action that the motive that lies behind what he does is a motive which no American need be ashamed of for a moment. Now, we ought to put this test to every man we know. We ought to let it be known that nobody who does not put America first can consort with us.

But we ought to set them the example. We ought to set them the example by thinking American thoughts, by entertaining American purposes, and those thoughts and purposes will stand the test of example anywhere in the world, for they are intended for the betterment of mankind.

So I have come to say these few words to you today, gentlemen, for a double purpose; first of all to express my personal good wishes to you in your graduation, and my personal interest in you, and second of all to remind you how we must all stand together in one spirit as lovers and servants of America. And that means something more than lovers and servants merely of the United States. You have heard of the Monroe Doctrine, gentlemen. You know that we are already spiritual partners with both continents of this hemisphere and that America means something which is bigger even than the United States, and that we stand here with the glorious power of this country ready to swing it out into the field of action whenever liberty and independence and political integrity are threatened anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. And we are ready-nobody has authorized me to say this, but I am sure of it-we are ready to join with the other nations of the world in seeing that the kind of justice prevails everywhere that we believe in.

So that you are graduating to-day, gentlemen, into a new distinction. Glory attaches to all these men whose names we love to recount who have made the annals of the American Army distinguished. They played the part they were called upon to play with honor and with extraordinary character and success. I am congratulating you, not because you will be better than they, but because you will have a wider world of thought and conception to play your part in. I am an American, but I do not believe that any of us loves a blustering nationality, a nationality with a chip on its shoulder, a nationality with its elbows out and its swagger on.

We love that quiet, self-respecting, unconquerable spirit which does not strike until it is necessary to strike, and then strikes to conquer. Never since I was a youngster have I been afraid of the noisy man. I have always been afraid of the still man. I have always been afraid of the quiet man. I had a classmate at college who was most dangerous when he was most affable. When he was maddest he seemed to have the sweetest temper in the world. He would approach you with the most ingratiating smile, and then you knew that every red corpuscle in his blood was up and shouting. If you work things off in your elbows, you do not work them off in your mind; you do not work them off in your purposes.

So my conception of America is a conception of infinite dignity, along with quiet, unquestionable power. I ask you, gentlemen, to join with me in that conception, and let us all in our several spheres be soldiers together to realize it.

ADDRESS ON FLAG DAY, WASHINGTON, JUNE 14, 1916

MR. SECRETARY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I have not come here this afternoon with the purpose of delivering to you an elaborate address. It seems to me that the day is sufficiently eloquent already with the meaning which it should convey to us. The spectacle of the morning has been a very moving spectacle indeed-an almost unpremeditated outpouring of thousands of sober citizens to manifest their interest in the safety of the country and the sacredness of the flag which is its emblem.

I need not remind you how much sentiment has been poured out in honor of the flag of the United States. Sometimes we have been charged with being a very sentimental people, fond of expressing in general rhetorical phrases principles not sufficiently defined in action, and I dare say there have been times of happy and careless ease in this country, when all that it has been necessary to do for the honor of the flag was to put our sentiments into poetic expressions, into the words that for the time being satisfied our hearts.

But this is not a day of sentiment. Sentiment is a propulsive power, but it does not propel in the way that is serviceable to the nation unless it have a definite purpose before it. This is not merely a day of sentiment. This is a day of purpose.

It is an eloquent symbol of the unity of our history that upon this monument, which commemorates the man who did most to establish the American Union, we should have hoisted those stars that have so multiplied since his time, associated with those lines of red and white which mean all that is pure in our purpose, and all that is red in our blood in the service of a nation whose history has been full of inspiration because of his example.

But Washington was one of the least sentimental men that America has ever produced. The thing that thrills me about Washington is that he is impatient of any sentiment that has not got definite purpose in it. His letters run along the lines of action, not merely along the mere lines of sentiment, and the most inspiring times that this nation has ever seen have been the times when sentiment had to be translated into action.

Apparently this nation is again and again and again to be tested, and always tested in the same way. The last supreme test this nation went through was the test. of the Civil War. You know how deep that cut. You know what exigent issues of life were at issue in that struggle. You know how two great sections of this Union seemed to be moving in opposite directions, and for a long time it was questionable whether that flag represented any one united purpose in America. And you know how deep that struggle cut into the sentiments of this people, and how there came a whole generation, following that great struggle, when men's hearts were bitter and sore, and memories hurt as well as exalted, and how it seemed as if a rift had come in the hearts of the people of America.

And you know how that ended. While it seemed a time of terror, it has turned out a proof of the validity of our hope. Where are now the divisions of sentiment which cut us asunder at the time of the Civil War? Did you not see the Blue and the Gray mingled this morning in the procession? Did not you see the sons of a subsequent generation walking together in happy comradeship? Was there any contradiction of feeling or division of sentiment evident there for a moment?

Nothing cuts so deep as a civil war, and yet all the wounds of that war have been healed, not only, but the very passion of that war seems to have contributed to the strength of national feeling which now moves us as a single body politic.

And yet again the test is applied, my fellow-countrymen. A new sort of division of feeling has sprung up among us. You know that we are derived in our citizenship from every nation in the world. It is not singular that sentiment should be disturbed by what is going on on the other side of the water, but while sentiment may be disturbed, loyalty ought not to be.

I want to be scrupulously just, my fellow-citizens, in assessing the circumstances of this day, and I am sure that you wish with me to deal out with an even hand the praise and the blame of this day of test.

I believe that the vast majority of those men whose lineage is directly derived from the nations now at war are just as loyal to the flag of the United States as any native citizen of this beloved land, but there are some men of that extraction who are not, and they, not only