The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-06-12
PRESIDENT AT WEST POINT
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 bluff, where the exercises were held 1 The small hall was packed with a bril- l liant throng, including graduates of all classes back to 1S42 and the under graduate cadets. Colonel Mills made an address of welcome and then intro duced President Roosevelt. The presi- l dent said:
 Colonel Mills l claim not to be his- torian, and I speak merely as a reciter of facts when I say that not merely as West Point contributed a greater num- Der of the men who stand highest on the nations honor roll but l think be- yond question that, taken as whole, the average graduate of West Point during this hundred years has given a greater amount of service to the coun- try through his life than has the aver age graduate of any other institution in this broad land.
 That is not surprising. That is what we have a right to expect from this mill
 itary university founded by the nation.
 Of all the institutions in this country
 none is more absolutely American, none
 more, In the proper sense of the word,
 absolutely democratic, than this. Here
 we care nothing for the boys birth
 place, for the boys grade, for his social
 standing; here we care nothing save for
 his worth if he is able to show it. Here
 YOU represent. with almost mathemati-
 cal exactness, the country geographical
 ly. You are drawn from every walk of
 life by a method of chance meant to in-
 oh i1, ma n
 cases, does insure, nothing but active
 youth. Here you come together as rep
 resentatives of America in the higher
 and more peculiar sense than can pos
 sibly be true of any other institution in the land, save your sister college that
 makes similar preparation for the ser vice of the country on the seas.
 This morning I have shaken hands with many of you, and I have met the men who stand as representatives of every great struggle this great nation has made for the last fifty-fve or sixty years There are still some left among the older of you who took part in the Mexican war, which added to this coun- try territory vaster than has changed hands in Europe as the result of all the wars of the last two centuries. I meet always, when I can, any of the older among you. men who took part in the civil war when this nation was tried in a furnace-the men who were called up- on to do the thing which had to be done under penalty of making the memory of Washington himself worthless, because If you had failed their failure would | have been written across the record of , his works. Finally, I see the younger men as well as the older ones-the men whom have seen myself take part in a |
 little war-a war that was the merest ! skirmish compared to the struggle in | which you fought from '61 to '65, and | yet war that has almost far-reaching | effects, not merely for the destiny of |
 his nation, but upon the destiny of the | war with Spain And it was | nv good fortune to see in the campaign | n Cuba how the graduates of West | Point handled themselves and to en- leavor to profit by their example. and | t has been my pleasure to come here o-day. because I was at that time in- imatelv associated with many of your 
 And now in closing I want to say | ,nn word to those who are graduates l md the younger graduates as we'll vas greatly struck the other day by |
 m article of one of your instructors l lere, himself graduate of West | ooint. in which he dwelt upon the 1 hanged conditions of warfare and of 1 he absolute need that man who was o be a good officer shoud meet these l hanged conditions. I think it is going | o he great deal harder to be a first | lass officer in the future than 1t has cen in the past. I think that in ad- ition to the courage and steadfast-
 ess that have always been the prime equisites in soldier you have got to how a far greater power of individual |