Who shall be the heralds of this coming day? Who shall thread the way of honor and safety through these besetting problems? Who shall rally the people to the defense of their liberties and stir them until they shall cry aloud to be led against the enemies of the Republic? You, my countrymen, you! The university is the training camp of the future. The scholar the champion of the coming years. Napoleon over-ran Europe with drum-tap and bivouac—the next Napoleon shall form his battalions at the tap of the schoolhouse bell and his captains shall come with cap and gown. Waterloo was won at Oxford—Sedan at Berlin. So Germany plants her colleges in the shadow of the French forts, and the professor smiles amid his students as he notes the sentinel stalking against the sky. The farmer has learned that brains mix better with his soil than the waste of seabirds, and the professor walks by his side as he spreads the showers in the verdure of his field, and locks the sunshine in the glory of his harvest. A button is pressed by a child’s finger and the work of a million men is done. The hand is nothing—the brain everything. Physical prowess has had its day and the age of reason has come. The lion-hearted Richard challenging Saladin to single combat is absurd, for even Gog and Magog shall wage the Armageddon from their closets and look not upon the blood that runs to the bridle-bit. Science is everything! She butchers a hog in Chicago, draws Boston within three hours of New York, renews the famished soil, routs her viewless bondsmen from the electric center of the earth, and then turns to watch the new Icarus as mounting in his flight to the sun he darkens the burnished ceiling of the sky with the shadow of his wing. Learning is supreme and you are its prophets. Here the Olympic games of the Republic—and you its chosen athletes. It is yours then to grapple with these problems, to confront and master these dangers. Yours to decide whether the tremendous forces of this Republic shall be kept in balance, or whether unbalanced they shall bring chaos; whether 60,000,000 men are capable of self-government, or whether liberty shall be lost to them who would give their lives to maintain it. Your responsibility is appalling. You stand in the pass behind which the world’s liberties are guarded. This government carries the hopes of the human race. Blot out the beacon that lights the portals of this Republic and the world is adrift again. But save the Republic; establish the light of its beacon over the troubled waters, and one by one the nations of the earth shall drop anchor and be at rest in the harbor of universal liberty. Let one who loves this Republic as he loves his life, and whose heart is thrilled with the majesty of its mission, speak to you now of the dangers that threaten its peace and prosperity, and the means by which they may be honorably averted.