Here at Valley Forge Washington and his Continentals warred not against the foreign soldiery, but against themselves, against all the appeals of our nature that are most difficult to resist—against discouragement, discontent, the mean envies and jealousies, and heart-burnings sure to arise at any time in large bodies of men, but especially sure to arise when defeat and disaster have come to large bodies of men. Here the soldiers who carried our national flag had to suffer from cold, from privation, from hardship, knowing that their foes were well housed, knowing that things went easier for the others than it did for them. And they conquered, because they had in them the spirit that made them steadfast, not merely on an occasional great day, but day after day in the life of daily endeavor to do duty well.
When two lessons are both indispensable, it seems hardly worth while to dwell more on one than on the other. Yet I think that as a people we need more to learn the lesson of Valley Forge even than that of Gettysburg. I have not the slightest anxiety but that this people, if the need should come in the future, will be able to show the heroism, the supreme effort that was shown at Gettysburg, though it may well be that it would mean a similar two years of effort, checkered by disaster, to lead up to it. But the vital thing for this Nation to do is steadily to cultivate the quality which Washington and those under him so pre-eminently showed during the winter at Valley Forge—the quality of steady adherence to duty in the teeth of difficulty, in the teeth of discouragement, and even disaster, the quality that makes a man do what is straight and decent, not one day when a great crisis comes, but every day, day in and day out, until success comes at the end.
Of course, all of us are agreed that a prime national need is the need of commemorating the memories of the men who did greatly, thought highly, who fought, suffered, endured, for the Nation. It is a great thing to commemorate their lives; but, after all, the worthy way to do so is to try to show by our lives that we have profited by them. If we show that the lives of the great men of the past have been to us incitements to do well in the present, then we have paid to them the only homage which is really worthy of them. If we treat their great deeds as matters merely for idle boasting, not as spurring us on to effort, but as excusing us from effort, then we show that we are not worthy of our sires, of the people who went before us in the history of our land. What we as a people need more than aught else is the steady performance of the everyday duties of life, not with hope of reward, but because they are duties.
I spoke of how we felt that we had in Washington and Lincoln national ideals. I contrasted their names with the names of many others in history, names which will shine as brightly, but oh! with how much less power and light. I think you will find that the fundamental difference between our two great national heroes and almost any other men of equal note in the world’s history, is that when you think of our two men you think inevitably not of glory, but of duty, not of what the man did for himself in achieving name, or fame, or position, but of what he did for his fellows. They set the right ideal and also they lived up to it in practical fashion. Had either of them possessed that fantastic quality of mind which sets an impossible, and, perhaps, an undesirable ideal, or which declines to do the actual work of the present because forsooth the implements with which it is necessary to work are not to that man’s choice, his fame would have been missed, his achievement would have crumbled into dust, and he would not have left one stroke on the book which tells of effort accomplished for the good of mankind.
A man, to amount to anything, must be practical. He must actually do things, not talk about doing them, least of all cavil at how they are accomplished by those who actually go down into the arena, and actually face the dust and the blood and the sweat, who actually triumphed in the struggle. The man must have the force, the power, the will to accomplish results, but he must have also the lift toward lofty things which shall make him incapable of striving for aught unless that for which he strives is something honorable and high—something well worth striving for.
I congratulate you that it is your good fortune to be engaged in erecting a memorial to the great man who was equal to the great days—to the man and the men who showed by their lives that they were indeed doers of the word and not hearers only.
ADDRESS AT OYSTER BAY, N. Y., JULY 27, 1904, IN RESPONSE TO THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO NOTIFY HIM OF HIS NOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY
Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the Notification Committee:
I am deeply sensible of the high honor conferred upon me by the representatives of the Republican party assembled in convention, and I accept the nomination for the Presidency with solemn realization of the obligations I assume. I heartily approve the declaration of principles which the Republican National Convention has adopted, and at some future day I shall communicate to you, Mr. Chairman, more at length and in detail a formal written acceptance of the nomination.
Three years ago I became President because of the death of my lamented predecessor. I then stated that it was my purpose to carry out his principles and policies for the honor and the interest of the country. To the best of my ability I have kept the promise thus made. If next November my countrymen confirm at the polls the action of the convention you represent, I shall, under Providence, continue to work with an eye single to the welfare of all our people.