinds of work to do; but so long as the work is honorable, is necessary, and is well done the man who does it well is entitled to the respect of his fellows.

I have come here to this meeting especially as the invited guest of the wage-workers, and I am happy to be able to say that the kind of speech I will make to you, I would make just in exactly the same language to any group of employers or any set of our citizens in any corner of this Republic. I do not think so far as I know that I have ever promised beforehand anything I did not make a strong effort to make good afterward. It is sometimes very attractive and very pleasant to make any kind of a promise without thinking whether or not you can fulfil it; but in the after event it is always unpleasant when the time for fulfilling comes; for in the long run the most disagreeable truth is a safer companion than the most pleasant falsehood.

To-night I have come hither looking on either hand at the results of the enterprises which have made Butte so great. The man who by the use of his capital develops a great mine, the man who by the use of his capital builds a great railroad, the man who by the use of his capital either individually or joined with others like him does any great legitimate business enterprise, confers a benefit, not a harm, upon the community, and is entitled to be so regarded. He is entitled to the protection of the law, and in return he is to be required himself to obey the law. The law is no respecter of persons. The law is to be administered neither for the rich man as such, nor for the poor man as such. It is to be administered for every man, rich or poor, if he is an honest and law-abiding citizen; and it is to be invoked against any man, rich or poor, who violates it, without regard to which end of the social scale he may stand at, without regard to whether his offence takes the form of greed and cunning, or the form of physical violence; in either case if he violates the law, the law is to be invoked against him; and in so invoking it I have the right to challenge the support of all good citizens and to demand the acquiescence of every good man. I hope I will have it; but once for all I wish it understood that even if I do not have it I shall enforce the law.

The soldiers who fought in the great Civil War fought for liberty under, by, and through the law; and they fought to put a stop once for all to any effort to sunder this country on the lines of sectional hatred; therefore their memory shall be forever precious to our people. We need to keep ever in mind that he is the worst enemy of this country who would strive to separate its people along the lines of section against section, of creed against creed, or of class against class. There are two sides to that. It is a base and an infamous thing for the man of means to act in a spirit of arrogant and brutal disregard of right toward his fellow who has less means; and it is no less infamous, no less base, to act in a spirit of rancor, envy, and hatred against the man of greater means, merely because of his greater means. If we are to preserve this Republic as it was founded, as it was handed down to us by the men of ’61 to ’65, and as it is and will be, we must draw the line never between section and section, never between creed and creed, thrice never between class and class; but along the line of conduct, the line that separates the good citizen wherever he may be found from the bad citizen wherever he may be found. This is not and never shall be a government of a plutocracy; it is not and never shall be a government by a mob. It is as it has been and as it will be, a government in which every honest man, every decent man, be he employer or employed, wage-worker, mechanic, banker, lawyer, farmer, be he who he may, if he acts squarely and fairly, if he does his duty by his neighbor and the State, receives the full protection of the law and is given the amplest chance to exercise the ability that there is within him, alone or in combination with his fellows as he desires. My friends, it is sometimes easier to preach a doctrine under which the millennium will be promised off-hand if you have a particular kind of law, or follow a particular kind of conduct—it is easier, but it is not better. The millennium is not here; it is some thousand years off yet. Meanwhile there must be a good deal of work and struggle, a good deal of injustice; we shall often see the tower of Siloam fall on the just as well as the unjust. We are bound in honor to try to remedy injustice, but if we are wise we will seek to remedy it in practical ways. Above all, remember this: that the most unsafe adviser to follow is the man who would advise us to do wrong in order that we may benefit by it. That man is never a safe man to follow; he is always the most dangerous of guides. The man who seeks to persuade any of us that our advantage comes in wronging or oppressing others can be depended upon, if the opportunity comes, to do wrong to us in his own interest, just as he has endeavored to make us in our supposed interest do wrong to others.

