Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1903-06-17
Massachusetts States
man Speaks atIOWa City
Commencement.
CHARACTER BUILDING
Involving Duty of Citi-
zenShip Above Par
ty the Keynote.

Iowa City, Iowa, June IA feat
ure of the commencement exercises
of the University of Iowa today was
an address by United States Senator
.ieorge F. Hoar, of Massachusetts,
who said in part:
The fate of the nation depends in
the last resort on individual charac-
ter. Everything in human govern
ment, like everything in individual
conduct, depends. in the end, upon
the sense of duty. Whatever safe
guards may be established. however
complicated or we'll adjusted the
mechanism. you come to a place some
where, where safety depends upon
somebody having the viii to do right
when it Is in his power and may seem
10 his interest to do wrong. When
the people were considering the adop-
ton of the constitution of the United
States. one of the wisest statesmen
said that the real and only security
for Il republic is when the rulers have
the same interest as the people. If
they have not, constitutional re-
straints will break down somewhere,
except for the sense of duty of the
rulers.
Duty Above Party.
'All elections depend upon this
principle. You may multiply election
officers and returning boards. you
may provide for an appeal to courts
of first resort or last resort. But in
the end YOU must somewhere come
TO a point where the sense of public
duty is stronger than party spirit. or
your election Is but Il sort of fighting.
or If not that, n sort of cheating. The
same thing is true of the individual
voter. or of the legislator who is 10
elect the senator. or the governor who
i to appoint the judge. or the execu-
tive officer. or the judge who is to in
terEret the constitution or the stat
ute and decide the cause. or the Juror
who i to find the fact. On these men
depend the safety and the perma-
nence of the republic. On these men
depend life, liberty and property.
And Vet each of them has to make
that choice. Each has to decide
whether he will be influenced by am
bition or by party spirit or the desire
for popular favor or the fear of pop
ular disfavOr or the love of money on
the one side. or by the sense of duty
on the other.
so, in the last resort. the destiny
of the republic, like the destiny of the
Individual (and in the case Of an indi-
vidual, character and destiny are the
same thing) depends upon individual
will. VIII the individual choose what
is right and not what is wrong? Now
this choice is largely affected by what
we call strength of Will. by that habit
of the soul which enables men to ad-
here to its deliberate purposes and
principles formed when reason is un-
affected by passion or by desire,
against the pressure and excitement
of an immediate demand; that char
acter of will which. as Wordsworth
says in his Happy Warrior
in the heat of conflict keeps the law
In calmness made. and sees what it
foresaw.'
The great single purpose of moral
education must be TO induce the will
to adhere to its general, permanent
aud deliberately-conceiv purpose, in
spite of the motives which appeal to
it with special strength at the time of
tuC CllOlCt VI dCliOI- III OlltI NpIOlSs
it is to give strength to resolution
which will overcome the strength of
temptation.
ITO teach this to the youth of the
republic is the great duty of the uni
versity. The final purpose of all
scholarship, as of all life. is charac-
ter. If the university be the hand
maid of science, science herself is but
the handmade of soul. The lover of
truth is but a poor serf if he do not
know that in the great feudal system
this is the sovereign before whom all
truth, all science, all knowledge, all
art, are but the chief vassals and Off
GERS Of the court.
The Lesson to Learn.
The university must choose what
she will teach her children, and her
sors must choose whether they will
learr and practice her lesson. Wheth-
er we accept the doctrine of the old
theology, that everything that comes
to man by descent cometh of evil. and
that neither man nor nation can es-
cape an ineXorable doom by putting