ANNAPOLIS COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

[Delivered before the Graduating Class of the United States Naval
Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, June 5, 1914.]


MR. SUPERINTENDENT, YOUNG GENTLEMEN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

During the greater part of my life I have been associated with young
men, and on occasions it seems to me without number have faced bodies of
youngsters going out to take part in the activities of the world, but I
have a consciousness of a different significance in this occasion from
that which I have felt on other similar occasions. When I have faced the
graduating classes at universities I have felt that I was facing a great
conjecture. They were going out into all sorts of pursuits and with
every degree of preparation for the particular thing they were expecting
to do; some without any preparation at all, for they did not know what
they expected to do. But in facing you I am facing men who are trained
for a special thing. You know what you are going to do, and you are
under the eye of the whole Nation in doing it. For you, gentlemen, are
to be part of the power of the Government of the United States. There is
a very deep and solemn significance in that fact, and I am sure that
every one of you feels it. The moral is perfectly obvious. Be ready and
fit for anything that you have to do. And keep ready and fit. Do not
grow slack. Do not suppose that your education is over because you have
received your diplomas from the academy. Your education has just begun.
Moreover, you are to have a very peculiar privilege which not many of
your predecessors have had. You are yourselves going to become
teachers. You are going to teach those 50,000 fellow-countrymen of yours
who are the enlisted men of the Navy. You are going to make them fitter