No one can too strongly insist upon the elementary fact that you cannot build the superstructure of public virtue save on private virtue.

The shots that count in battle are the shots that hit, and only those.

I have come from the Atlantic across the continent to the Pacific; I have come from the East through the West, beyond the West, to California.

I am glad that we have the chance to erect a monument to commemorate a naval victory of the United States.

There is nothing more foolish, nothing less dignified than to indulge in boastfulness, in self-glorification as to the capacity of our soldiers and sailors while denying them the material which we are in honor bound to give them in order…

Much though I have been interested in the wonderful physical beauty of this wonderful State, I have been infinitely more interested in its citizenship.

I have enjoyed to the utmost my stay in California, my visits to its greatest cities.

Envy is merely the meanest form of admiration, and a man who envies another admits thereby his own inferiority.

I demand it of you as a right, and hold you recreant to your duty if you fail to give it.

I am glad indeed to see you, to see the men, the women, and the children.

I am sure that the others will not mind my saying a special word of greeting to two sets of men.

We won at Manila because the shipbuilders of the country, including those here at San Francisco, under the wise provisions of Congress, had for fifteen years before been preparing the navy.

I ask of you the straightforward, earnest performance of duty in all the little things that come up day by day in business, in domestic life, in every way.

It is absolutely essential, if we are to have the proper standard of public life, that promise shall be square with performance.

I wish to take this opportunity of thanking the men who work in the Navy Yard for the quality of the work that they do.

Great is your State, men and women of California, and a great thing it is to be a Californian.

I do not ask of you, men and women here today, good citizenship as a favor to the State.

A naval war is two-thirds settled in advance, at least two-thirds, because it is mainly settled by the preparation which has gone on for years preceding its outbreak.

The one indispensable thing for us to keep is a high standard of character for the average American citizen.

The business of finding a scapegoat to send loose into the wilderness is neither honorable nor dignified for a self-respecting people to be engaged in.

There is the same sound reason for distrusting the man who promises too much in public that there is for distrusting the man who promises too much in private business.

No worthier object can be striven after than the creation of a building such as this for the benefit of those to whom every American owes so much—the enlisted men of the United States navy.

Remember that after the war has begun it is too late to improvise a navy.

That is the spirit of devotion to the flag and the country, and to one's fellows which the United States navy develops.

I have not got much to say to you, because since I have been in California I have felt a good deal more like learning than teaching.