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.