The men who founded this Nation had to deal with theories of government and the fundamental principles of free institutions. We are now concerned with a different set of questions, for the Republic has been firmly established, its principles thoroughly tested and fully approved. To merely political issues have succeeded those of grave social and economic importance, the solution of which demands the best efforts of the best men. We have a right to expect that a wise and leading part in the effort to attain this solution will be taken by those who have been exceptionally blessed in the matter of obtaining an education. That college graduate is but a poor creature who does not feel when he has left college that he has received something for which he owes a return. What he thus owes he can, as a rule, only pay by the way he bears himself throughout life. It is but occasionally that a college graduate can do much outright for his alma mater; he can best repay her by living a life that will reflect credit upon her, by so carrying himself as a citizen that men shall see that the years spent in training him have not been wasted. The educated man is entitled to no special privilege, save the inestimable privilege of trying to show that his education enables him to take the lead in striving to guide his fellows aright in the difficult task which is set to us of the twentieth century. The problems before us to-day are very complex, and are widely different from those which the men of Washington’s generation had to face; but we can overcome them surely, and we can overcome them only, if we approach them in the spirit which Washington and Washington’s great supporters brought to bear upon the problems of their day—the spirit of sanity and of courage, the spirit which combines hard common-sense with the loftiest idealism. INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1905 _My Fellow-Citizens:_