I have been acquainted especially with three types of your work: the work in the army and navy, the work among railroad men, and the work among college students. These three classes are not going to be effectively reached as classes by any effort which fails to take account of the fact that they demand manliness as well as virtue; and you can make them straight only on condition that in making them straight you also keep in mind that it is necessary for them to be strong. Remember Wesley’s remark when some one criticised him because his hymn tunes were so good. He answered that he was not going to leave all the good tunes to the devil. We want to be exceedingly careful that the impression shall not get about that good men intend to leave strength to those who serve the devil. I was very much interested in what was said by Mr. Mott as to the meeting at Yale a few nights ago, where the captain of the football team and the captain of the crew of next season both were present. I think that is typical of the whole movement. I am certain that those who have had experience in the army and navy have seen that in the long run the man who is a decent man is apt to be the man who is the best soldier. The work among the railroad men always particularly appealed to me because the railroad men are those who follow that modern industry which more than any other modern industry makes demand upon its followers for the heroic virtues, for the willingness to take risks, the willingness to accept responsibilities, the readiness to adopt a standard of duty which will require at need the sacrifice of life; those who follow it must possess both the power to obey and the power to act on individual initiative—the power to take responsibility. You can make men like that accept morality if you can make them understand that it is not only compatible with but is demanded by essential manliness. The work of the Y. M. C. A. has grown so among college students, for instance, because (I think I am right in saying) it has tried, not to dwarf any of the impulses of the young, vigorous men but to guide them aright. It has sought not to make a man’s development one-sided, not to prevent his being a man, but to see that he is in the fullest sense a man, and a good man. We greet to-night with peculiar pleasure the men who served in the great war. Those men won in the day of trial because they and their fellows had in them, in the first place, the power of devotion to an ideal, and, in the next place, the strength to realize that power in effective fashion. If the men of ’61 had not been driven forward by a spirit which made them anxious to lay down their lives if need should be rather than to see the flag of the Union torn in twain, if they had not had in them the lift toward loftier things which comes to those who value life as of small account compared to devotion to country and to the flag, if they had not in the truest and greatest and deepest sense of the word been patriotic, then no amount of fighting capacity would have saved them. I don’t care how good natural soldiers or sailors they had been, if their ambitions had been personal, if they had been fundamentally disloyal, if each had been striving to build up himself and had viewed his fellows as rivals to be trampled down for his own advantage, then failure would have come upon them. If Grant and Sherman and Thomas and Farragut had not all felt that they were fighting for one end, that they were holding up the arms of mighty Lincoln as he toiled and wrought and suffered for the people, then their prowess would have availed naught, and this Nation would have gone down into bloody anarchy, would have crumbled into dust as so many republics had crumbled of old. They needed fervent devotion to country, devotion to the right, and power to fight.
In addition to the lofty ideal—in no way as a substitute for it, but in addition to this power of devotion to an ideal—the man must have the fibre of heart, the fibre of body, to make his devotion take effective shape for the Nation’s welfare. And nowadays we shall win out, in the fight for a loftier life—we shall make this twentieth century better and not worse than any century that has gone before it—in proportion as we approach the problems that face us as this society has approached those problems, with a firm resolution to neglect neither side of the development of our people, to strive to make the young men decent, God-fearing, law-abiding, honor-loving, justice-doing; and also fearless and strong, able to hold their own in the hurly-burly of the world’s work, able to strive mightily that the forces of right may be in the end triumphant.
AT THE BANQUET AT CANTON, OHIO, JANUARY 27, 1903, IN HONOR OF THE BIRTHDAY OF THE LATE PRESIDENT McKINLEY
Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies, and Gentlemen:
Throughout our history, and indeed throughout history generally, it has been given to only a very few thrice-favored men to take so marked a lead in the crises faced by their several generations that thereafter each stands as the embodiment of the triumphant effort of his generation. President McKinley was one of these men.
