Chapter II: Part 2

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.

Before speaking of what I had intended to say here to-day, I want to say a word just suggested by that address on “idealism in politics.” I wish to see every graduate of this college, and every graduate of every other college in the land, feel (and I thank the speaker for the way he emphasized it) the need of ideals in business and in law, quite as much as in politics. I wish to see every graduate do all that in him lies to uphold a standard of practical idealism in after life. I was struck and amused by the sentence in which the speaker said that at present if you spoke of ideals, you met with the answer, “Oh, yes, that is very pretty in theory, but it won’t work in Troy!” There are two sides to that. In the first place, it is a bad thing for Troy if Troy will not stand idealism; and in the next place it is a poor type of ideal that is of no use in Troy. I want you to remember the last just as much as the first. I want you to have high ideals, but practical ideals. I do not want you ever to get into a frame of mind which we see pretty often in the world at large, which believes that you can only have either high or fantastic ideals, or else low and practical ones. If you have to choose, of course I would a great deal rather see you choose high and fantastic ideals than low and practical ones, because the last are a detriment to the Nation at large, while the first are merely of no earthly consequence. If you have to choose between being noxious and being merely harmless, of course, choose to be harmless. But do not expect very great gratitude from any person interested in the country if you choose merely to be harmless. If you choose to have high ideals so fantastic that they are of no use when you try to apply them in practical life, do not for one moment delude yourself into the belief that to have these fantastic ideals shows that you are more virtuous than the man who has not got them. It merely shows that you are more foolish. Have a high ideal and try to realize it, measurably, within your powers, as, immeasurably and with tremendous power, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington strove to realize their ideals. Have high ideals, and then try to realize them in practical shape. I do not want to see you go out of this institution of learning with an ideal impossible to put into effect, because I am afraid if you leave it with such an ideal and find that this ideal does not work, then instead of realizing that the fault lies in you for having chosen that kind of an ideal, you will think it lies with idealism itself, and will abandon idealism. What I desire to see you feel is that you must have a high ideal; that you must also apply that ideal in practice; and above all things to avoid the state of mind in which you preach an impossible idealism, and make amends for it by not practicing any idealism at all.

It is perfectly true that you want to avoid improper compromises, but you will not get any other, if you are not able to compromise in non-essential matters. I do not suppose there is one of these men on this platform—Mr. Root, Mr. Choate, Senator Crane—who has not disagreed with me on some pretty important points, ranging from the navy to corporations. But we have been able to come to a working agreement. We have been able to establish a basis for common action, not by surrendering on matters of principle, but by agreeing each to subordinate his views on certain points, so that we could secure the efficiency of action that can only come from united effort. I want you to feel that to accomplish anything in after life, you men who are just going out into the great world, you must keep ever before your minds both the desire to work for betterment, and the power to work in combination with your fellows (who will not on all points agree with you) practically to achieve that betterment.

In striving to solve the immediate governmental problems that are before us, we have a right to expect leadership from the men who come out of Williams, who come out of the other colleges and universities of the land; we have a right to expect that leadership to be shown with practical efficiency, in seeing that this Nation does its duty abroad and at home. I wish to see this Nation not merely talk for peace and righteousness, but act for peace and righteousness; but I wish to see this Nation stand for righteousness first and then for peace. I wish to see the Nation stand for the peace of justice, for the righteousness in the attainment of which peace is normally a potent instrument, but for which we must stand, whether peace comes or not. In 1861, there were men who cried peace, peace, when there was no peace; and we have peace now combined with righteousness, and have secured it, as I believe, for ages to come on this continent, because men then dared to draw the sword for righteousness. We have no such terrible crisis as that of 1861 facing us now. On the contrary, we have a series of rather humdrum little crises which it is sometimes exasperating to have to face, but which we must.

