PRES. ROOSEVELT'S ADDRESS

Theodore Roosevelt '80, President of the United States, delivered a strong address to the Union members of the University in the Living Room of the Union Saturday afternoon.

By half-past one, there were about 1900 men standing in the room, from which all furniture had been removed except the chairs on the platform, on which the guests of honor sat. The gallery was reserved for the Faculty, of whom about 70 were present.

After a short reception in the Sanctum of the Advocate, of which he was an editor when in College, the President appeared on the platform at about 2.30 o'clock and was introduced by J. D. White '07. When the President arose to speak, he was greeted by a long cheer, which lasted several minutes, and during his address he was frequently interrupted by the applause which arose whenever he expressed a strong opinion on matters of close interest to those present.

When he had concluded his speech, R. L. Bacon '07, President of the Political Club, called for a long cheer for the President after which the President himself arose and led a cheer for Harvard. During the spontaneous cheering which followed he made his way from the building, and with Bishop Lawrence, called and left his card at the home of President Eliot. The party then went to the Hasty Pudding Club where an informal reception was held by about 250 members.

The President next visited the Alpha Delta Phi Club, where he was entertained for a short time, soon leaving to attend a tea at Bishop Lawrence's residence 122 Commonwealth avenue. The President then returned to Dr. Bigelow's where he stopped Friday night, and remained until it was time to attend dinner at the Porcellian Club.

Yesterday, the President, accompanied by Congressman and Mrs. Nicholas Longworth, took the 11 o'clock train, on which was a special car, to go to Groton, to see Kermit Roosevelt, after dining there at 4 o'clock, the party returned to Boston on the 6 o'clock train, arriving in time to take the 8 o'clock express for Washington from the South Station.

The President's Speech.

In his speech, after a discussion of the athletic question, in which he expressed himself as favorable to intercollegiate contest, the President devoted the greatly part of his attention to a statement of the great problems of the day, and related several interesting anecdotes from his personal experience.

The following is the speech in full:

Unity in College Life.

In speaking here at the Harvard Union, I wish to say first a special word as one Harvard man to his follow Harvard men. I feel that we can none of us ever be sufficiently grateful to Major Higginson for having founded this Harvard Union, because each loyal Harvard man should do all he can to foster in Harvard that spirit of real democracy which will make Harvard men feel the vital sense of solidarity so that they can all join to work together in the things that are of most concern to the College. It is idle to expect, nor indeed would it be desirable, that there should be in Harvard a uniform level of taste and association. Some men will excel in one thing and some in another; some in things of the body, some in things of the mind; and where thousands are gathered together each will naturally find some group of specially congenial friends with whom he will form ties of peculiar social intimacy. These groups--athletic, artistic, scientific, social--must inevitably exist. My plea is not for their abolition. My plea is that they shall be got into the right focus in the eyes of college men; that the relative importance of the different groups shall be understood when compared with the infinitely greater life of the college as a whole. Let each man have his special associates, his special interests, his special studies and pursuits, but let him remember that he cannot get the full benefit of life in college if he does nothing but specialize; and that, what is even more important, he cannot do his full duty by the college unless his first and greatest interest is in the college itself, in his associates taken as a mass, and not in any small group.

Discussion of Athletics.