AT THE TABERNACLE, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, MAY 29, 1903

_Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, Senator Kearns, and you, my Fellow-Americans_:

I am particularly glad to have the chance to speak to you here in this city, in Utah, this morning, because you have exemplified a doctrine which it seems to me all-essential for our people ever to keep fresh in their minds—the fact that though natural resources can do a good deal, though the law can do a good deal, the fundamental requisite in building up prosperity and civilization is the requisite of individual character in the individual man or woman. Here in this State the pioneers and those who came after them took not the land that would ordinarily be chosen as land that would yield return with little effort. You took territory which at the outset was called after the desert, and you literally—not figuratively—you literally made the wilderness blossom as the rose. The fundamental element in building up Utah has been the work of the citizens of Utah. And you did it because your people entered in to possess the land and to leave it after them to their children and their children’s children. You here whom I am addressing and your predecessors did not come in to exploit the land and then go somewhere else. You came in, as the Governor has said, as home-makers, to make homes for yourselves and those who should come after you; and that is the only way in which a State can be built up, in which the Nation can be built up. You have built up this great community because you came here with the purpose of making this your abiding home, and of leaving to your children not an impoverished, but an enriched heritage; and I ask that all our people from one ocean to the other, but especially the people of the arid and the semi-arid regions, the people of the great plains, the people of the mountains, approach the problem of taking care of the physical resources of the country in the spirit which has made Utah what it is. You have developed your metal wealth wonderfully; and your growth is not a boom growth—it is a thoroughly healthy, normal growth. During the past decade the population has doubled and the wealth quadrupled; and labor is employed at as high a compensation as is paid elsewhere in the world. Although you are not essentially a mining State, in the last year you marketed thirty millions’ worth of ore; and again you showed your good sense in the way you handled it; for you paid five millions in dividends and you invested the balance in labor and surplus. The effort to make a big showing in dividends is not always healthy for the future. Here you have shown your wonderful capacity to develop the earth so as to make both irrigated agriculture and stock-raising in all its forms two great industries. When you deal with a mine you take the ore out of the earth and take it away, and in the end exhaust the mine. The time may be very long in coming before it is exhausted, or it may be a short time; but in any event, mining means the exhaustion of the mine. But that is exactly what agriculture does not and must not mean.

So far from agriculture properly exhausting the land, it is always the sign of a vicious system of agriculture if the land is rendered poorer by it. The direct contrary should be the fact. After the farmer has had the farm for his life he should be able to hand it to his children as a better farm than it was when he had it.

In these regions, in the Rocky Mountain regions, it is especially incumbent upon us to treat the question of the natural pasturage, the question of the forests, and the question of the use of the waters, all from the one standpoint—the standpoint of the far-seeing statesman, of the far-seeing citizen, who wishes to preserve and not to exhaust the resources of the country, who wishes to see those resources come into the hands not of a few men of great wealth, least of all into the hands of a few men who will speculate in them; but be distributed among many men, each of whom intends to make his home in the land.

This whole so-called arid and semi-arid region is by nature the stock range of the Nation. One of the questions which are rising to confront us is how this range may be made to produce the greatest number and best quality of horses, cattle, and sheep, not only this year, not only next year, but for this generation and the next generation. The old system of grazing the ranges so closely as to injure the whole crop of grass was a serious detriment to the development of the West, a serious detriment to the development of our people. The ranges must be treated as a great invested capital; and that old system tended to dissipate and partially to destroy that capital. That is something that we can not as a Nation of home-makers permit. The wise man, the wise industry, the wise nation, maintains such capital unimpaired and tries to increase it; and more and more the range lands will be used in conjunction with the small irrigable areas which they include; so that the industry can take on a more stable character than ever before. It is impossible permanently, although it may be advisable for the time being, to move stock in a body from summer to winter ranges across country which can be made into homesteads, because when the country can itself be taken by actual settlers, in the long run it will only be possible to move the stock through hundreds of miles of dusty lanes where they can not graze, where they can not live. Our aim must be steadily to help develop the settler, the man who lives in the land and in growing up with it and raising his children to own it after him. More and more hereafter the stock owners will have the necessity forced upon them of providing green summer pasturage within the limits of their own ranges; and so the question of irrigation is wellnigh as important to the stockmen as to the agriculturist proper.

