ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The Brigade of Midshipmen, some 4,400 students, clad in dress blues and khakis, stands at attention, arrayed in Noon Meal Formation in front of Bancroft Hall at the United States Naval Academy. Upon command, a small group of cadet officers draw its swords. The drum and Bugle Corps strikes up the notes of John Philip Souza’s “The Thunderer.” The midshipmen, still in formation, march off Tecumseh Court.

This is ritual, underlying the values and tradition of the institution that has trained officers for the Navy and the Marine Corps on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay since its inception in 1845. Even as the midshipmen lined up for inspection on Thursday, politicians in Washington were arguing about the lessons of the Vietnam War and their applicability in Iraq.

A few hundred feet up the steps into the Beaux Arts architecture of Bancroft Hall, there were other war lessons, past and present, for today’s students, recent graduates, and Americans at large. Up a sweeping staircase stands Memorial Hall. A blue flag with the last words of John Lawrence, the captain of the U.S.S. Chesapeake, “don’t Give Up the Ship,” hangs on the wall above a list with 956 names, a “scroll” of Naval Academy graduates killed in action. The greatest portion fell in World War II, among others in the Boxer Rebellion, the Philippine Insurrection, and in Lebanon. Twelve names are listed under the Global War on Terror, among them James Patrick Blecksmith ’03, Jennifer Harris ’00, and Douglas Zembiec ’95.

“This is the heart of the yard. Our ‘sanctum sanctorum,’ the holiest of our holy places,” says George Watt, the president of the United States Naval Academy’s Alumni Association, which helped complete a renovation of Memorial Hall along with the United States Naval Academy Foundation.

One thing they did was construct another scroll, of 2,600 names — all graduates killed in operations during their time in service. Before incoming first year students, “plebes” in Academy parlance, can enter Memorial Hall, they have to learn about the meaning of the place, “honor, courage and commitment.”

A ceremony marks their first entry into Memorial Hall. “The regimental commander who’s a first class midshipman then tells them about the history of this place, why it’s important, why they are here at the academy,” Mr. Watt explains.

Typically, that commander, who is a student, will make reference to recent graduates, such as Blecksmith, Harris, and Zembiec. Blecksmith died on Veterans day, November 11, 2004, in Fallujah. Harris was a Marine pilot whose helicopter was shot down in February. Her funeral shut down the town of Swampscott, Mass. Zembiec, “the Lion of Fallujah,” was killed in a raid in Baghdad. The plebes “have to understand they can never dishonor those who have come before,” Mr. Wyatt says.

They are told of those who gave the supreme sacrifice in popular wars, such as World War II, “The Good War,” and those conflicts scorned by many Americans, such as Vietnam. The Academy instills values in its graduates regardless of opinion polls.

Off to the side of the hall is a diorama that marks a graduate’s act of heroism that came when the Vietnam War was at the nadir of its popularity in America. It depicts John Ripley, a Marine captain in 1972, installing explosives while under enemy fire on the bridge at Dong Ha.

Intact, the bridge would have facilitated the entry of 30,000 enemy troops into Hue, the old imperial capital of Vietnam that was brought under attack in what is known as the Easter Offensive. Now Mr. Ripley, who was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions in combat, comes back to Memorial Hall to tell his story to today’s midshipmen. Mr. Watt, who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1973, when confidence in the military and the academy itself was at a low point, sometimes accompanies him.

“John Ripley said in his hardest times, he kept reflecting there must be a place that’s still right. Then he’d think of the Brigade of Midshipmen,” Mr. Watt says. “The academy itself represented a rock of stability,” Mr. Ripley adds.

The Academy is the kind of place a nation needs to sustain itself during good times and difficult ones, a place where honor, courage, and commitment can be inculcated, even as the broader world devolves into chaos. It is a place to which young Americans want to come, even when the nation is embroiled in an unpopular war.

On Thursday morning, prior to Noon Meal Formation, a lanky white-haired grandfather accompanies an eager, tall grandson on a tour of the academy and Memorial Hall. The tour guide asks the grandson about his interest in visiting the Naval Academy. He replies succinctly that he wants to join the military. The young man, if admitted, will enter the vast depth of traditions, rituals, and values that existed before America went to war in Iraq and will keep our nation afloat long after the guns give their last report from Iraq.

Mr. Gitell (gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.