230 Presidential Addresses 



Those men won in the day of trial because they 

 and their fellows had in them, in the first place, the 

 power of devotion to an ideal, and, in the next place, 

 the strength to realize that power in effective fash 

 ion. If the men of '61 had not been driven forward 

 by a spirit which made them anxious to lay down 

 their lives if need should be rather than to see the 

 flag of the Union torn in twain, if they had not had 

 in them the lift toward loftier things which comes 

 to those who value life as of small account compared 

 to devotion to country and to the flag, if they had 

 not in the truest and greatest and deepest sense of 

 the word been patriotic, then no amount of fighting 

 capacity would have saved them. I don't care how 

 good natural soldiers or sailors they had been, if 

 their ambitions had been personal, if they had been 

 fundamentally disloyal, if each had been striving 

 to build up himself and had viewed his fellows as 

 rivals to be trampled down for his own advantage, 

 then failure would have come upon them. If Grant 

 and Sherman and Thomas and Farragut had not all 

 felt that they were fighting for one end, that they 

 were holding up the arms of mighty Lincoln as he 

 toiled and wrought and suffered for the people, then 

 their. prowess would have availed naught, and this 

 Nation would have gone down into bloody anarchy, 

 would have crumbled into dust as so many republics 

 had crumbled of old. They needed fervent devo 

 tion to country, devotion to the right, and power to 

 fight. 



In addition to the lofty ideal in no way as a 



