tell us where you think advice will lift them up; tell us where you think that the counsel of statesmen may better the fortunes of unfortunate men; always having it in mind that you are champions of what is right and fair all ’round for the public welfare, no matter where you are, and that it is that you are ready to fight for and not merely on the drop of a hat or upon some slight punctilio, but that you are champions of your fellow-men, particularly of that great body one hundred million strong whom you represent in the United States.

What do you think is the most lasting impression that those boys down at Vera Cruz are going to leave?  They have had to use some force—­I pray God it may not be necessary for them to use any more—­but do you think that the way they fought is going to be the most lasting impression?  Have men not fought ever since the world began?  Is there anything new in using force?  The new things in the world are the things that are divorced from force.  The things that show the moral compulsions of the human conscience, those are the things by which we have been building up civilization, not by force.  And the lasting impression that those boys are going to leave is this, that they exercise self-control; that they are ready and diligent to make the place where they went fitter to live in than they found it; that they regarded other people’s rights; that they did not strut and bluster, but went quietly, like self-respecting gentlemen, about their legitimate work.  And the people of Vera Cruz, who feared the Americans and despised the Americans, are going to get a very different taste in their mouths about the whole thing when the boys of the Navy and the Army come away.  Is that not something to be proud of, that you know how to use force like men of conscience and like gentlemen, serving your fellow-men and not trying to overcome them?  Like that gallant gentleman who has so long borne the heats and perplexities and distresses of the situation in Vera Cruz—­Admiral Fletcher.  I mention him, because his service there has been longer and so much of the early perplexities fell upon him.  I have been in almost daily communication with Admiral Fletcher, and I have tested his temper.  I have tested his discretion.  I know that he is a man with a touch of statesmanship about him, and he has grown bigger in my eye each day as I have read his dispatches, for he has sought always to serve the thing he was trying to do in the temper that we all recognize and love to believe is typically American.

I challenge you youngsters to go out with these conceptions, knowing that you are part of the Government and force of the United States and that men will judge us by you.  I am not afraid of the verdict.  I cannot look in your faces and doubt what it will be, but I want you to take these great engines of force out onto the seas like adventurers enlisted for the elevation of the spirit of the human race.  For that is the