Proceedings of the Inauguration 
49 
The important matter in all this discussion is that there is 
one great service which is too rarely emphasized, but is yet a 
service which the college, whatever, else it does, must con- 
tinue to render. If it fails here it will fail everywhere, for with- 
out this none of its work can stand. 
Thus I come back to the opening question, What is a col- 
lege for? 
I but put the one great and historic purpose of the college 
in modern terms when I say that, first, last, and always, the chief 
business of the college is the conservation of men and women; 
the conservation of the nation's highest intellectual, moral and 
spiritual resources; those finest and strongest qualities of mind 
and heart, of will and spirit. 
We have grown accustomed to think of the conservation of 
the nation's natural resources. State and national governments 
have reiterated the importance of economies in the use of our 
inheritance in nature's bounties, the importance of saving so that 
the nation, and those who come after us, may be assured of the 
means of comfort and the sources of material power. Yet few 
have risen to warn us that, unless we can conserve and increase 
the nation's highest intellectual, moral and spiritual resources, 
our material economies will go for naught, for a luxury-loving 
and morally inferior race which may follow us will spend these 
cherished material bounties in riotous living, spend nature's sub- 
stance in ways which will weaken, and not strengthen, the people. 
Stop for a minute and think. What is the real root of the 
unstable and distracted condition of the Mexican people today? 
Natural resources they have in abundant profusion. Nature has 
given them more than they have intelligence, initiative, or ambi- 
tion, to develop. The root of the trouble is that Mexico is a 
nation without sufficient intellectual, moral and spiritual re- 
sources; and without these no nation can become either strong 
or enduring. Any people which has once had these resources, 
and is in danger of losing them, may read Roman history with 
profit. 
There are four institutions pre-eminently consecrated to the 
conservation of men: the Home, the Church, the School, the 
College. 
If our homes go wrong ; if through blindness, selfishness, or 
ignorance, we are making mistakes with our children ; if we 