One reason why I so thoroughly believe in the athletic spirit at Harvard is because the athletic spirit is essentially democratic. Our chief interest should not lie in the great champions in sport. On the contrary, our concern should be most of all to widen the base, the foundation in athletic sports; to encourage in every way a healthy rivalry which shall give to the largest possible number of students the chance to take part in vigorous outdoor games. It is of far more importance that a man shall play something himself, even if he plays it badly, than that he shall go with hundreds of companions to see some one else play well, and it is not healthy for either students or athletes if the teams are mutually exclusive. But even having this aim especially in view it seems to me we can best attain it by giving proper encouragement to the champions in the sports, and this can only be done by encouraging intercollegiate sport. As I emphatically disbelieve in seeing Harvard or any other college turn out mollycoddles instead of vigorous men, I may add that I do not in the least object to a sport because it is rough. Rowing, baseball, lacrosse, track and field games, hockey, football, are all of them good. Moreover, it is to my mind simple nonsense, a mere confession of weakness, to desire to abolish a game because tendencies show themselves, or practices grow up, which prove that the game ought to be reformed. Take football for instance. The preparatory schools are able to keep football clean and to develop the right spirit in the players without the slightest necessity ever arising to so much as consider the question of abolishing it. There is no excuse whatever for colleges failing to show the same capacity, and there is no real need for considering the question of the abolition of the game. If necessary, let the college authorities interfere to stop any excess or perversion, making their interference as little officious as possible, and yet as rigorous as is necessary to achieve the end. But there is no justification for stopping a thoroughly manly sport because it is sometimes abused, when the experience of every good preparatory school shows that the abuse is in no shape necessarily attendant upon the game. We cannot afford to turn out of college men who shrink from physical effort or from a little physical pain. In any republic courage is a prime necessity for the average citizen if he is to be a good citizen; and he needs physical courage no less than moral courage, the courage, that dares as well as the courage that endures, the courage that will fight valiantly alike against the foes of the soul and the foes of the body. Athletics are good, especially in their rougher forms, because they tend to develop such courage. They are good also because they encourage a true democratic spirit; for in the athletic field the man must be judged, not with reference to outside and accidental attributes, but to that combination of bodily vigor and moral quality which go to make up prowess.

Athletics a Means, Not an End.

I trust I need not add that in defending athletics I would not for one moment be understood as excusing that perversion of athletics which would make it the end of life instead of merely a means in life. It is first-class healthful play, and is useful as such. But play is not business, and it is a very poor business indeed for a college man to learn nothing but sport. There are exceptional cases which I do not need to consider; but disregarding these, I cannot with sufficient emphasis say that when you get through college you will do badly unless you turn your attention to the serious work of life with a devotion which will render it impossible for you to pay much heed to sport in the way in which it is perfectly proper for you to pay heed while in college. Play while you play and work while you work; and though play is a mighty good thing, remember that you had better never play at all than to get into a condition of mind where you regard play as the serious business of life, or where you permit it to hamper and interfere with your doing your full duty in the real work of the world.

The Function of Scholarship.

A word also to the students. Athletics are good; study is even better; and best of all is the development of the type of character for the lack of which, in an individual, as in a nation, no amount of brilliancy of mind or strength of body will atone. Harvard must do more than produce students: yet, after all, she will fall immeasurably short of her duty and her opportunity unless she produces a great number of true students, of true scholars.

Moreover, let the students remember that in the long run in the field of study judgment must be rendered upon the quantity of first-class work produced in the way of productive scholarship, and that no amount of second-class work can atone for failure in the college to produce this first-class work. A course of study is of little worth if it tends to deaden individual initiative and cramp scholars so that they only work in the ruts worn deep by many predecessors.

American scholarship will be judged, not by the quantity of routine work produced by routine workers, but by, the small amount of first class output of those who, in whatever branch stand in in the first rank. No industry in combination and in combination will ever take the place of this first-hand original work, this productive and creative work, whether in science, in art, in literature. The greatest special function of a college, as distinguished from its general function of producing good citizenship, should be so to shape conditions as to put a premium upon the development of productive scholarship, of the creative mind, in any form of intellectual work. The men whose chief concern lies with the work of the student in study should bear this fact ever before them.

The Duties of Citizenship.

