a message that you are on an errand which other navies have sometimes
tunes forgotten; not an errand of conquest, but an errand of service. I
always have the same thought when I look at the flag of the United
States, for I know something of the history of the struggle of mankind
for liberty. When I look at that flag it seems to me as if the white
stripes were strips of parchment upon which are written the rights of
man, and the red stripes the streams of blood by which those rights have
been made good. Then in the little blue firmament in the corner have
swung out the stars of the States of the American Union. So it is, as it
were, a sort of floating charter that has come down to us from
Runnymede, when men said, "We will not have masters; we will be a
people, and we will seek our own liberty."

You are not serving a government, gentlemen; you are serving a people.
For we who for the time being constitute the Government are merely
instruments for a little while in the hands of a great Nation which
chooses whom it will to carry out its decrees and who invariably rejects
the man who forgets the ideals which it intended him to serve. So that I
hope that wherever you go you will have a generous, comprehending love
of the people you come into contact with, and will come back and tell
us, if you can, what service the United States can render to the
remotest parts of the world; tell us where you see men suffering; tell
us where you think advice will lift them up; tell us where you think
that the counsel of statesmen may better the fortunes of unfortunate
men; always having it in mind that you are champions of what is right
and fair all 'round for the public welfare, no matter where you are, and
that it is that you are ready to fight for and not merely on the drop
of a hat or upon some slight punctilio, but that you are champions of
your fellow-men, particularly of that great body one hundred million
strong whom you represent in the United States.