The particular small crisis of which I am thinking is that in Santo Domingo last year. I had done everything that in me lay to prevent that crisis coming. All I asked, on behalf of the people of the United States, of Santo Domingo was that it should be good and happy. Without entering into the ethical question, I shall merely say that it was not happy. Finally affairs grew into such shape down there that it was evident that the bonds of society were on the point of dissolution; and the Government of Santo Domingo made an earnest appeal to the Government of the United States and asked that this Nation, out of the abundance of its strength, should strive to help a weaker brother. Now do not forget that that was the appeal, and that it was because of this appeal that we took action. There were of course two motives that influenced us. One was the desire to help the people of Santo Domingo for their own sakes, and the other, and a legitimate one, was to try to fend off the possibility of trouble coming to Santo Domingo, which might bring the United States itself into trouble. The debts of Santo Domingo were so great and the impossibility of paying all those debts so patent that there was a threat of imminent interference by foreign nations to collect the debts due their own citizens. And as the only way of guaranteeing the collection of those debts was to seize the custom-houses, it inevitably meant the seizure nominally, temporarily, of a certain amount of Santo Domingo territory, which would almost inevitably produce a conflict between us and those foreign governments. So, in the interest of the peace of the world, and in the interest of justice to Santo Domingo, we yielded to Santo Domingo’s request and have started to try to help her so to carry on her finances that she may be able to pay all that she can of what she justly owes. In taking that action the Government has proceeded upon the theory that you can not formulate a right, individual or national, without impliedly formulating a responsibility and obligation to go with that right.

We say that in our own interest and in the interest of the peoples of the Western Hemisphere we adhere to the Monroe Doctrine. With the promulgation of that doctrine must go the responsibility that ought by right to accompany it. We can not say that other peoples shall not do what ought to be done, unless we do it ourselves. People answer that trouble and bother will come if we do it. If this Nation refuses to do its duty because it thinks the duty will necessitate encountering some trouble, some bother, then let this Nation cease to claim to be great. I demand that the Nation do its duty, and accept the responsibility that must go with greatness. I ask that the Nation dare to be great, and that in daring to be great it show that it knows how to do justice to the weak no less than to exact justice from the strong. In order to take such a position of being a great Nation, the one thing that we must not do is to bluff. It is perhaps defensible, although I think improper, to say that we will not try to be a big Nation, will not try to play the part of a big Nation or act as such in the world. But the unpardonable thing is to say we will act as a big Nation and then decline to take the necessary steps to make the words good. Therefore, gentlemen, see to it that the navy is built up, and kept at the highest point of efficiency. I ask that, not in the interest of war, but as a guarantee of peace. I believe in the Monroe Doctrine; I believe in the building and maintaining as an open highway for the nations of mankind the Panama Canal. But I had a great deal rather see this country abandon the Monroe Doctrine and give up all thought of building the Panama Canal than to see it attempt to maintain the one and construct the other while refusing to provide the means which can alone render our attitude as a Nation worthy of the respect of the other nations of mankind. Keep on building and maintaining at the highest point of efficiency the United States navy, or quit trying to be a big Nation. Do one or the other.

Now for our internal affairs. I am particularly glad to speak to an audience like this, because I do not know that I shall have the unqualified assent of everybody here. If I address an audience merely of men of very small means or wage-workers, then what I want to tell them, as the most important thing for them to learn, is to avoid an attitude of rancorous envy or hostility toward men of wealth, and above all to remember that the well-being of our social structure rests upon obedience to the law, upon the immediate suppression of mob violence, mob rule, in any form. There can be and must be no paltering with any manifestation of that spirit. Any attempt to override the law by action of individuals or by the action of mobs, whether the attempt comes in connection with labor difficulties or in any other way, must in the interest of the Nation be met fearlessly at the earliest opportunity, and the lawlessness put down.

On the other side, just as we must never allow this Government to be changed into government by a mob, so we must never allow it to be changed into government by a plutocracy. The growth of our modern industrialism has resulted in an altogether disproportionate reward to the man who goes into money-making as his only career. Two evil results follow. One is the result to himself, for, unless he is a man of very strong character, there almost inevitably comes a certain arrogance, or at least a certain carelessness toward the rights of others. The other result is to breed in the minds of poor people an attitude of sullen envy toward men of wealth, which is infinitely more damaging to the people who hold it than any action of the man of wealth could be.

