You of this State of Texas have behind you a history containing the deeds of which not only you but all of the country must be forever proud. My regiment was raised under the walls of that historic building of which it was said that “Thermopylæ had its messengers of death, but the Alamo had none.” You, the men of Texas, like the men of Oregon and California, like the men of Kentucky and Tennessee in a previous generation, did your part in changing this Nation from a string of Atlantic seaboard commonwealths into a people bounded only by a continent. No people more than the Texans have rendered it impossible for this country to be anything but great. It is not open to us to choose whether we shall play a small part or a great part. Your fathers helped to make that choice impossible. Play a great part we must. All that we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill; and I know too well, oh, my fellow-countrymen, not to know what your decision will be. The problems change. One generation faces different difficulties from the difficulties faced by its predecessors. But the spirit in which those problems must be faced is forever the same. You, the men of the Civil War, who wrought deeds of deathless fame, who left memories of honor that will last as long as this Nation endures, fought with muzzle-loading, percussion-cap muskets and rifles, with cannon that you could afford to put out in the open when you wanted to shoot at the foe. You fought still in the shoulder-to-shoulder tactics. Nowadays men must fight with different weapons; men must fight with different tactics; but the spirit in which they must fight if they are to win must be the spirit that sustained you alike in triumph and defeat. The outward problem changes, the outward means of solving that problem changes, but the heart of the man who is to solve it can not be changed. We must show as a Nation now the same spirit that has been shown by the mighty men of times past under penalty of failure; show it in war if the need arises; and we must also show it in peace; show it in the days that are with us all the time instead of waiting for the heroic days that may never come. Just as in time of war the man who does his duty in camp, on the march, who does not throw away his blanket at noon because it is heavy, and then wishes that he had two at midnight, is the type of man who makes the best soldier in the long run; so it is true that in civil life the man who does his duty as a citizen in the long run is the man who does his ordinary work day by day, doing each day’s duty, great or small, behaving as he should toward his wife, toward his children, toward his neighbor, in his business, in his home; and if he does those duties well the sum of the duties performed means that he is a good citizen.