I feel that too much can not be said to impress upon you the all-importance of the work that you are doing. Even if you yourselves never go into battle, you create the spirit which makes those who come after you on the ships able to do their duty in battle. The time of peace is the time when we must make ready for war, should war come. I do not think we will have any war if we have a good enough navy; and I could appeal to any peace society in the land for support upon the ground that every first-class record of target practice in the American navy is a positive provocative of peace and not of war. I am speaking to the men who, more than any others in this country, do most for peace. You are doing it and you will continue to do it only by fitting yourselves in every way to be ready for war, if war should come. AT THE GRADUATING EXERCISES OF THE COLLEGIATE DEPARTMENT OF CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS., JUNE 21, 1905 While it is incumbent upon every citizen of this country to do the best that is in him, not only for his own sake, and the sake of those immediately connected with him, but for the sake of the people as a whole, it is especially incumbent upon the graduates of such an institution of learning as this. Every man that graduates here has received something, and something big, for which he has made no return, and for which he can never make any return to the men giving it. It is given in part by those who are dead and in part by those who are living, but who can not ever receive any reward for that they have themselves done. You graduates can not pay back directly to the founder, to the trustees, to the president, to the professors, what they have done in money and effort for you. There is just one way and only one way in which you can give back to the college, to the university, what you have received from the college, from the university, and that is by so leading your lives in point of purpose and in point of efficiency as to reflect honor upon those who did so much for you, to show that they were right in doing what they did, and that their effort was not wasted when they gave you this great chance. Every college man owes a debt of gratitude to his college, which he can pay in but one way, and that is by the way in which through his life he makes that college stand in the estimation of the public.