It is indeed a peculiar pleasure to be here this morning and be greeted as you have greeted me. Mr. Mayor, I feel that those gathered here to greet me symbolize what we most like to think of as typically American in our national life. When you brought me here, Mr. Mayor, I was met on the platform by the pastors of the Methodist and Baptist churches in the shade of an institution of the higher learning, in the presence of these students and of the children of the public schools; while at the same time I see the industries of the nation typified both by cotton being picked as I came up and also by the fact that I am speaking on the most valuable platform I have ever spoken on (cotton bales); and finally, I have as a guard of honor members of the National Guard, whom, as I look at, I feel to be my own comrades, for they are just the type I had in my own regiment in the Spanish war. These elements, as I say, typify what we hope and believe are the elements representing what is most vital in American life: the deep religious feeling of our people, the understanding of our people that material prosperity amounts to nothing if behind it and under it there is not the spiritual sense, the sense of moral obligation, the fealty to an ideal; the realization that in addition we must have, as the foundation of national prosperity, industry, energy, and thrift, and their fruits. There must be devotion to the arts and practices of peace, devotion to civic duty, and yet the readiness of the man who does his duty in civil life to do it in military life if ever the need arises; and finally the recognition of the fact that though a great many crops are important, the most important crop is the crop of children; and the one thing that this Nation can not afford to neglect is the education of the nation of the future. The Nation of the future will rise higher or not just as the boys and girls of the present are or are not trained to do their duty as men and as women. So I take a particular pleasure in being here and greeting the children of the public schools and those past childhood who are studying in this college itself. The one all-essential thing in America, the thing that underlies everything else, is to have the average American a good man or a good woman. If there is any one thing that I respect more than a good man it is a good woman. I think she is just a trifle more useful, and she has a harder time in life; and so she is a little more entitled to our respect than even the best man; and there is not a man here who is worth his salt who does not agree with me. Of course it is a mere truism to say that the ultimate factor in determining the welfare of the nation is the life of the home; that is, the way in which the ordinary man, the ordinary woman, performs his or her ordinary duties of the most sacred and intimate kind. If the man is a good father, a good husband; if he is decent and clean in his domestic life; if he does his duty