So much for what I have to say to you purely as Harvard men. Now, a word which applies to you merely as it applies to all college men, to all men in this country who have received the benefits of a college education, and what I have to say on this topic can properly be said under the auspices of your Political Club. You here when you graduate will take up many kinds of work; but, there is one work in which all of you should take part simply as good American citizens, and that is the work of self-government. Remember, in the first place, that to take part in the work of government does not in the least mean of necessity to hold office. It means to take an intelligent, disinterested and practical part in the everyday duties of the average citizen, of the citizen who is not a faddist or a doctrinaire, but who abhors corruption and dislikes inefficiency; who wishes to see decent government prevail at home, with genuine equality of opportunity for all men so far as it can be brought about, and who wishes, as far as foreign matters are concerned, to see this nation treat all other nations, great and small with respect, and if need be with generosity, and at the same time show herself able to protect herself by her own might from any wrong at the hands of any outside power. Each man here should feel that he has no excuse, as a citizen in a democratic republic like ours, if he fails to do his part in the government. It is not only his right to do so, but his duty; his duty both to the nation and to himself. Each man should feel that, if he fails in this, he is not only failing in his duty, but is showing himself in a contemptible light. A man may neglect his political duties because he is too lazy, too selfish, too shortsighted, or too timid; but whatever the reason may be it is certainly an unworthy reason, and it shows either a weakness or worse than a weakness in the man's character. Above all, you college men, remember that if your education, the pleasant lives you lead, make you too fastidious, too sensitive to take part in the rough hurly-burly of the actual work of the world, if you became overcultivated, so over-refined that you cannot do the hard work of practical polities, then you had better never have been educated at all.

The weakling and the coward are out of place in a strong and free community. In a republic like ours the governing class is composed of the strong men who take the trouble to do the work of government; and if you are too timid or too fastidious or too careless to do your part in this work, then you forfeit your right to be considered one of the governing and you become one of the governed instead--one of the driven cattle of the political arena. I want you to feel that it is not merely your right to take part in politics, not merely your duty to the state, but that it is demanded by your own self-respect, unless you are content to acknowledge that you are until to govern yourself and have to submit to the rule of somebody else as a master--and this is what it means if you do not do your own part in the government. Like most other things of value, education is good only in so far as it is used aright, and if it is misused or if it causes the owner to be so puffed up with pride as to make him misestimate the relative values of things it becomes a harm and not a benefit. There are a few things less desirable than the arid cultivation, the learning and refinement which lead merely to that intellectual conceit which makes a man in a democratic community like ours hold himself aloof from his fellows and pride himself upon the weakness which he mistakes for supercilious strength.

Misuse of Education.

Small is the use of those educated men who in after life meet no one but themselves, and gather in parlors to discuss wrong conditions which they do not understand and to advocate remedies which have the prime defect of being unworkable. The judgment on practical affairs, political and social, of educated men who keep aloof from the conditions of practical life, is apt to be valueless to those other men who do really wage effective war against the forces of baseness and evil. From the political standpoint, education is a harm and not a benefit to the men whom it serves as an excuse for refusing to mingle with their fellows and for standing aloof from the broad sweep of our national life in a curiously impotent spirit of fancied superiority. The political wrong-headedness of such men is quite as great as that of wholly uneducated men, and no people could be less trust-worthy as critics and advisers. The educated man who seeks to console himself for his own lack of the robust qualities to bring success in American politics by moaning over the degeneracy of the times, instead of trying to better them, by railing at the men who do the actual work of political life, instead of trying himself to do the work, is a poor creature, and, so far as his feeble powers avail, is a damage and not a help to the community. You may come far short of this disagreeable standard and still be a rather useless member of society. Your education, your cultivation, will not help you if you make the mistake of thinking that is a substitute for instead of an addition to those qualities which in the struggle of life bring success to the ordinary man without your advantages.

Your college training confers no privilege upon you save as tested by the use you make of it. It puts upon you the obligation to show yourselves better able to do certain things than your fellows who have not had your advantages. If it has served merely to make you believe that you are to be excused from effort in after life, that you are to be excused from contact with the actual world of men and events, then it will prove a curse and not a blessing.

If on the other hand you treat your education as a weapon the more in your hands, a weapon to fit you to do better in the hard struggle of effort and not as excusing you in any way from taking part in practical fashion in that struggle, then it will be a benefit to you. Let each of you college men remember in after life that in the fundamentals he is very much like his fellows who have not been to college, and that if he is to achieve results, instead of confining himself exclusively to disparagement of other men who achieve them, he must manage to come to some kind of working agreement with these fellows of his there are times of course when it may be the highest duty of a citizen to stand alone, or practically alone. But if this is a man's normal attitude if normally he is unable to work in combination with a considerable body of his fellows it is safe to set him down as unfit for useful service in a democracy. In popular government results worth having can only be achieved by men who combine worthy ideals with practical good sense, who are resolute to accomplish good purposes, but who