In the same way our mountain forests must be preserved from the harm done by over-grazing. Let all the grazing be done in them that can be done without injury to them, but do not let the mountain forests be despoiled by the man who will over-graze them and destroy them for the sake of three years’ use, and then go somewhere else, and leave by so much diminished the heritage of those who remain permanently in the land. I believe that already the movement has begun which will make in the long run the stock-raisers,—of whom I have been one myself, whose business I know, and with whom I feel the heartiest sympathy,—through the enlightenment of their own self-interest, become the heartiest defenders and the chief beneficiaries of the wise and moderate use of forest ranges, both within and without the forest reserves. It is and it must be the definite policy of this government to consider the good of all its citizens—stockmen, lumbermen, irrigators, and all others—in dealing with the forest reserves; and for that reason I most earnestly desire in every way to bring about the heartiest co-operation between the men who are doing the actual business of stock-raising, the actual business of irrigated agriculture, the actual business of lumbering,—the closest and most intimate relations, the heartiest co-operation between them and the government at Washington through the Department of Agriculture. Of course I do not have to say to any audience of intelligent people that nothing is such an enemy to the stock industry as persistent over-grazing. We shall have not far hence to raise the problem of the best method of making use of the public range. Our people have not as yet settled in their own minds what is that best method. In some way there will have to be formed such regulation as shall without undue restriction prevent the needless over-grazing, while keeping the public lands open to settlement through homestead entry. Such a policy would, of course, be of the most far-reaching benefit to the whole range industry. It is the same in dealing with our forest reserves. Almost every industry depends in some more or less vital way upon the preservation of the forests; and while citizens die, the government and the nation do not die, and we are bound in dealing with the forests to exercise the foresight necessary to use them now, but to use them in such a way as will also keep them for those who are to come after us.

The first great object of the forest reserves is, of course, the first great object of the whole land policy of the United States,—the creation of homes, the favoring of the home-maker. That is why we wish to provide for the home-makers of the present and the future the steady and continuous supply of timber, grass, and above all, of water. That is the object of the forest reserves, and that is why I bespeak your cordial co-operation in their preservation. Remember you must realize, what I thoroughly realize, that however wise a policy may be it can be enforced only if the people of the States believe in it. We can enforce the provisions of the forest reserve law or of any other law only so far as the best sentiment of the community or the State will permit that enforcement. Therefore it lies primarily not with the people at Washington, but with you, yourselves, to see that such policies are supported as will redound to the benefit of the home makers and therefore the sure and steady building up of the State as a whole.

One word as to the greatest question with which our people as a whole have to deal in the matter of internal development to-day—the question of irrigation. Not of recent years has any more important law been put upon the statute books of the Federal Government than the law a year ago providing for the first time that the National Government should interest itself in aiding and building up a system of irrigated agriculture in the Rocky Mountains and plains States. Here the government had to a large degree to sit at the feet of Gamaliel in the person of Utah; for what you had done and learned was of literally incalculable benefit to those engaged in framing and getting through the national irrigation law. Irrigation was first practiced on a large scale in this State. The necessity of the pioneers here led to the development of irrigation to a degree absolutely unknown before on this continent. In no respect is the wisdom of the early pioneers made more evident than in the sedulous care they took to provide for small farms, carefully tilled by those who lived on and benefited from them; and hence it comes about that the average amount of land required to support a family in Utah is smaller than in any other part of the United States. We all know that when you once get irrigation applied rain is a very poor substitute for it. The Federal Government must co-operate with Utah and Utah people for a further extension of the irrigated area. Many of the simpler problems of obtaining and applying water have already been solved and so well solved that, as I have said, some of the most important provisions of the Federal act, such as the control of the irrigating works by the communities they serve, such as making the water appurtenant to the land and not a source of speculation apart from the land, were based upon the experience of Utah. Of course the control of the larger streams which flow through more than one State must come under the Federal Government. Many of the great tracts which will ultimately so enlarge the cultivated area of Utah, which will ultimately so increase its population and wealth, are surrounded with intricate complications because of the high development which irrigation has already reached in this State. Necessarily the Federal officers charged with the execution of the law must proceed with great caution so as not to disturb present vested rights; but subject to that, they will go forward as fast as they can. They realize, and all men who have actually done irrigating here will realize, that no man is more timid than the practical irrigator regarding any change in the water distribution. He wants to look well before he leaps. He has learned from bitter experience what damage can come from well meant changes hastily made. The government can do a good deal; the government will do a good deal; but your experience here in Utah has shown that the greatest results which are accomplishing most spring directly from the sturdy courage, the self-denial, the willingness with iron resolution to endure the risk and the suffering, of the pioneers; for they were the men who sought and found a livelihood in what was once a desert, and they must be protected in the legitimate fruits of their toil.

