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.
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