There must be a closer supervision by the Government of great industrial combinations, for of course wealth at present finds its expression through these great industrial combinations. I think it has been a mistake to act on the theory which has shaped most of our legislation, National and State, for the last thirty years, that it is possible to turn back the hands of the clock, to forbid combinations and to restore business to conditions which have absolutely passed away. That can not be done. What we can do is to exercise an efficient supervision over the combinations, so as to see as far as possible that they are used in the interest of and not against the interest of the general public. I do not believe that such supervision can come effectively through the State, nor that it can effectively come through the municipality. Ultimately in the great majority of cases to be effective it must be exercised by the National Government. I trust that in the end means will be found by which the exercise of such control over all the great industrial corporations which are really engaged in and doing an interstate business will be lodged in the hands of the National Government. As the first step to that I hope to see the passage of legislation which will give as an executive, not as a judicial function, to the National Government the supervision of the railroads of the United States which are engaged in interstate commerce, with the power, when a rate is complained of as improper and unjust, to examine that rate, and if the rate should be changed to change it to a given rate, and to have that given rate take practically immediate effect. Now, I am perfectly well aware that there are objections to the proposed change, but in my judgment they are far outweighed by the objections attendant upon not making the change. The fear expressed by excellent people, who no doubt feel it genuinely, that we could not get a commission who would fix all the rates of the railroads of the country, is to my mind much as if they should express fear that you could not get Supreme Court Justices who would be able to fix all the laws. I expect that the commission will be able to pass upon a given rate brought before it, just as the Supreme Court passes upon a given question of law brought before it; and one will prove to be as feasible as the other has proved feasible. That system should be, and in my judgment will be introduced. I believe it will work a measurable betterment for the public. Listen to what I say—a measurable betterment for the public. I do not believe that it will produce the millennium, or anything approaching it; and I am quite certain that some of its most ardent advocates will be disappointed with the results. But I think measurable good will come. It can only come if the officers intrusted with the administration of the law remember that it is exactly as much their duty to protect the railroad from the public as to protect the public from the railroad; to remember that when we say we want justice from the railroad we must, if we are honest, add also a pledge to do justice to the railroad.

AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY, JUNE 28, 1905

THE HARVARD SPIRIT

_Bishop Lawrence, Brothers, Men of Harvard_:

We have just heard from a Harvard man speaking in behalf of the class of ’55. I now speak to you in behalf of the class of ’80. Mr. Choate, you can afford to be generous. A man whose life has been passed in public service such as yours can freely praise those who come after him. I speak in behalf of the younger men here present when I say that we shall count ourselves more than happy if in the future we can approach the service of the men of Harvard in the past. I trust that if any great crisis come again—may Heaven forbid its coming—if ever a great crisis like that of ’61 should come, may the men of that day who have been brought up in Harvard rise level to it as you of the years from ’55 onward rose level to meet the crisis of your day. We heard from Mr. Agassiz what the class of his day did, how many of them went into the Union Army, how some of them went into the gallant Confederate Army, one of the members of which, the great justice from Louisiana, Mr. Justice White, has to-day become an adopted son of Harvard. In Kentucky, a number of years ago, I had a good friend, a man much older than I was, Colonel John Mason Brown. He came back from a trip to the Rocky Mountains just after Sumter had been fired on. His mother brought him the sword that his father had worn with honor in the Mexican War, and said to him, “My son, war has come, and you must draw this sword; I hope you will draw it for the flag under which your father fought; but draw it for one side or the other you must.” We Americans of to-day have the right to feel the same pride in the valor, the devotion, the fealty to the right as it was given them to see the right, of those who wore the gray no less than of those who wore the blue.

In Bishop Lawrence’s introduction—an introduction which touched me deeply, not only because of the words used, but because of the high value which I put upon the friendship of the man using them—he spoke of the effort that I am making for peace throughout the world. Of course I am for peace. Of course every President who is fit to be President must be for peace. But I am for one thing before peace; I am for righteousness first, and then peace. I am for peace, because normally peace is the best instrument wherewith to obtain righteousness. But, Mr. Agassiz, when you and those like you faced 1861, you had to win peace by war, and you rendered us forever your debtors, because when the choice was between what was peaceful and what was right you chose what was right.

A great university like this has two especial functions. The first is to produce a small number of scholars of the highest rank, a small number of men who, in science and literature, or in art, will do productive work of the first class. The second is to send out into the world a very large number of men who never could achieve, and who ought not to try to achieve, such a position in the field of scholarship, but whose energies are to be felt in every other form of activity; and who should go out from our doors with the balanced development of body, of mind, and above all of character, which shall fit them to do work both honorable and efficient.