One of the tasks that the government must do here in Utah is to build reservoirs for the storage of the flood waters, to undertake works too great to be undertaken by private capital. Great as the task is, and great as its benefits will become, the government must do still more. Besides the storage of the water there must be protection of the watersheds; and that is why I ask you to help the National Government protect the watersheds by protecting the forests upon them.

AT FREEPORT, ILL., JUNE 3, 1903

_Congressman Hitt, and you, my Fellow-Countrymen_:

Here where we meet to-day there occurred one of those memorable scenes in accordance with which the whole future history of nations is molded. Here were spoken winged words that flew through immediate time and that will fly through that portion of eternity recorded in the history of our race. Here was sounded the keynote of the struggle which after convulsing the Nation, made it in fact what it had only been in name,—at once united and free. It is eminently fitting that this monument, given by the women of this city in commemoration of the great debate that here took place, should be dedicated by the men whose deeds made good the words of Abraham Lincoln—the soldiers of the Civil War. The word was mighty. Had it not been for the word the deeds could not have taken place; but without the deeds the word would have been the idlest breath. It is forever to the honor of our nation that we brought forth the statesman who, with far-sighted vision, could pierce the clouds that obscured the sight of the keenest of his fellows, could see what the future inevitably held; and moreover that we had back of the statesman and behind him the men to whom it was given to fight in the greatest war ever waged for the good of mankind, for the betterment of the world.

I have literally but a moment here. I could not resist the chance that was offered me to stop and dedicate this monument, for great though we now regard Abraham Lincoln, my countrymen, the future will put him on an even higher pinnacle than we have put him. In all history I do not believe that there is to be found an orator whose speeches will last as enduringly as certain of the speeches of Lincoln; and in all history, with the sole exception of the man who founded this Republic, I do not think there will be found another statesman at once so great and so single-hearted in his devotion to the weal of his people. We can not too highly honor him; and the highest way in which we can honor him is to see that our homage is not only homage of words; that to lip loyalty we join the loyalty of the heart; that we pay honor to the memory of Abraham Lincoln by so conducting ourselves, by so carrying ourselves as citizens of this Republic, that we shall hand on undiminished to our children and our children’s children the heritage we received from the men who upheld the statesmanship of Lincoln in the council, who made good the soldiership of Grant in the field.

AT THE LINCOLN MONUMENT, SPRINGFIELD, ILL., JUNE 4, 1903

It is a good thing that the guard around the tomb of Lincoln should be composed of colored soldiers. It was my own good fortune at Santiago to serve beside colored troops. A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterward. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.

AT THE CONSECRATION OF GRACE MEMORIAL REFORMED CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C., JUNE 7, 1903

I shall ask your attention to three lines of the Dedication Canticle: “Serve the Lord with gladness: enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul with vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.”

Better lines could surely not be brought into any dedication service of a church; and it is a happy thing that we should have repeated them this morning. This church is consecrated to the service of the Lord; and we can serve Him by the way we serve our fellow-men. This church is consecrated to service and duty. It was written of old that “by their fruits ye shall know them”; and we can show the faith that is in us, we can show the sincerity of our devotion, by the fruits we bring forth. The man who is not a tender and considerate husband, a loving and wise father, is not serving the Lord when he goes to church; so with the woman; so with all who come here. Our being in this church, our communion here with one another, our sitting under the pastor and hearing from him the word of God, must, if we are sincere, show their effects in our lives outside.

