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NAVAL WAR COLLEGE

CHANGE OF COMMAND ADDRESS

13 OCTOBER 1977

Governor Garrahy, Admiral Holloway, ladies and gentlemen.
As I savor this moment, which is the realization of at least
ten years of dreams, I pray that today and in all my dealings
with this College, "...the words of my mouth and the medita-
tion of my heart be acceptable in thy sight O Lord my strength
and my redeemer."

Hunt Hardisty, you have clearly won the esteem of this
College and of the City of Newport. And as I said before,
somewhat facetiously, I wish you a long and productive tour
in the Phillipines, a long and successful tour at sea, and
that after all of those years you come back and relieve me
for a full tour as the President of this College. I accept
from you a school that is on an even keel, with programs that
are the envy of every senior service college in the United
States (this fact came to me clearly during last week's meet-
ing of military college Presidents). I thank you for a faculty
that is also second to none. It has been said that "...every-
thing depends upon the person who stands in the front of the
classroom. The teacher is not an automatic fountain from
which intellectual beverages may be obtained. He is a witness
to guide a pupil into the promised land; but he must have
been there himself." This faculty has been there, and they
hold the respect that goes with that qualification.

I spent this week with the Academic Department Heads.
And, at the urging of Professor Phil Crowl, by way of prepara-
tion, I consulted The Oracle. If you remember Phil's article
in the Naval War College Review, you will recall that his is
not The Oracle of Delphi but The Oracle of Newport, Rhode
Island, a man I can now call my predecessor, Alfred Thayer
Mahan. I've studied lectures Mahan gave here nearly one hun-
dred years ago--one given in the year 1888 right over here at
Founders Hall in the third year of his first term as President;
another given four years later in 1892, just after he came back
for his second term as President, delivered here to my right
in what was then the brand new Luce Hall. Besides their court-
liness (they are always addressed to the "Gentlemen of the Navy,"
which I thought rather classy), one of the first things to
strike you is the timeliness of these talks. Their content
verifies the wisdom of the philosophy he institutionalized here.