ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF THE UNITED STATES MILITARY

ACADEMY, JUNE 13, 1916

The United States Military Academy was authorized by an act of Congress of March 16, 1802. West Point, New York, was selected for its location, and, with a class of ten cadets present, it was formally opened on July 4, 1802. The Act of May 4, 1916, provided that the Corps of Cadets at the United States Military Academy shall hereafter consist of two for each congressional district, two from each Territory, four from the District of Columbia, two from natives of Porto Rico, four from each State at large, and eighty from the United States at large twenty of whom shall be selected from among the honor graduates of educational institutions having officers of the Regular Army detailed as professors of military science and tactics under existing law or any law hereafter enacted for the detail of officers of the Regular Army to such institutions, and which institutions are designated as "honor schools " upon the determination of their relative standing at the last preceding annual inspection regularly made by the War Department. They shall be appointed by the President and shall, with the exception of the eighty appointed from the United States at large, be actual residents of the Congressional or Territorial district, or of the District of Columbia, or of the island of Porto Rico, or of the States, respectively, from which they purport to be appointed. On mental and physical examination they are admitted to the Academy, and upon the successful completion of four years of study are appointed second lieutenants of the Regular Army. The number allowed by law is 1336 and the actual number in attendance in 1917 was 898. To the class graduating on June 13, 1916, President Wilson delivered the following address.

I look upon this body of men who are graduating today with a peculiar interest. I feel like congratulating them that they are living in a day not only so interesting, because so fraught with change, but also because so responsible. Days of responsibility are the only days that count in time, because they are the only days that give test of quality. They are the only days when manhood and purpose is tried out as if by fire. I need not tell you young gentlemen that you are not like an ordinary graduating class of one of our universities. The men in those classes look forward to the life which they are to lead after graduation with

a great many questions in their mind. Most of them do not know exactly what their lives are going to develop into. Some of them do not know what occupations they are going to follow. All of them are conjecturing what will be the line of duty and advancement and the ultimate goal of success for them.

There is no conjecture for you. You have enlisted in something that does not stop when you leave the Academy, for you then only begin to realize it, which then only begins to be fulfilled with the full richness of its meaning, and you can look forward with absolute certainty to the sort of thing that you will be obliged to do.

This has always been true of graduating classes at West Point, but the certainty that some of the older classes used to look forward to was a dull certainty. Some of the old days in the army, I fancy, were not very interesting days. Sometimes men like the present Chief of Staff, for example, could fill their lives with the interest of really knowing and understanding the Indians of the Western plains, knowing what was going on inside their minds and being able to be the intermediary between them and those who dealt with them, by speaking their sign language, could enrich their lives, but the ordinary life of the average officer at a Western post can not have been very exciting, and I think with admiration of those dull years through which officers who had not a great deal to do insisted, nevertheless, upon being efficient and worth while and keeping their men fit at any rate, for the duty to which they were assigned.

But in your case there are many extraordinary possibilities, because, gentlemen, no man can certainly tell you what the immediate future is going to be either in the history of this country or in the history of the world. It is not by accident that the present great war came in Europe. Every element was there, and the contest had to come sooner or later, and it is not going to be by accident that the results are worked out, but by purpose-by the purpose of the men who are strong enough to have guiding minds and indomitable wills when the time for decision and settlement comes. And the part that the United States is to play has this distinction in it, that it is to be in any event a disinterested part. There is nothing that the United States wants that it has to get by war, but there are a great many things that the United States has to do. It has to see that its life is not interfered with by anybody else who wants something.

These are days when we are making preparation, when the thing most commonly discussed around every sort of table, in every sort of circle, in the shops and in the streets, is preparedness, and undoubtedly, gentlemen, that is the present imperative duty of America, to be prepared. But we ought to know what we are preparing for. I remember hearing a wise man say once that the old maxim that "everything comes to the man who waits" is all very well provided he knows what he is waiting for; and preparedness might be a very hazardous thing if we did not know what we wanted to do with the force that we mean to accumulate and to get into fighting shape.

America, fortunately, does know what she wants to do with her force. America came into existence for a particular reason. When you look about upon these beautiful hills, and up this stately stream, and then let your imagination run over the whole body of this great country from which you youngsters are drawn, far and wide, you remember that while it had aboriginal inhabitants, while there were people living here, there was no civilization which we displaced. It was as if in the Providence of God a continent had been kept unused and waiting for a peaceful people who loved liberty and the rights of men more than they loved anything else, to come and set up an unselfish commonwealth. It is a very extraordinary thing. You are so familiar with American history, at any rate in its general character-I don't accuse you of knowing the details of it, for I never found the youngster who did,—but you are so familiar with the general character of American history that it does not seem strange to you, but it is a very strange history. There is none other like it in the whole annals of mankind-of men gathering out of every civilized nation of the world on an unused continent and building up a polity exactly to suit themselves, not under the domination of any ruling dynasty or of the ambitions of any royal family; doing what they pleased with their own life on a free space of land which God had made rich with every resource which was necessary for the civilization they meant to build up. There is nothing like it.

Now, what we are preparing to do is to see that nobody mars that and that, being safe itself against

interference from the outside, all of its force is going to be behind its moral idea, and mankind is going to know that when America speaks she means what she says. I heard a man say to another, "If you wish me to consider you witty, I must really trouble you to make a joke." We have a right to say to the rest of mankind, "If you don't want to interfere with us, if you are disinterested, we must really trouble you to give the evidence of that fact." We are not in for anything selfish, and we want the whole mighty power of America thrown into that scale and not into any other.

You know that the chief thing that is holding many people back from enthusiasm for what is called preparedness is the fear of militarism. I want to say a word to you young gentlemen about militarism. You are not militarists because you are military. Militarism does not consist in the existence of an army, not even in the existence of a very great army. Militarism is a spirit. It is a point of view. It is a system. It is a purpose. The purpose of militarism is to use armies for aggression. The spirit of militarism is the opposite of the civilian spirit, the citizen spirit. In a country where militarism prevails the military man looks down upon the civilian, regards him as inferior, thinks of him as intended for his, the military man's, support and use; and just so long as America is America that spirit and point of view is impossible with us. There is as yet in this country, so far as I can discover, no taint of the spirit of militarism. You young gentlemen are not preferred in promotion because of the families you belong to. You are not