1 6 Presidential Addresses 



blood of the bravest and best, it was because only 

 by that sacrifice could the flag that had been rent 

 in sunder once again be made without a seam. You 

 taught the ideal of duty duty, a word that stands 

 above glory, or any other word. Glory is a good 

 word, too, but duty is a better one. 



You taught, in addition to that, brotherhood. In 

 the ranks, as you stood there shoulder to shoulder, 

 little any one of you cared what the man next to 

 you was as regarded wealth, trade, or education, if 

 he was in very truth a man. And, friends, short would 

 have been our shrift if in our army as a whole there 

 had been any failure to exercise just that type of 

 judgment to exercise the judgment on the man as 

 a man; short would have been our shrift if we had 

 failed to do justice to the bricklayer on the one 

 hand, or to the banker on the other; if we had 

 shown either contempt of the one, or the no less 

 mean emotion of envy for the other. If we are to 

 go on, as we shall and must go on in our national 

 career, we must apply in the civic life of our na 

 tion exactly the principles which obtained in the 

 Grand Army of the Republic. There are plenty of 

 foes to fight and we can not afford to have honest 

 men betrayed into hostility toward one another ; be 

 trayed into acting toward one another in a way 

 that will permanently deteriorate the standard of 

 our national character. We can afford to disagree 

 on questions of proper political difference. There 

 are plenty such. But we can not afford, if we are 

 to remain true to the ideals of the past, to differ 