We of the Dutch and German Reformed Churches, like our brethren of the Lutheran Church, have a peculiar duty to perform in this great country of ours, a country still in the making, for we have the duty peculiarly incumbent upon us to take care of our brethren who come each year from over seas to our shores. The man going to a new country is torn by the roots from all his old associations, and there is great danger to him in the time before he gets his roots down into the new country, before he brings himself into touch with his fellows in the new land. For that reason I always take a peculiar interest in the attitude of our churches toward the immigrants who come to these shores. I feel that we should be peculiarly watchful over them, because of our own history, because we or our fathers came here under like conditions. Now that we have established ourselves let us see to it that we stretch out the hand of help, the hand of brotherhood, toward the new-comers, and help them as speedily as possible to get into such relations that it will be easy for them to walk well in the new life. We are not to be excused if we selfishly sit down and enjoy gifts that have been given to us and do not try to share them with our poorer fellows coming from every part of the world, who many of them stand in such need of the helping hand; who often not only meet too many people anxious to associate with them for their detriment, but often too few anxious to associate with them for their good.

I trust that with the consecration of each new church of the Reformed creed in this our country there will be established a fresh centre of effort to get at and to help for their good the people that yearly come from over seas to us. No more important work can be done by our people; important to the cause of Christianity, important to the cause of true national life and greatness here in our own land.

Another thing: let us so far as strength is given us make it evident to those who look on and who are not of us that our faith is not one of words merely; that it finds expression in deeds. One sad, one lamentable phase of human history is that the very loftiest words, implying the loftiest ideas, have often been used as cloaks for the commission of dreadful deeds of iniquity. No more hideous crimes have ever been committed by men than those that have been committed in the name of liberty, of order, of brotherhood, of religion. People have butchered one another under circumstances of dreadful atrocity, claiming all the time to be serving the object of the brotherhood of man or of the fatherhood of God. We must in our lives, in our efforts, endeavor to further the cause of brotherhood in the human family; and we must do it in such a way that the men anxious to find subject for complaint or derision in the churches of the United States, in our church, may not be able to find it by pointing out any contrast between our professions and our lives.

This church is consecrated to-day to duty and to service, to the worship of the Creator, and to an earnest effort on our part so to shape our lives among ourselves and in relation to the outside world that we may feel that we have done our part in bringing a little nearer the day when there shall be on this earth a genuine brotherhood of man.

AT THE SAENGERFEST, BALTIMORE, MD., JUNE 15, 1903

_My Fellow-Citizens_:

Let me in the first place congratulate the city of Baltimore upon what she has done and upon the way she has done it; and then let me welcome the members of the Saengerfest Association and all the guests of Baltimore this evening. Since the beginning of our country’s history many different race strains have entered to make up the composite American. Out of and from each we have gained something for our national character; to each we owe something special for what it has contributed to us as a people.

It is almost exactly two hundred and twenty years ago that the first marked immigration from Germany to what were then the colonies in this Western Hemisphere began. As is inevitable with any pioneers those pioneers of the German race on this side of the ocean had to encounter bitter privation, had to struggle against want in many forms; had to meet and overcome hardship; for the people that go forth to seek their well-being in strange lands must inevitably be ready to pay as the price of success the expenditure of all that there is in them to overcome the obstacles in their way. It was some fifty years later that the great tide of German immigration in colonial times began to flow hither; one of the leaders in it being Muhlenburg, the founder of a family which has contributed to military and civil life some of the worthiest figures in American history. The first of the famous speakers of the House of Representatives was Muhlenburg, of German ancestry.

Baltimore is a centre in that region of our land where from the earliest days there was that intermingling of ethnic strains which finally went to the making of the Americans who in ’76 made this country a nation. Within the boundaries of this State was founded that colony which first of all on this western continent saw a government modeled upon these principles of religious freedom and toleration which we now regard as the birthrights of American citizens.

Throughout our career of development the German immigration to this country went steadily onward, and they who came here, and their sons and grandsons, played an ever-increasing part in the history of our people—a part that culminated in the Civil War; for every lover of the Union must ever bear in mind what was done in this commonwealth as in the commonwealth of Missouri, by the folk of German birth or origin who served so loyally the flag that was theirs by inheritance or adoption.

