is going to be the volunteering of the men to take the training and the willingness of their employers to see to it that no obstacle is put in the way of their volunteering. It will be up to the young men of this country and to the men who employ them; then, and not till then, we shall know how far it is true that America wishes to prepare itself for national defense-not a matter of sentiment, but a matter of hard practice.

Are the men going to come out, and are those who employ them going to facilitate their coming out? I for one believe that they will. There are many selfish influences at work in this country, as in every other; but when it comes to the large view America can produce the substance of patriotism as abundantly as any other country under God's sun. I have no anxiety along those lines, and I have no anxiety along the lines of what Congress is going to do. You elect men to Congress who have opinions, and it is not strange that they should have differing opinions. I am not jealous of debate. If what I propose can not stand debate, then something ought to be substituted for it which can. And I am not afraid that it is going to be all debate. I am not afraid that nothing is going to come out of it. I am not afraid that we shall fail to get out of it the most substantial and satisfactory results. Certainly when I talk a great deal myself I am not going to be jealous of the other man's having a chance to talk also. We are talking, I take it, in order to get at the very final analysis of the case, the final proof and demonstration of what we ought to do.

My own feeling, ladies and gentlemen, is that it is a pity that this is a campaign year. I hope, with the chairman of the meeting, that the question of national preparation for defense will not by anybody be drawn into campaign uses or partisan aspects. There are many differences between Democrats and Republicans, honest differences of opinion and of conviction, but Democrats do not differ

from Republicans upon the question of the Nation's safety, and no man ought to draw this thing into controversy in order to make party or personal profit out of it. I am ready to acknowledge that men on the other side politically are just as deeply and just as intelligently interested in this question as I am, of course, and I shall be ashamed of any friends of mine who may take any different view of it.

I want you to realize just what is happening, not in America, but in the rest of the world. It is very hard to describe it briefly. It is very hard to describe it in quiet phrases. The world is on fire, and there is tinder everywhere. The sparks are liable to drop anywhere, and somewhere there may be material which we can not prevent from bursting into flame. The influence of passion is everywhere abroad in the world. It is not strange that men see red in such circumstances. What a year ago was incredible has now happened and the world is so in the throes of this titanic struggle that no part of it is unaffected.

You know what is happening. You know that by a kind of improvidence which should be very uncharacteristic of America we have neglected for several generations to provide the means to carry our own commerce on the seas, and, therefore, being dependent upon other nations for the most part to carry our commerce, we are dependent upon other nations now for the movement of our commerce when other nations are caught in the grip of war. So that every natural impulse of our peaceful life is embarrassed and impeded by the circumstances of the time, and wherever there is contact there is apt to be friction. Wherever the ordinary rules of commerce at sea and of international relationship are thrust aside or ignored, there is danger of the more critical kind of controversy. Where nations are engaged as many nations are now engaged, they are peculiarly likely to be stubbornly steadfast in the pursuit of the purpose which is the main purpose of the moment; and so, while we move among friends, we move among

friends who are preoccupied, preoccupied with an exigent matter which is foreign to our own life, foreign to our own policy, but which nevertheless inevitably affects our own life and our own policy. While a year ago it seemed impossible that a struggle upon so great a scale should last a whole twelvemonth, it has now lasted a year and a half and the end is not yet, and all the time things have grown more and more difficult to handle.

It fills me with a very strange feeling sometimes, my fellow citizens, when it seems to be implied that I am not the friend of peace. If these gentlemen could have sat with me reading the dispatches and handling the questions which arise every hour of the twenty-four, they would have known how infinitely difficult it had been to maintain the peace and they would have believed that I was the friend of peace. But I also know the difficulties, the real dangers, dangers not about things that I can handle, but about things that the other parties handle and I can not control.

It amazes me to hear men speak as if America stood alone in the world and could follow her own life as she pleased. We are in the midst of a world that we did not make and can not alter; its atmospheric and physical conditions are the conditions of our own life also, and therefore, as your responsible servant, I must tell you that the dangers are infinite and constant. I should feel that I was guilty of an unpardonable omission if I did not go out and tell my fellow countrymen that new circumstances have arisen which make it absolutely necessary that this country should prepare herself, not for war, not for anything that smacks in the least of aggression, but for adequate national defense. . . .

What I want you to do is this: I do not want you merely to listen to speeches. I want you to make yourselves vocal. I want you to let everybody who comes within earshot of it know that you are a partisan for the adequate preparation of the United States for national defense. I have come to ask you not merely to go home and say, "The President

seems to be a good fellow and to mean what he says"; I want you to go home determined that within the whole circle of your influence the President, not as a partisan, but as the representative of the national honor, shall be backed up by the whole force that is in the Nation.

AT CLEVELAND, OHIO, JANUARY 29, 1916.

(The Western Preparedness Tour)

Mr. President and Fellow Citizens:

I suppose that from the first America has had one peculiar and particular mission in the world. Other nations have grown rich, my fellow citizens, other nations have been as powerful as we in material resources in comparison with the other nations of the world, other nations have built up empires and exercised dominion; we are not peculiar in any of these things, but we are peculiar in this, that from the first we have dedicated our force to the service of justice and righteousness and peace. We have said: "Our chief interest is not in the rights of property, but in the rights of men; our chief interest is in the spirits of men that they might be free, that they might enjoy their lives unmolested so long as they observed the just rules of the game, that they might deal with their fellowmen with their heads erect, the subjects and servants of no man; the servants only of the principles upon which their lives rested." And America has done more than care for her own people and think of her own fortunes in these great matters. She has said ever since the time of President Monroe that she was the champion of the freedom and the separate sovereignty of peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere. She is trustee for these ideals and she is pledged, deeply and permanently pledged, to keep these momentous promises.

She not only, therefore, must play her part in keeping this conflagration from spreading to the people of the

United States; she must also keep this conflagration from spreading on this side of the sea. These are matters in which our very life and our whole pride are embedded and rooted, and we can never draw back from them. And I, my fellow citizens, because of the extraordinary office with which you have intrusted me, must, whether I will or not, be your responsible spokesman in these great matters. It is my duty, therefore, when impressions are deeply borne in upon me with regard to the national welfare to speak to you with the utmost frankness about them, and that is the errand upon which I have come away from Washington.

For my own part, I am sorry that these things fall within the year of a national political campaign. They ought to have nothing whatever to do with politics. The man who brings partisan feeling into these matters and seeks partisan advantage by means of them is unworthy of your confidence. I am sorry that upon the eve of a campaign we should be obliged to discuss these things, for fear they might run over into the campaign and seem to constitute a part of it. Let us forget that this is a year of national elections. That is neither here nor there. The thing to do now is for all men of all parties to think along the same lines and do the same things and forget every difference that may have divided them.

And what ought they to do? In the first place, they ought to tell the truth. There have been some extraordinary exaggerations both of the military weakness and the military strength of this country. Some men tell you that we have no means of defense and others tell you that we have sufficient means of defense, and neither statement is true. Take, for example, the matter of our coast defenses. It is obvious to every man that they are of the most vital importance to the country. Such coast defenses as we have are strong and admirable, but we have not got coast defenses in enough places. Their quality is admirable, but