The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

THE PRESIDENT STARTS ON HIS TRIP 159
After listening to words of welcome by President James, the
Chief Executive responded, in part, as follows:
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S EVANSTON SPEECH
We have no room for the idler here; we have no room for the man who merely
wishes to lead a pleasant life; if that is all he desires he can never count in Ameri-
can work; if the man has not got in him the desire to count, the desire to do good
work in whichever line he adopts, then scant is our use for him.
But if he has got it in him, then all that I ask him to remember is this—all that
I ask each one of you here to remember is this: that if you go from this university
from any university—feeling merely that your course has given you special privileges
if you feel that it has put you in a class apart, you will fail in life. If you feel, on
the other hand, that the very fact of your having had special advantages imposes
upon you special responsibilities, makes it specially incumbent upon you to show that
you can do your duty with peculiar excellence ;
university training will have done much for you.
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STRENGTH
if you approach life in that spirit the
We need all the training for mind that can be given. We need all the training
for body that can be given. I welcome every form of rough, vigorous athletic
sports. Some of the cheering this morning made me feel as if I was looking on at a
good football game. I welcome all forms of manly, vigorous, rough exerci.se. The
best kind of work that can be done is such as is done by your life-saving crew here.
But all universities cannot be placed beside a lake, where there is a chance for a
crew. They are going to do the best they can with the nine and the eleven.
Now, it is a great thing to have a safe and a strong and a vigorous mind. But
best of all is to have that which is partly made up of both, and partly made up of
something higher and better—character. That is what counts, and the main good
that can be done to you after all in a university such as this, is to give you what I
am certain universities do give—character—a iine and high type of citizenship.
That is what we must strive to produce in our universities. Physical strength? Yes.
Mental strength? Yes, even more than physical. But above all, let us strive to
develop that for the lack of which- neither bodily prowess nor mental capacity can
atone—the quality of the soul, of the heart, the qualities of strength, of courage, of
sweetness, which we group together when we say that a man or woman has
character.
The formal welcome of the city of Chicago was extended
to President Roosevelt by Mayor Harrison and a committee