Every such occasion is clothed with the
splendor of perpetual youth. The secret of your future
success lies in the impossibility of your entering into
the experience of your predecessors. Every man's life
begins with the rising sun. The world would soon become
a frozen waste but for the inextinguishable ardor of
youth, which believes success still to be possible
where every attempt has failed.
That courage which avoids rashness by the restraints
of knowledge, and dishonor by the fear of God, is the
best hope of the world.
History is not life, but its reflection.
The great armies of modern times which have won
immortal victories have been composed of young men
who have turned into historic acts the strategy of
experienced commanders.
To bystanders, for the same and other reasons, the
occasion is profoundly interesting.
For educated men who are true to honor and to
righteousness, the world anxiously waits; but
an educated man who is false, the world has good
reason to dread. The best thing that can be said
of this Academy, with its long roll of heroes in
war and in peace, is, that every year the conviction
increases among the people of the United States, that
its graduates are men who will maintain, at all
hazards, the simple virtues of a robust manhood--like
Chaucer's young Knight, courteous, lowly, and
serviceable.
I welcome you, therefore, to the hardships and perils
of a soldier's life in a time of peace.
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