Posted on 06/03/2008 5:25:50 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
A quarter of a century ago I began coming to graduation exercises at the United States Naval Academy. I find it a good custom and I hope to be following it occasionally when I have reached the age of the oldest admiral on the retired list. As a retired Commander-in-Chief of the navy I could do nothing else.
The only time I disgraced myself, was, I think, during the World War. Because of the strenuous work in the Navy Department I was a bit in arrears on sleep. The temperature in this hall was in the neighborhood of a hundred.
There I was, sitting on the right of the Superintendent of the Naval Academy. The speaker of the occasion began his address. My eyes slowly but firmly closed. I think my mouth fell open. I slept ungracefully, but soundly, directly in front of the eyes of the entire graduating class. Could anything be more unmilitary, more humilitating – but more satisfactory?
You who are about to become officers of the navy of the United States have had four years of advice – kindly advice but firm advice. I do not propose to add to it except to make one friendly suggestion which is not addressed to you as officers but is intended to apply to you just as much as to this year’s graduates of any other college or school in the country.
No matter whether your specialty is naval science, or medicine, or the law, or teaching, or the church, or the civil service or public service – remember that you will never reach the top and stay at the top unless you are well rounded in your knowledge of all the other factors in modern civilization that lie outside of your own special profession.
That applies to all of world thought and world problems, but it applies, of course, with special emphasis to the thought and problems of our own nation.
Let me illustrate by quoting what Theodore Roosevelt once said to me. A bill for the conservation of natural resources, which he had strongly recommended, had been defeated in the Congress by a coalition of votes by members who saw in the bill no special advantage to their own Congressional districts. When he learned of the defeat he said:
“I wish I could be for just five minutes both President and Congress too. I wish we could have a constitutional amendment requiring that no person could run for Congress unless he had visited every one of the forty-eight States in the Union.”
You who graduate today will fill many important government posts during many intervals of shore duty. In these posts you will need national knowledge – knowledge of the problems of industry, knowledge of the problems of farming, knowledge of the problems of labor and knowledge of the problems of capital.
You will need to know intimately the geography and the natural and human resources of the United States. You will need to know the current operations of Federal, State and local government. You will be called on for decisions in your line of duty where such knowledge will be of at least daily desirability – daily help to you in coming to your own conclusions.
Preliminary knowledge of this kind you have, but the best of it – the most important part of it – will come to you through the passing years.
It will come to you in two ways. First, by the experiences of your daily life, and those experiences can be profitable to you or not in proportion to your ability to relate each experience to the whole field of experiences. Second, you will have the opportunity constantly to widen your knowledge by your own individual efforts. You can confine your field of thought to your professional work or you can widen it to include a current interest in current events.
You graduate with certification by the Government of the United States that you are gentlemen – and the fact that you have been able to graduate from the Naval Academy at all proves that your are scholars. I want you to prove that you have another qualification – that you are also thoroughgoing, up-to-date, intelligent American citizens.
I congratulate you on your graduation. Your Commander-in-Chief is proud of you.
I notice three things about this commencement address: It is boring, it is mercifully short, and there is a distinct lack of sabre rattling in it. These new ensigns are going out into a dangerous and uncertain world and their commander-in-chief wants them to be well rounded. How inspiring.
Uninspiring, perhaps, but he was proved correct by events. "Provincialism" within the Navy was a serious problem during the war; for example, rivalries between destroyer guys vs. battleship guys vs. carrier guys was apparently pretty intense. Roosevelt had probably been dealing with intra-Navy rivalries that very month or year.
In terms of sabre rattling ... you're right, there's none of it. But then, why should there have been? True, there were ominous signs in Europe, and Japan was troublesome in the Pacific ... but there was no actual conflict, and the mood of the nation was very much isolationist.
Roosevelt was never noted for being much of a forward-looker, either. He probably would not have been thinking yet in terms of serious preparation for war.
There is an error in the title. Should be “-70.”
Uninspiring, perhaps, but he was proved correct by events. "Provincialism" within the Navy was a serious problem during the war; for example, rivalries between destroyer guys vs. battleship guys vs. carrier guys was apparently pretty intense. Roosevelt had probably been dealing with intra-Navy rivalries that very month or year.
In terms of sabre rattling ... you're right, there's none of it. But then, why should there have been? True, there were ominous signs in Europe, and Japan was troublesome in the Pacific ... but there was no actual conflict, and the mood of the nation was very much isolationist.
Roosevelt was never noted for being much of a forward-looker, either. He probably would not have been thinking yet in terms of serious preparation for war.
For any Herman Wouk fans checking in, I believe Warren Henry was in the graduating class attending this address.
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