And here in this city I would be unwilling to let an occasion like this pass without recalling the part of incalculable importance played by the members of the Turn Verein of Baltimore in saving Baltimore to the Union. In congratulating every man here to whom it was given to fight in the great Civil War, in congratulating the men of Baltimore who in these dark days followed the lead of Sigel, Rapp, and Blumenberg in playing well and nobly their part in upholding the hands of Abraham Lincoln, I congratulate them thrice over because it was given to them to fight in a contest where the victors and the vanquished alike have bequeathed to us as a heritage the memory of the valor and the loyalty to the right as to each it was given to see the right, shown alike by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray, in the great days of the Civil War. Terrible though that contest was, in which with blood and tears and sweat, with the suffering of men and the sorrow of women, the generation of Lincoln and Grant purchased for us peace and union, it paid for itself over and over again by what it left to us—not merely a reunited land, not merely a land in which freedom was a fact instead of only a boast, but above all the right as Americans to feel within us the lift toward lofty things which must come to those who know that their fathers and forefathers have in the supreme crisis entirely shown themselves fit to rank among the men of all time.

I want to say just one thing more. I feel that the men of this Association and of kindred associations are not only adding to the common fund of pleasure, but are doing genuine missionary work of a needed kind when they hold such a festival as this. I wish that everywhere in our country we could see clubs and associations including all our citizens, similar in character to that Society which has furnished the reason for the assembling of this great audience to-night. No greater contribution to American social life could possibly be made than by instilling into it the capacity for Gemüthlichkeit. No greater good can come to our people than to encourage in them a capacity for enjoyment which shall discriminate sharply between what is vicious and what is pleasant. Nothing can add more to our capacity for healthy social enjoyment than, by force of example no less than by precept, to encourage the formation of societies which by their cultivation of music, vocal and instrumental, give great lift to the artistic side, the æsthetic side of our nature; and especially is that true when we remember that no man is going to go very far wrong if he belongs to a society where he can take his wife with him to enjoy it.

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA., JUNE 16, 1903

_Mr. Chairman; my Fellow-Americans_:

It is to me to-day a double pleasure to be with you; in the first place, because the University of Virginia is one among that limited number of institutions of learning to which because of its historic association every American proud of his country and his country’s history must turn; and in the next place, because I have just finished a trip to and fro across this continent, which at almost every step has reminded me of some great deed done by a Virginian or a descendant of a Virginian, in that wonderful formative period which has occupied more than half of this Republic’s life; going across the Alleghanies in the path over the mountains which men of Virginia first crossed to found the commonwealth of Kentucky; beyond the Ohio, which was crossed by a military force carrying the American flag for the first time when a son of Virginia, George Rogers Clark, led his little band of backwoods riflemen to conquer what is now the heart of this Republic, and that in the middle of the Revolutionary War. Then I crossed the Mississippi and went through that great region of prairie, plain, and mountain, now dotted with cities, each filled with the fruits of our material civilization, cities placed upon spots which were unknown to any map maker but a century ago; thence to the Pacific Ocean, I went through the regions which mark the two greatest territorial expansions of this Nation; the greatest of which, by the fact of its acquisition, is in itself a tribute most to that man who founded this University—President Thomas Jefferson—and which was explored by two Virginians born not far from this neighborhood—Lewis and Clark. When I got south of the limits of the old Louisiana Purchase I came into that region acquired as the result of the Mexican War—the region in territorial extent next to the Louisiana Purchase; and in that war the two foremost figures were men likewise born in Virginia—Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott.

Virginia has always rightly prided herself upon the character of the men whom she has sent into public life. No more wonderful example of governmental ability, ability in statecraft and public administration, has ever been given than by the history of Virginia’s sons in public life. I feel that this University, which so peculiarly embodies the ideal of Virginia, is in no small degree accountable for the happy keeping up of the spirit which sends into public life men of whom their constituents exact that they shall possess both courage and courtesy; and that is the reason why—as I am glad to say here in the presence of the two United States Senators from Virginia, both of them graduates of this University—whether one agrees or differs with them it is so genuine a pleasure to be brought into contact with them in handling public affairs.

In the very able address to which we have had the honor of listening it is pointed out that in mere years the history of this University is not long. Years count differently at different places and at different times. Fifty years of Europe are very much longer than a cycle of Cathay; and the period grows longer still when you take it across into the Western Hemisphere. To us of this Nation there must always be the charm of old historic associations inseparably connected with this institution, the birth of which will always recall the names of three of our greatest Presidents, and from which one can wellnigh see the former abodes of all three of those Presidents—Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.

