72 Presidential Addresses 



This morning I have shaken hands with many of 

 you; and I have met the men who stand as repre 

 sentatives of every great struggle, every great for 

 ward movement this nation has made for the last 

 fifty-five or sixty years. There are some still left 

 who took part in the Mexican War, a struggle which 

 added to this country a territory vaster than has 

 changed hands in Europe as the result of all the 

 wars of the last two centuries. I meet, when I see 

 any of the older men among you, men who took 

 part in the great Civil War, when this nation was 

 tried as in a furnace ; the men who were called upon 

 to do the one deed which had to be done under 

 penalty of making the memory of Washington him 

 self of little account, because if you had failed, then 

 failure would also have been written across the rec 

 ord of his work. Finally, I see the younger men 

 as well as the older ones, the men whom I myself 

 have seen taking part in a little war a war that 

 was the merest skirmish compared with the struggle 

 in which you fought from '61 to '65, and yet a 

 war that has had most far-reaching effects, not 

 merely upon the destiny of this nation, but, there 

 fore, upon the destiny of the world the war with 

 Spain. 



It was my good fortune to see in the campaign 

 in Cuba how the graduates of West Point handled 

 themselves; to see and to endeavor to profit by 

 their example. It is a peculiar pleasure to come 

 here to-day, because I was at that time intimately 

 associated with many of these, your graduates, who 