Much of the effort to accomplish the first function, that of developing men capable of productive scholarship, as distinguished from merely imitative, annotative, or pedagogic scholarship, must come through the graduate school. The law school and medical school do admirable work in fitting men for special professions, but they in no shape or way supply any shortcomings in the graduate school any more than does the college proper, the college of the undergraduates. The ideal for the graduate school and for those undergraduates who are to go into it must be the ideal of high scholarly production, which is to be distinguished in the sharpest fashion from the mere transmittal of ready-made knowledge without adding to it. If America is to contribute its full share to the progress not alone of knowledge, but of wisdom, then we must put ever-increasing emphasis on university work done along the lines of the graduate school. We can best help the growth of American scholarship by seeing that as a career it is put more on a level with the other careers open to our young men. The general opinion of the community is bound to have a very great effect even upon its most vigorous and independent minds. If in the public mind the career of the scholar is regarded as of insignificant value when compared with that of a glorified pawnbroker, then it will with difficulty be made attractive to the most vigorous and gifted of our American young men. Good teachers, excellent institutions, and libraries are all demanded in a graduate school worthy of the name. But there is an even more urgent demand for the right sort of student. No first-class science, no first-class literature or art, can ever be built up with second-class men. The scholarly career, the career of the man of letters, the man of arts, the man of science, must be made such as to attract those strong and virile youths who now feel that they can only turn to business, law, or politics. There is no one thing which will bring about this desired change, but there is one thing which will materially help in bringing it about, and that is to secure to scholars the chance of getting one of a few brilliant positions as prizes if they rise to the first rank in their chosen career. Every such brilliant position should have as an accompaniment an added salary, which shall help indicate how high the position really is; and it must be the efforts of the alumni which can alone secure such salaries for such positions.

As a people I think we are waking up to the fact that there must be better pay for the average man and average woman engaged in the work of education. But I am not speaking of this now; I am not speaking of the desirability, great though that is, of giving better payment to the average educator, I am speaking of the desirability of giving to the exceptional man the chance of winning an exceptional prize, just as he has the chance to do in law and business. In business at the present day nothing could be more healthy than an immense reduction in the money value of the exceptional prizes thus to be won; but in scholarship what is needed is the reverse. In this country we rightly go upon the theory that it is more important to care for the welfare of the average man than to put a premium upon the exertions of the exceptional. But we must not forget that the establishment of such a premium for the exceptional, though of less importance, is nevertheless of very great importance. It is important even to the development of the average man, for the average of all of us is raised by the work of the great masters.

It is, I trust, unnecessary to say that I appreciate to the full the fact that the highest work of all will never be affected one way or the other by any question of compensation. And much of the work which is really best for the Nation must from the very nature of things be non-remunerative as compared with the work of the ordinary industries and vocations. Nor would it ever be possible or desirable that the rewards of transcendent success in scholarship should even approximate, from a monetary standpoint, the rewards in other vocations. But it is also true that the effect upon ambitious minds can not but be bad if as a people we show our very slight regard for scholarly achievement by making no provision at all for its reward. The chief use of the increased money value of the scholar’s prize would be the index thereby afforded of the respect in which it was popularly held. The American scientist, the American scholar, should have the chance at least of winning such prizes as are open to his successful brother in Germany, England, or France, where the rewards paid for first-class scholarly achievement are as much above those paid in this country as our rewards for first-class achievement in industry or law are above those paid abroad.

But of course what counts infinitely more than any possible outside reward is the spirit of the worker himself. The prime need is to instil into the minds of the scholars themselves a true appreciation of real as distinguished from sham success. In productive scholarship, in the scholarship which adds by its work to the sum of substantial achievement with which the country is to be credited, it is only first-class work that counts. In this field the smallest amount of really first-class work is worth all the second-class work that can possibly be produced; and to have done such work is in itself the fullest and amplest reward to the man producing it. We outsiders should according to our ability aid him in every way to produce it. Yet all that we can do is but little compared to what he himself can and must do. The spirit of the scholar is the vital factor in the productive scholarship of the country.