If during the lifetime of a generation no crisis occurs sufficient to call out in marked manner the energies of the strongest leader, then of course the world does not and can not know of the existence of such a leader; and in consequence there are long periods in the history of every nation during which no man appears who leaves an indelible mark in history. If, on the other hand, the crisis is one so many-sided as to call for the development and exercise of many distinct attributes, it may be that more than one man will appear in order that the requirements shall be fully met. In the Revolution and in the period of constructive statesmanship immediately following it, for our good fortune it befell us that the highest military and the highest civic attributes were embodied in Washington, and so in him we have one of the undying men of history—a great soldier, if possible an even greater statesman, and above all a public servant whose lofty and disinterested patriotism rendered his power and ability—alike on fought fields and in council chambers—of the most far-reaching service to the Republic. In the Civil War the two functions were divided, and Lincoln and Grant will stand for evermore with their names inscribed on the honor roll of those who have deserved well of mankind by saving to humanity a precious heritage. In similar fashion Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson stand each as the foremost representative of the great movement of his generation, and their names symbolize to us their times and the hopes and aspirations of their times.
It was given to President McKinley to take the foremost place in our political life at a time when our country was brought face to face with problems more momentous than any whose solution we have ever attempted, save only in the Revolution and in the Civil War; and it was under his leadership that the Nation solved these mighty problems aright. Therefore he shall stand in the eyes of history not merely as the first man of his generation, but as among the greatest figures in our national life, coming second only to the men of the two great crises in which the Union was founded and preserved.
No man could carry through successfully such a task as President McKinley undertook, unless trained by long years of effort for its performance. Knowledge of his fellow-citizens, ability to understand them, keen sympathy with even their innermost feelings, and yet power to lead them, together with far-sighted sagacity and resolute belief both in the people and in their future—all these were needed in the man who headed the march of our people during the eventful years from 1896 to 1901. These were the qualities possessed by McKinley and developed by him throughout his whole history previous to assuming the Presidency. As a lad he had the inestimable privilege of serving, first in the ranks, and then as a commissioned officer, in the great war for national union, righteousness, and grandeur; he was one of those whom a kindly Providence permitted to take part in a struggle which ennobled every man who fought therein. He who when little more than a boy had seen the grim steadfastness which after four years of giant struggle restored the Union and freed the slaves was not thereafter to be daunted by danger or frightened out of his belief in the great destiny of our people.
Some years after the war closed McKinley came to Congress, and rose, during a succession of terms, to leadership in his party in the lower House. He also became Governor of his native State, Ohio. During this varied service he received practical training of the kind most valuable to him when he became Chief Executive of the Nation. To the high faith of his early years was added the capacity to realize his ideals, to work with his fellow-men at the same time that he led them.
President McKinley’s rise to greatness had in it nothing of the sudden, nothing of the unexpected or seemingly accidental. Throughout his long term of service in Congress there was a steady increase alike in his power of leadership and in the recognition of that power both by his associates in public life and by the public itself. Session after session his influence in the House grew greater; his party antagonists grew to look upon him with constantly increasing respect, his party friends with constantly increasing faith and admiration. Eight years before he was nominated for President he was already considered a Presidential possibility. Four years before he was nominated only his own high sense of honor prevented his being made a formidable competitor of the chief upon whom the choice of the convention then actually fell. In 1896, he was chosen because the great mass of his party knew him and believed in him and regarded him as symbolizing their ideals, as representing their aspirations. In estimating the forces which brought about this nomination and election I do not undervalue that devoted personal friendship which he had the faculty to inspire in so marked a degree among the ablest and most influential leaders; this leadership was of immense consequence in bringing about the result; but, after all, the prime factor was the trust in and devotion to him felt by the great mass of men who had come to accept him as their recognized spokesman. In his nomination the national convention of a great party carried into effect in good faith the deliberate judgment of that party as to whom its candidate should be.