120 Presidential Addresses 



courage and self-devotion among the Spaniards, but 

 on our side, in addition to the courage and devotion, 

 for the lack of which no training could atone, there 

 was also that training the training which comes 

 only as the result of years of thorough and painstak 

 ing practice. 



Annapolis is, with the sole exception of its sister 

 academy at West Point, the most typically demo 

 cratic and American school of learning and prepa 

 ration that there is in the entire country. Men go 

 there from every State, from every walk of life, pro 

 fessing every creed the chance of entry being open 

 to all who perfect themselves in the necessary studies 

 and who possess the necessary moral and physical 

 qualities. There each man enters on his merits, 

 stands on his merits, and graduates into a service 

 where only his merit will enable him to be of value. 



The enlisted men are of fine type, as they needs 

 must be to do their work well, whether in the gun 

 turret or in the engine room; and out of the fine 

 material thus provided the finished man-of-war's 

 man is evolved by years of sea-service. 



It is impossible after the outbreak of war to im 

 provise either the ships or the men of a navy. A 

 war vessel is a bit of mechanism as delicate and com 

 plicated as it is formidable. You might just as well 

 expect to turn an unskilled laborer offhand into a 

 skilled machinist or into the engineer of a flyer on 

 one of our big railroad systems as to put men 

 aboard a battleship with the expectation that they 

 will do anything but discredit themselves until they 



