I challenge you youngsters to go out with these conceptions, knowing
that you are part of the Government and force of the United States and
that men will judge us by you. I am not afraid of the verdict. I cannot
look in your faces and doubt what it will be, but I want you to take
these great engines of force out onto the seas like adventurers enlisted
for the elevation of the spirit of the human race. For that is the only
distinction that America has. Other nations have been strong, other
nations have piled wealth as high as the sky, but they have come into
disgrace because they used their force and their wealth for the
oppression of mankind and their own aggrandizement; and America will not
bring glory to herself, but disgrace, by following the beaten paths of
history. We must strike out upon new paths, and we must count upon you
gentlemen to be the explorers who will carry this spirit and spread this
message all over the seas and in every port of the civilized world.

You see, therefore, why I said that when I faced you I felt there was a
special significance. I am not present on an occasion when you are about
to scatter on various errands. You are all going on the same errand, and
I like to feel bound with you in one common organization for the glory
of America. And her glory goes deeper than all the tinsel, goes deeper
than the sound of guns and the clash of sabers; it goes down to the very
foundations of those things that have made the spirit of men free and
happy and content.




THE MEANING OF LIBERTY