Let me acknowledge a piece of personal indebtedness to this institution. When last year we sought at Washington to restore the White House, which ought to be always kept as the historic building of the Nation, to what it was planned to be by the founders of the Republic, we came here to study the building which represented in its existence the realization of the ideas of certain of those founders of the Republic, and gained from our study of a portion of this University an idea of the plan along which the restoration of the White House was to proceed.

The University is not old in years as years are counted in an older world, but there are very few institutions of learning in Europe which, however old, have such an honor roll of service to the State, in the council chambers of the State, and of service on the tented field, which have such an honor roll of statesmen and soldiers, as the roll that can be furnished by reading the list of the graduates of this University of Virginia. The University has been prolific of men who have gone into public life; but it is not only in public life that the record made by the University is imperishable. The strangest, in some ways the most brilliant name to be found in American letters, the name of the man who contributed something purely individual in poetry and in prose, not merely to the literature of this country, not merely to the literature of our tongue, but to the literature of mankind—the name of Edgar Allan Poe, is to be found upon your rolls. It is a pleasure to one who earnestly hopes to see the literary habit in American life kept up and who hopes to see a keeping up of productive scholarship and literature, to be able to number among his friends one of those younger literary men of whom it can be safely asserted that they have added something permanent to letters, in the person of one of your graduates—my friend, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page.

I owe you for other things. When I wished to choose the Surgeon-General of the Navy I had to go to Virginia and to the University of Virginia to find the man whom I esteem, not only because of his ability as a public servant, but because of those qualities which will render him ever one for whom I and mine feel the warmest and liveliest personal affection. Finally, when I had to choose an Ambassador to represent us at the court of Russia, I had to take another graduate of your University—Mr. McCormick. You will pardon me one personal allusion; I shall never forget as long as I live certain of your graduates who served in my regiment during the Cuban War.

The University of Virginia has stood for much in our national life. It is something to stand merely for such beauty as your buildings and campus represent here. It is a good thing for any nation to have as beautiful an institution of learning as is this University. It is a good thing for the taste of a nation to have such an example of good taste ever before it. You stand for the production of scholarship; for the production of men who are to do well for the State if ever the need of calling upon them for their services may arise; but above all, as has been so well said in the address to which we have listened to-day, the University of Virginia stands for the production of men; of men who are to do each a man’s duty in the world. A good American never owes anything that he does not seek to repay. The man who is content to go through life owing his alma mater for an education for which he has made no adequate return is not true to the ideals of American citizenship. He is in honor bound to make such return. He can make it in but one way; he can return what he owes to his alma mater only by making his alma mater proud of what he does in service rendered to his fellow-men. That is the type of return we have the right to expect of the University men in this country.

TO THE HOLY NAME SOCIETY AT OYSTER BAY, N. Y., AUGUST 16, 1903

_Very Reverend Dean, Reverend Clergy, and you of the Holy Name Society_:

