The tie between Harvard and Cambridge has always been kept up.  I remember when you sent over Mr. Lehmann to teach us how to row.  He found us rather refractory pupils, I am afraid.  In the course of the struggle, the captain of the Harvard crew was eliminated.  He afterwards came down to Cuba and was one of the very best captains in my regiment.  At that time, however, he was still too close to his college days—­he was separated from them only by about two weeks when he joined me—­to appreciate what I endeavored to instil into him, that while winning a boat-race was all very well, to take part in a victorious fight, in a real battle, was a good deal better.  Sport is a fine thing as a pastime, and indeed it is more than a mere pastime; but it is a very poor business if it is permitted to become the one serious occupation of life.

One of the things I wish we could learn from you is how to make the game of football a rather less homicidal pastime. (Laughter.) I do not wish to speak as a mere sentimentalist; but I do not think that killing should be a normal accompaniment of the game, and while we develop our football from Rugby, I wish we could go back and undevelop it, and get it nearer your game.  I am not qualified to speak as an expert on the subject, but I wish we could make it more open and eliminate some features that certainly tend to add to the danger of the game as it is played in America now.  On the Pacific slope we have been going back to your type of Rugby football.  I would not have football abolished for anything, but I want to have it changed, just because I want to draw the teeth of the men who always clamor for the abolition of any manly game.  I wish to deprive those whom I put in the mollycoddle class, of any argument against good sport.  I thoroughly believe in sport, but I think it is a great mistake if it is made anything like a profession, or carried on in a way that gives just cause for fault-finding and complaint among people whose objection is not really to the defects, but to the sport itself.

Now I am going to disregard your poet and preach to you for just one moment, but I will make it as little obnoxious as possible.  (Laughter.) The Secretary spoke of me as if I were an athlete.  I am not, and never have been one, although I have always been very fond of outdoor amusement and exercise.  There was, however, in my class at Harvard, one real athlete who is now in public life.  I made him Secretary of State, or what you call Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he is now Ambassador in Paris.  If I catch your terminology straight, he would correspond to your triple blue.  He was captain of the football eleven, played on the base-ball team, and rowed in the crew, and in addition to that he was champion heavy-weight boxer and wrestler, and won the 220-yard dash.  His son was captain of the Harvard University crew that came over here and was beaten by Oxford two years ago. [Voices:  “Cambridge.”] Well, I never took a great interest in defeats. (Loud laughter and applause.) Now, as I said before, I never was an athlete, although I have always led an outdoor life, and have accomplished something in it, simply because my theory is that almost any man can do a great deal, if he will, by getting the utmost possible service out of the qualities that he actually possesses.