So much for the first function of the university, the sending forth of a small number of scholars of the highest rank who will do productive work of the first class. Now turn to the second, and what may be called the normal function of the college, the function of turning out each year many hundreds of men who shall possess the trained intelligence, and especially the character, that will enable them to hold high the renown of this ancient seat of learning by doing useful service for the Nation. It is not my purpose to discuss at length what should be done in Harvard to produce the right spirit among the men who go out of Harvard, but rather to speak of what this spirit should be. Nor shall I speak of the exceptions, the men to whom college life is a disadvantage. Randolph of Roanoke, he of the biting tongue, once remarked of an opponent that he reminded him of certain tracts of land “which were almost worthless by nature, and became entirely so by cultivation.” Of course, if, in any individual, university training produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort, a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of supercilious aloofness from the world of real men who do the world’s real work, then it has harmed that individual; but in such case there remains the abiding comfort that he would not have amounted to much anyway. Neither a college training nor anything else can do much good to the man of weak fibre or to the man with a twist in his moral or intellectual makeup. But the average undergraduate has enough robustness of nature, enough capacity for enthusiasm and aspiration, to make it worth while to turn to account the stuff that is in him.

There are, however, two points in the undergraduate life of Harvard about which I think we have a right to feel some little concern. One is the growth of luxury in the university. I do not know whether anything we can say will have much effect on this point, but just so far as the alumni have weight I hope to see that weight felt in serious and sustained effort against the growing tendency to luxury, and in favor of all that makes for democratic conditions. One of our number, the one whom I think the rest of us most delight to honor—Colonel Higginson—has given to our Alma Mater the Harvard Union, than which no better gift, no gift meeting a more vital need, could have been given to the university. It is neither possible nor desirable to try to take away all social differences from the student life; but it is a good thing to show how unimportant these differences are compared to the differences of real achievement, and compared also to the bonds which should unite together all the men who are in any degree capable of such real achievement; bonds, moreover, which should also knit these capable men to their brethren who need their help.

The second point upon which I wish to speak is the matter of sport. Now I shall not be suspected of a tendency unduly to minimize the importance of sport. I believe heartily in sport. I believe in outdoor games, and I do not mind in the least that they are rough games, or that those who take part in them are occasionally injured. I have no sympathy whatever with the overwrought sentimentality which would keep a young man in cotton wool, and I have a hearty contempt for him if he counts a broken arm or collar bone as of serious consequence when balanced against the chance of showing that he possesses hardihood, physical address, and courage. But when these injuries are inflicted by others, either wantonly or of set design, we are confronted by the question, not of damage to one man’s body, but of damage to the other man’s character. Brutality in playing a game should awaken the heartiest and most plainly shown contempt for the player guilty of it; especially if this brutality is coupled with a low cunning in committing it without getting caught by the umpire. I hope to see both graduate and undergraduate opinion come to scorn such a man as one guilty of base and dishonorable action, who has no place in the regard of gallant and upright men.

It is a bad thing for any college man to grow to regard sport as the serious business of life. It is a bad thing to permit sensationalism and hysteria to shape the development of our sports. And finally it is a much worse thing to permit college sport to become in any shape or way tainted by professionalism, or by so much as the slightest suspicion of money-making; and this is especially true if the professionalism is furtive, if the boy or man violates the spirit of the rule while striving to keep within the letter. Professional sport is all right in its way. I am glad to say that among my friends I number professional boxers and wrestlers, oarsmen, and baseball men, whose regard I value, and whom in turn I regard as thoroughly good citizens. But the college undergraduate who, in furtive fashion, becomes a semi-professional is an unmitigated curse, and that not alone to university life and to the cause of amateur sport; for the college graduate ought in after years to take the lead in putting the business morality of this country on a proper plane, and he can not do it if in his own college career his code of conduct has been warped and twisted. Moreover, the spirit which puts so excessive a value upon his work as to produce this semi-professional is itself unhealthy. I wish to see Harvard win a reasonable proportion of the contests in which it enters, and I should be heartily ashamed of every Harvard athlete who did not spend every ounce there was in him in the effort to win, provided only he does it in honorable and manly fashion. But I think our effort should be to minimize rather than to increase that kind of love of athletics which manifests itself, not in joining in the athletic sports, but in crowding by tens of thousands to see other people indulge in them. It is a far better thing for our colleges to have the average student interested in some form of athletics than to have them all gather in a mass to see other people do their athletics for them.

So much for the undergraduates. Now for the alumni, the men who are at work out in the great world. Of course the man’s first duty is to himself and to those immediately dependent upon him. Unless he can pull his own weight he must be content to remain a passenger all his life. But we have a right to expect that the men who come out of Harvard will do something more than merely pull their own weight. We have a right to expect that they will count as positive forces for the betterment of their fellow-countrymen; and they can thus count only if they combine the power of devotion to a lofty ideal with practical common-sense in striving to realize this ideal.

