THE BATTALION.
11
fear territorial and colonial expansion. The round earth
belongs to redeemed man, and he is redeemed man who,
like Captain Philip, after victory in a righteous cause,
sheathes his sword to acknowledge God and his supremacy.
Now, your aim as students is to be abreast of these
conditions, to rise to the level of your heritage, to respond
to claims which no generation of the world has ever yet
pressed upon its children.
We are to second you in all your efforts. We are to
lay before you our experience, so far as we can, smooth the
way before you, conscious all the time, something like John
the Baptist, that as you come to your inheritance, we must
yield up our prerogatives, that as you increase we must de
crease. We are but agents, agents of your parents, of the
state, of your forefathers, of your God, handing over to you,
not our own, but what we have received in trust from them.
We cannot hold you to account, demand of you this and
that, with any more sterness of authority or strictness of
discipline than we are ourselves under to them. The mili
tary regime under which you move day after day, and of
whose requirements you are sometimes disposed to com
plain, is but a picture on diminished scale of the accounta
bility which we acknowledge, if we are honest men, to our
own consciences and to God. Our aim is to prepare you
for, and put you in possession, so far as we can, be en
couragement, admonition, by physical, mental, and moral
instruction, of the inheritance which comes to you in the
mere fact of your being men. If it is no little thing to be
heirs of all the ages, it is no less a responsibility to be