380 Presidential Addresses 



thrust upon you, so that you may justify by your 

 deeds in the future your training and the extraor 

 dinary advantages under which that training has 

 been obtained. 



America, the Republic of the United States, is 

 of course in a peculiar sense typical of the present 

 age. We represent the fullest development of the 

 democratic spirit acting on the extraordinary and 

 highly complex industrial growth of the last half 

 century. It behooves us to justify by our acts the 

 claims made for that political and economic prog 

 ress. We will never justify the existence of the 

 Republic by merely talking each Fourth of July 

 about what the Republic has done. If our homage 

 is lip loyalty merely, the great deeds of those who 

 went before us, the great deeds of the times of 

 Washington and of the times of Lincoln, the great 

 deeds of the men who won the Revolution and 

 founded the Nation, and of the men who preserved it, 

 who made it a Union and a free Republic, will simply 

 arise to shame us. We can honor our fathers and 

 our fathers'" fathers only by ourselves striving to rise 

 level to their standard. There are plenty of ten 

 dencies for evil in what we see round about us. 

 Thank heaven, there are an even greater number 

 of tendencies for good, and one of the things, Mr. 

 Jordan, which it seems to me give this Nation 

 cause for hope is the national standard of ambition 

 which makes it possible to recognize with admira 

 tion and regard such work as the founding of a 

 university of this character. It speaks well for our 



