Notice how truly these men were of our blood.  I mean of our American blood, which is not drawn from any one country, which is not drawn from any one stock, which is not drawn from any one language of the modern world; but free men everywhere have sent their sons and their brothers and their daughters to this country in order to make that great compounded Nation which consists of all the sturdy elements and of all the best elements of the whole globe.  I listened again to this list of the dead with a profound interest because of the mixture of the names, for the names bear the marks of the several national stocks from which these men came.  But they are not Irishmen or Germans or Frenchmen or Hebrews or Italians any more.  They were not when they went to Vera Cruz; they were Americans, every one of them, and with no difference in their Americanism because of the stock from which they came.  They were in a peculiar sense of our blood, and they proved it by showing that they were of our spirit—­that no matter what their derivation, no matter where their people came from, they thought and wished and did the things that were American; and the flag under which they served was a flag in which all the blood of mankind is united to make a free Nation.

War, gentlemen, is only a sort of dramatic representation, a sort of dramatic symbol, of a thousand forms of duty.  I never went into battle; I never was under fire; but I fancy that there are some things just as hard to do as to go under fire.  I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.  When they shoot at you, they can only take your natural life; when they sneer at you, they can wound your living heart, and men who are brave enough, steadfast enough, steady in their principles enough, to go about their duty with regard to their fellow-men, no matter whether there are hisses or cheers, men who can do what Rudyard Kipling in one of his poems wrote, “Meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same,” are men for a nation to be proud of.  Morally speaking, disaster and triumph are impostors.  The cheers of the moment are not what a man ought to think about, but the verdict of his conscience and of the consciences of mankind.

When I look at you, I feel as if I also and we all were enlisted men.  Not enlisted in your particular branch of the service, but enlisted to serve the country, no matter what may come, even though we may sacrifice our lives in the arduous endeavor.  We are expected to put the utmost energy of every power that we have into the service of our fellow-men, never sparing ourselves, not condescending to think of what is going to happen to ourselves, but ready, if need be, to go to the utter length of complete self-sacrifice.

As I stand and look at you to-day and think of these spirits that have gone from us, I know that the road is clearer for the future.  These boys have shown us the way, and it is easier to walk on it because they have gone before and shown us how.  May God grant to all of us that vision of patriotic service which here in solemnity and grief and pride is borne in upon our hearts and consciences!