I count myself fortunate in having the chance to say a word to you to-day; and at the outset let me, Father Power, on behalf of my neighbors, your congregation, welcome all your guests here to Oyster Bay. I have a partial right to join in that welcome myself, for it was my good fortune in the days of Father Power’s predecessor, Father Belford, to be the first man to put down a small contribution for the erection of your church here. I am particularly glad to see such a society as this flourishing as your society has flourished, because the future welfare of our Nation depends upon the way in which we can combine in our men—in our young men—decency and strength. Just this morning when attending service on the great battleship _Kearsarge_ I listened to a sermon addressed to the officers and enlisted men of the navy, in which the central thought was that each American must be a good man or he could not be a good citizen. And one of the things dwelt upon in that sermon was the fact that a man must be clean of mouth as well as clean of life—must show by his words as well as by his actions his fealty to the Almighty if he was to be what we have a right to expect from men wearing the national uniform. We have good Scriptural authority for the statement that it is not what comes into a man’s mouth but what goes out of it that counts. I am not addressing weaklings, or I should not take the trouble to come here. I am addressing strong, vigorous men, who are engaged in the active hard work of life; and life to be worth living must be a life of activity and hard work. I am speaking to men engaged in the hard, active work of life, and therefore to men who will count for good or for evil. It is peculiarly incumbent upon you who have strength to set a right example to others. I ask you to remember that you can not retain your self-respect if you are loose and foul of tongue, that a man who is to lead a clean and honorable life must inevitably suffer if his speech likewise is not clean and honorable. Every man here knows the temptations that beset all of us in this world. At times any man will slip. I do not expect perfection, but I do expect genuine and sincere effort toward being decent and cleanly in thought, in word, and in deed. As I said at the outset, I hail the work of this society as typifying one of those forces which tend to the betterment and uplifting of our social system. Our whole effort should be toward securing a combination of the strong qualities with those qualities which we term virtues. I expect you to be strong. I would not respect you if you were not. I do not want to see Christianity professed only by weaklings; I want to see it a moving spirit among men of strength. I do not expect you to lose one particle of your strength or courage by being decent. On the contrary, I should hope to see each man who is a member of this society, from his membership in it become all the fitter to do the rough work of the world; all the fitter to work in time of peace; and if, which may Heaven forfend, war should come, all the fitter to fight in time of war. I desire to see in this country the decent men strong and the strong men decent, and until we get that combination in pretty good shape we are not going to be by any means as successful as we should be. There is always a tendency among very young men and among boys who are not quite young men as yet to think that to be wicked is rather smart; to think it shows that they are men. Oh, how often you see some young fellow who boasts that he is going to “see life,” meaning by that that he is going to see that part of life which it is a thousandfold better should remain unseen! I ask that every man here constitute himself his brother’s keeper by setting an example to that younger brother which will prevent him from getting such a false estimate of life. Example is the most potent of all things. If any one of you in the presence of younger boys, and especially the younger people of your own family, misbehave yourself, if you use coarse and blasphemous language before them, you can be sure that these younger people will follow your example and not your precept. It is no use to preach to them if you do not act decently yourself. You must feel that the most effective way in which you can preach is by your practice.

As I was driving up here a friend who was with us said that in his experience the boy who went out into life with a foul tongue was apt so to go because his kinsfolk, at least his intimate associates, themselves had foul tongues. The father, the elder brothers, the friends, can do much toward seeing that the boys as they become men become clean and honorable men.

I have told you that I wanted you not only to be decent, but to be strong. These boys will not admire virtue of a merely anæmic type. They believe in courage, in manliness. They admire those who have the quality of being brave, the quality of facing life as life should be faced, the quality that must stand at the root of good citizenship in peace or in war. If you are to be effective as good Christians you must possess strength and courage, or your example will count for little with the young, who admire strength and courage. I want to see you, the men of the Holy Name Society, you who embody the qualities which the younger people admire, by your example give those young people the tendency, the trend, in the right direction; and remember that this example counts in many other ways besides cleanliness of speech. I want to see every man able to hold his own with the strong, and also ashamed to oppress the weak. I want to see each young fellow able to do a man’s work in the world, and of a type which will not permit imposition to be practiced upon him. I want to see him too strong of spirit to submit to wrong, and, on the other hand, ashamed to do wrong to others. I want to see each man able to hold his own in the rough work of actual life outside, and also, when he is at home, a good man, unselfish in dealing with wife, or mother, or children. Remember that the preaching does not count if it is not backed up by practice. There is no good in your preaching to your boys to be brave, if you run away. There is no good in your preaching to them to tell the truth if you do not. There is no good in your preaching to them to be unselfish if they see you selfish with your wife, disregardful of others. We have a right to expect that you will come together in meetings like this; that you will march in processions; that you will join in building up such a great and useful association as this; and, even more, we have a right to expect that in your own homes and among your own associates you will prove by your deeds that yours is not a lip loyalty merely; that you show in actual practice the faith that is in you.

ON BOARD THE _KEARSARGE_, DURING THE REVIEW OF THE FLEET, AUGUST 17, 1903

_Officers and Enlisted Men_:

I wish to say a word of thanks to you on behalf of the people of the United States. There are many public servants whom I hold in high esteem, but there are no others whom as a class I hold in quite the esteem I do the officers and enlisted men of the navy and the army of the United States.