I am glad to have the chance of saying a word of greeting to you this morning. You represent two professions, for you are members of the great medical body and you are also officers of the Navy of the United States, and therefore you have a double standard of honor up to which to live. I think that all of us laymen, men and women, have a peculiar appreciation of what a doctor means; for I do not suppose there is one of us who does not feel that the family doctor stands in a position of close intimacy with each of us, in a position of obligation to him under which one is happy to rest to an extent hardly possible with any one else; and those of us, I think most of us, who are fortunate enough to have a family doctor who is a beloved and intimate friend, realize that there can be few closer ties of intimacy and affection in the world. And while, of course, even the greatest and best doctors can not assume that very intimate relation with more than a certain number of people (though it is to be said that more than any other man, the doctor does commonly assume such a relation to many people)—while it is impossible this relation in its closest form shall obtain between a doctor and more than a certain number of people, still with every patient with whom the doctor is thrown at all intimately he has this peculiar relation to a greater or less extent. The effect that the doctor has upon the body of the patient is in very many cases no greater than the effect that he has upon the patient’s mind. Each one of you here has resting upon him not only a great responsibility for the care of the body of the officer or enlisted man who will be under his supervision, but a care—which ought not to be too consciously shown, but which should be unconsciously felt—for the man’s spirit. The morale of the entire ship’s company, of the entire body of men with which you are to be thrown, will be sensibly affected by the way in which each of you does his duty. Just as the great doctor, the man who stands high in his profession in any city, counts as one of the most valuable assets in that city’s civic work, so in the Navy or the Army the effect of having thoroughly well-trained men with a high and sensitive standard of professional honor and professional duty is wellnigh incalculable upon the service itself. I want you now, as you graduate, to feel that on your shoulders rests a great weight of responsibility; that your position is one of high honor, and that it is impossible to hold a position of high honor and not hold it under penalty of incurring the severest reprobation if you fail to live up to its requirements.