I need not inquire whether the citizens of Milwaukee and Wisconsin are
interested in the subject of my errand. The presence of this great body
in this vast hall sufficiently attests your interest, but I want at the
outset to remove a misapprehension that I fear may exist in your mind.
There is no sudden crisis; nothing new has happened; I am not out upon
this errand because of any unexpected situation. I have come to confer
with you upon a matter upon which it would, in any circumstances, be
necessary for us to confer when all the rest of the world is on fire and
our own house is not fireproof. Everywhere the atmosphere of the world
is thrilling with the passion of a disturbance such as the world has
never seen before, and it is wise, in the words just uttered by your
chairman, that we should see that our own house is set in order and that
everything is done to make certain that we shall not suffer by the
general conflagration.
There were some dangers to which this Nation seemed at the outset of the
war to be exposed, which, I think I can say with confidence, are now
passed and overcome. America has drawn her blood and her strength out of
almost all the nations of the world. It is true of a great many of us
that there lies deep in our hearts the recollection of an origin which
is not American. We are aware that our roots, our traditions, run back
into other national soils. There are songs that stir us; there are some
far-away historical recollections which engage our affections and stir
our memories. We cannot forget our forbears; we cannot altogether ignore
the fact of our essential blood relationship; and at the outset of this
war it did look as if there were a division of domestic sentiment which
might lead us to some errors of judgment and some errors of action; but
I, for one, believe that that danger is passed. I never doubted that the
danger was exaggerated, because I had learned long ago, and many of you
will corroborate me by your experience, that it is not the men who are
doing the talking always who represent the real sentiments of the
Nation. I for my part always feel a serene confidence in waiting for the
declaration of the principles and sentiments of the men who are not
vociferous, do not go about seeking to make trouble, do their own
thinking, attend to their own business, and love their own country.
I have at no time supposed that the men whose voices seemed to contain
the threat of division amongst us were really uttering the sentiments
even of those whom they pretended to represent. I for my part have no
jealousy of family sentiment. I have no jealousy of that deep affection
which runs back through long lineage. It would be a pity if we forget
the fine things that our ancestors have done. But I also know the magic
of America; I also know the great principles which thrill men in the
singular body politic to which we belong in the United States. I know
the impulses which have drawn men to our shores. They have not come
idly; they have not come without conscious purpose to be free; they have
not come without voluntary desire to unite themselves with the great
nation on this side of the sea; and I know that whenever the test comes
every man's heart will be first for America. It was principle and
affection and ambition and hope that drew men to these shores, and they
are not going to forget the errand upon which they came and allow
America, the home of their refuge and hope, to suffer by any
forgetfulness on their part. And so the trouble makers have shot their
bolt, and it has been ineffectual. Some of them have been vociferous;
all of them have been exceedingly irresponsible. Talk was cheap, and
that was all it cost them. They did not have to do anything. But you
will know without my telling you that the man whom for the time being
you have charged with the duties of President of the United States must
talk with a deep sense of responsibility, and he must remember, above
all things else, the fine traditions of his office which some men seem
to have forgotten. There is no precedent in American history for any
action of aggression on the part of the United States or for any action
which might mean that America is seeking to connect herself with the
controversies on the other side of the water. Men who seek to provoke us
to such action have forgotten the traditions of the United States, but
it behooves those with whom you have entrusted office to remember the
traditions of the United States and to see to it that the actions of the
Government are made to square with those traditions.
But there are other dangers, my fellow-citizens, which are not past and
which have not been overcome, and they are dangers which we cannot
control. We can control irresponsible talkers amidst ourselves. All we
have got to do is to encourage them to hire a hall and their folly will
be abundantly advertised by themselves. But we cannot in this simple
fashion control the dangers that surround us now and have surrounded us
since this titanic struggle on the other side of the water began. I say
on the other side of the water; you will ask me, "On the other side of
which water," for this great struggle has extended to all quarters of
the globe. There is no continent outside, I was about to say, of this
Western Hemisphere which is not touched with it, but I recollected as I
began the sentence that a part of our own continent was touched with it,
because it involves our neighbors to the north in Canada. There is no
part of the world, except South America, to which the direct influences
of this struggle have not extended, so that now we are completely
surrounded by this tremendous disturbance and you must realize what that
involves.
