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An epoch of war, or an era of governmental creation, administration, or reconstruction, is more easily to be comprehended and its respective dangers can be more readily grasped, because through the skein, tangled though it may be, there is always the one controlling thread. Moreover, these last-mentioned epochs are generally controlled by some master spirit, whose genius has given him supreme control in the exigencies of the era. Some Cavour or Cromwell, towering above his fellows, has understood and firmly grasped the conditions of the hour, and the people have followed the master's guidance. This cannot be in an era of commercialism. This era is the result of the infinite interminglings by the people of their more than infinite interests. It is the development of the elements of a complex civilization with its ramifications, which generally are not understood or perceived. The era of commercialism concerns the whole people. Its spirit laughs with the farmer as the sunshine gathers the fields in its ripening embrace. It ripples with the waters and sings in the sails as the ship, filled with the products of our busy hands, flies to distant lands. It walks in the crowded marts of the cities and touches with its controlling spirit men of every class and condition. It furnishes an open field for our thrift and gratifies us by its independence. It arrives, however, at only one height, and its tendency, unwatched and unguarded, is to measure men and civilizations and governments by its own unchangeable Procrustean

rule. It appeals to our love of power and ministers to every comfort. It is all-pervading, and within its rightful bounds it is right. It is a part of the inner life of all the people, and its tendencies cannot be guided or arrested by the spirit of one genius, but can be reached only by rousing the action of all of the people. It is slow-moving and insidious, and to conserve its legitimate glory and arrest its evil tendencies there is needed the highest intelligence of all the body politic.

This imposing spectacle of young and intelligent manhood assembled here, where "we behold the bright countenances of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies," is the inspiration of my answer that the mighty questions of this era can be met and solved for the ultimate good of the Republic by the exalted intelligence of American citizenship. And here let me enter my earnest protest against the half-grounded mediocrity which only glances into the outer life of the affairs of to-day. The half-taught man will not suffice for the peculiar needs of the citizenship of this era. That mediocrity of intelligence which will not strive to recognize the high and important and rightful place that material power should hold in this Republic is not fitted to settle the direction of this era. More than this, that mediocrity of intelligence which will not differentiate between making wealth and its influence and its acquirement the standard of all civic excellence, and that radicalism which denies to ma

terial power any influence in the body politic, will but increase the dangers of the era. Here will be needed the very sublimity of the intelligence of American citizenship. For whilst energizing and developing the life of this commercial era the citizen of this day must preserve, unimpaired in pristine vigor, the foundations beneath our institutions of liberty. How vast and how splendid will be your opportunity! Consider the field upon which to expend your powers, cultivated and strengthened within this great institution of learning.

Whether for national weal or woe is hidden in the womb of the future, the isolation of our past has flown with the spirit of the day. Every question has broadened in its scope, and our old system of commercial life has changed its very being. "Not rivers and provinces and peoples are implicated, but oceans and continents and races; not parties and policies, but hemispheres and civilizations. The world itself is involved. On the hinge of these questions may turn, is likely to turn, the history of centuries."

The peopling of our fields, the excess of our products beyond our needs, the restless energies of this free people, have overthrown the barriers of sea, distance, and tradition. The West, no longer aglow with the rainbow of promise to the hosts of Europe, but thronged with its own earnest people, has turned its face to the millions of the East, there to fight out on the broadest field of endeavor ever vouchsafed to man the supreme contest for the control of the world's commerce. The

gauge of its battle is the broad Pacific, and the fruit of victory is the control of the civilization of five hundred millions of men. To the solemn words of the Father of his Country, that "the great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible," the militant spirit of to-day replies: "It is vain that men talk of keeping free from entanglements. Nature is omnipotent, and nations must float with the tide. Whither the exchanges flow they must follow, and they will follow as long as their vitality endures."

With this marvellous change in the direction of national effort produced by the spirit of the day, I will be pardoned for hurriedly placing before you a small part of the tremendous responsibilities of the American citizen necessarily arising from the spirit of the era, which has propelled him into the very midst of the most crucial and important affairs of the earth.

It will be your duty, with no precedent to guide, to create legislation which will control the life and constitute the government of millions of men of alien race and which will control the destiny of the islands of the Southern Seas. You will be the potent factor in the final arbitration of the living questions of the East, involving the peace of the world.

"We front the sun and on the purple ridges

The Virgin Future lifts her veil of snow."

Along the shores of the Pacific will boil with fervid heat the great caldron of the world's selfishness and greed. Here will meet Anglo-Saxon and Slav, armed cap-a-pie for the final contest for the control of the civilization of the world. On this colossal field must be settled the momentous problems involving the open door of commerce to millions of men, the levying of indemnities, the delimitations of spheres of influence, the dismemberment of empires, and the practical conquest and control of nations. Wondrous will be the field of endeavor for the American citizen, and surely his spirit should be filled with the highest ideals of free government. It will be for your strong hands to open wide the closed door of commerce to millions of people that through its lintels may flow the sunlight of Western life and thought, fructifying those strange lands with our conception of a higher and more glorious governmental and individual existence. Alone of the nations desiring no territorial aggrandizement, it will be for you to resist oppression by example and influence, to demand equal and exact justice to Caucasian, Malay, and Mongolian, and to place among far-off peoples a monument whose foundations are based upon the high ideals and broad intelligence of American citizenship.

Holding, as I do, that it is against the policy of our country to further extend politically our boundaries, yet the hour is upon us when we will control the trade, and through that channel dominate the life and gov

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