496 Presidential Addresses 



To an audience such as this I do not have to say 

 anything as to serving the cause of decency with 

 heart and with soul. I want to dwell, however, 

 upon the fact that we have the right to claim from 

 you not merely that you shall have heart in your 

 work, not merely that you shall put your souls into 

 it, but that you shall give the best that your minds 

 have to it also. In the eternal, the unending war- 

 fare for righteousness and against evil, the friends 

 of what is good need to remember that in addition 

 to being decent they must be efficient; that good in- 

 tentions, high purposes, can not be in themselves 

 effective, that they are in no sense a substitute for 

 power to -make those purposes, those intentions felt 

 in action. Of course we must first have the pur- 

 pose and the intention. If our powers are not 

 guided aright it is better that we should not have 

 them at all; but we must have the power itself be- 

 fore we can guide it aright. 



In the second text we are told not merely to be 

 harmless as doves, but also to be wise as serpents. 

 One of our American humorists who veils under 

 jocular phrases much deep wisdom one of those 

 men has remarked that it is much easier to be a 

 harmless dove than a wise serpent. Now, we are 

 not to be excused if we do not show both qualities. 

 It is not very much praise to give a man to say 

 that he is harmless. We have a right to ask that 

 in addition to the fact that he does no harm to 

 any one he shall possess the wisdom and the strength 

 to do good to his neighbor; that together with in- 