This Nation never stood in greater need than now of having among its leaders men of lofty ideals, which they try to live up to and not merely to talk of. We need men with these ideals in public life, and we need them just as much in business and in such a profession as the law. We can by statute establish only those exceedingly rough lines of morality the overpassing of which means that the man is in jeopardy of the constable or the sheriff. But the Nation is badly off if in addition to this there is not a very much higher standard of conduct, a standard impossible effectively to establish by statute, but one upon which the community as a whole, and especially the real leaders of the community, insist. Take such a question as the enforcement of the law. It is, of course, elementary to say that this is the first requisite in any civilization at all. But a great many people in the ranks of life from which most college men are drawn seem to forget that they should condemn with equal severity those men who break the law by committing crimes of mob violence and those who evade the law, or who actually break it, but so cunningly that they can not be discovered, the crimes they commit being not those of physical outrage, but those of greed and craft on the largest scale. The very rich man who conducts his business as if he believed that he were a law unto himself thereby immensely increases the difficulty of the task of upholding order when the disorder is a menace to men of property; for if the community feels that rich men disregard the law where it affects themselves, then the community is apt to assume the dangerous and unwholesome attitude of condoning crimes of violence committed against the interests which in the popular mind these rich men represent. This last attitude is wholly evil; but so is the attitude which produces it. We have a right to appeal to the alumni of Harvard, and to the alumni of every institution of learning in this land, to do their part in creating a public sentiment which shall demand of all men of means, and especially of the men of vast fortune, that they set an example to their less fortunate brethren, by paying scrupulous heed not only to the letter but to the spirit of the laws, and by acknowledging in the heartiest fashion the moral obligations which can not be expressed in law, but which stand back of and above all laws. It is far more important that they should conduct their business affairs decently than that they should spend the surplus of their fortunes in philanthropy. Much has been given to these men and we have the right to demand much of them in return. Every man of great wealth who runs his business with cynical contempt for those prohibitions of the law which by hired cunning he can escape or evade is a menace to our community; and the community is not to be excused if it does not develop a spirit which actively frowns on and discountenances him. The great profession of the law should be that profession whose members ought to take the lead in the creation of just such a spirit. We all know that, as things actually are, many of the most influential and most highly remunerated members of the bar in every centre of wealth make it their special task to work out bold and ingenious schemes by which their very wealthy clients, individual or corporate, can evade the laws which are made to regulate in the interest of the public the use of great wealth. Now, the great lawyer who employs his talent and his learning in the highly remunerative task of enabling a very wealthy client to override or circumvent the law is doing all that in him lies to encourage the growth in this country of a spirit of dumb anger against all laws and of disbelief in their efficacy. Such a spirit may breed the demand that laws shall be made even more drastic against the rich, or else it may manifest itself in hostility to all laws. Surely Harvard has the right to expect from her sons a high standard of applied morality, whether their paths lead them into public life, into business, or into the great profession of the law, whose members are so potent in shaping the growth of the national soul.

But in addition to having high ideals it can not too often be said to a body such as is gathered here to-day, that together with devotion to what is right must go practical efficiency in striving for what is right. This is a rough, workaday, practical world, and if in it we are to do the work best worth doing, we must approach that work in a spirit remote from that of the mere visionary, and above all remote from that of the visionary whose aspirations after good find expression only in the shape of scolding and complaining. It shall not help us if we avoid the Scylla of baseness of motive, only to be wrecked on the Charybdis of wrong-headedness, of feebleness and inefficiency. There can be nothing worse for the community than to have the men who profess lofty ideals show themselves so foolish, so narrow, so impracticable, as to cut themselves off from communion with the men who are actually able to do the work of governing, the work of business, the work of the professions. It is a sad and evil thing if the men with a moral sense group themselves as impractical zealots, while the men of action gradually grow to discard and laugh at all moral sense as an evidence of impractical weakness. Macaulay, whose eminently sane and wholesome spirit revolted not only at weakness, but at the censorious folly which masquerades as virtue, describes the condition of Scotland at the end of the seventeenth century in a passage which every sincere reformer should keep constantly before him.