WINFIELD SCOTT SCHLEY

THE NAVY IN PEACE AND IN WAR

[Speech of Winfield S. Schley at the eighteenth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1898.  The President, Stephen W. Dana, presented Admiral Schley in these words:  “Admiral Schley needs no introduction from me—­he speaks for himself.”]

MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:—­I am very much in the condition of the gentleman who, being about to be married and having had his wedding suit brought home a day before the event, returned it to the tailor with instructions to increase the girth just two inches.  His explanation was that not enough room had been left to accommodate the wedding breakfast he had to eat or for the emotion that was to follow the event.

I am always glad to meet my countrymen anywhere and everywhere.  They stand for all that is representative; they stand for all that is progressive; they stand for all that represents humanity, and they stand for all that is fair-minded, high-minded, and honorable.  As to those of us who by the circumstances of our service are obliged to pass the greater part of our lives away from home, away from kindred, and away from the flag, it may be difficult to understand how to keep the altar of one’s patriotism burning when we are separated from the sweetest and kindest influences of life and performing a service and a duty that are outside of the public observation.  But there is a large-heartedness at home that never forgets us.  We are bound to our country by ties that are not only sweet in their nature, but the circumstances of service generate a love of home and a patriotism that are the surest guarantees of the welfare and the safety of our people.

The Navy is that arm of the public defence the nature of whose duties is dual in that they relate to both peace and war.  In times of peace the Navy blazes the way across the trackless deep, maps out and marks the dangers which lie in the routes of commerce, in order that the peaceful argosies of trade may pursue safe routes to the distant markets of the world, there to exchange the varied commodities of commerce.  It penetrates the jungle and the tangle of the inter-tropical regions.  It stands ready to starve to death or to die from exposure.  It pushes its way into the icy fastnesses of the North or of the South, in order that it may discover new channels of trade.  It carries the influence of your power and the beneficent advantages of your civilization to the secluded and hermit empires of the Eastern world, and brings them into touch with our Western civilization and its love of law for the sake of the law rather than for fear of the law’s punishments.  It stands guard upon the outer frontiers of civilization, in pestilential climates, often exposed to noisome disease, performing duties that are beyond the public observation but yet which have their happy influence in maintaining the reputation and character of our country and extending the civilizing agency of its commerce.