Our thoughts are concentrated upon our own affairs and our own relations
to the rest of the world, but the thoughts of the men who are engaged in
this struggle are concentrated upon the struggle itself, and there is
daily and hourly danger that they will feel themselves constrained to do
things which are absolutely inconsistent with the rights of the United
States. They are not thinking of us. I am not criticising them for not
thinking of us. I dare say if I were in their place neither would I
think of us. They believe that they are struggling for the lives and
honor of their nations, and that if the United States puts its interests
in the path of this great struggle, she ought to know beforehand that
there is danger of very serious misunderstanding and difficulty. So that
the very uncalculating, unpremeditated, one might almost say accidental,
course of affairs may touch us to the quick at any moment, and I want
you to realize that, standing in the midst of these difficulties, I feel
that I am charged with a double duty of the utmost difficulty. In the
first place, I know that you are depending upon me to keep this Nation
out of the war. So far I have done so, and I pledge you my word that,
God helping me, I will if it is possible. But you have laid another duty
upon me. You have bidden me to see it that nothing stains or impairs
the honor of the United States, and that is a matter not within my
control; that depends upon what others do, not upon what the Government
of the United States does. Therefore there may at any moment come a time
when I cannot preserve both the honor and the peace of the United
States. Do not exact of me an impossible and contradictory thing, but
stand ready and insistent that everybody who represents you should stand
ready to provide the necessary means for maintaining the honor of the
United States.
I sometimes think that it is true that no people ever went to war with
another people. Governments have gone to war with one another. Peoples,
so far as I remember, have not, and this is a government of the people,
and this people is not going to choose war. But we are not dealing with
people; we are dealing with Governments. We are dealing with Governments
now engaged in a great struggle, and therefore we do not know what a day
or an hour will bring forth. All that we know is the character of our
own duty. We do not want the question of peace and war, or the conduct
of war, entrusted too entirely to our Government. We want war, if it
must come, to be something that springs out of the sentiments and
principles and actions of the people themselves; and it is on that
account that I am counseling the Congress of the United States not to
take the advice of those who recommend that we should have, and have
very soon, a great standing Army, but, on the contrary, to see to it
that the citizens of this country are so trained and that the military
equipment is so sufficiently provided for them that when they choose
they can take up arms and defend themselves.
The Constitution of the United States makes the President the Commander
in Chief of the Army and Navy of the Nation, but I do not want a big
Army subject to my personal command. If danger comes, I want to turn to
you and the rest of my fellow-countrymen and say, "Men, are you ready?"
and I know what the response will be. I know that there will spring up
out of the body of the Nation a great host of free men, and I want those
men not to be mere targets for shot and shell. I want them to know
something of the arms they have in their hands. I want them to know
something about how to guard against the diseases that creep into camps,
where men are unaccustomed to live. I want them to know something of
what the orders mean that they will be under when they enlist under arms
for the Government of the United States. I want them to be men who can
comprehend and easily and intelligently step into the duty of national
defense. That is the reason that I am urging upon the Congress of the
United States at any rate the beginnings of a system by which we may
give a very considerable body of our fellow-citizens the necessary
training.
I have not forgotten the great National Guard of this country, but in
this country of 100,000,000 people there are only 129,000 men in the
National Guard; and the National Guard, fine as it is, is not subject to
the orders of the President of the United States. It is subject to the
orders of the Governors of the several States, and the Constitution
itself says that the President has no right to withdraw them from their
States even, except in the case of actual invasion of the soil of the
United States. I want the Congress of the United States to do a great
deal for the National Guard, but I do not see how the Congress of the
United States can put the National Guard at the disposal of the national
authorities. Therefore it seems to me absolutely necessary that in
addition to the National Guard there should be a considerable body of
men with some training in the military art who will have pledged
themselves to come at the call of the Nation.
I have been told by those who have a greater knack at guessing
statistics than I have that there are probably several million men in
the United States who, either in this country or in other countries from
which they have come to the United States, have received training in
arms. It may be; I do not know, and I suspect that they do not either,
but even if it be true, these men are not subject to the call of the
Federal Government. They would have to be found; they would have to be
induced to enlist; they would have to be organized; their numbers are
indefinite; and they would have to be equipped. Such are not the
materials which we need. We want to know who these men are and where
they are and to have everything ready for them if they should come to
our assistance. For we have now got down, not to the sentiment of
national defense, but to the business of national defense. It is a
business proposition and it must be treated as such. And there are
abundant precedents for the proposals which have been made to the
Congress. Even that arch-Democrat, Thomas Jefferson, believed that there
ought to be compulsory military training for the adult men of the
Nation, because he believed, as every true believer in democracy
believes, that it is upon the voluntary action of the men of a great
Nation like this that it must depend for its military force.
There is another misapprehension that I want to remove from your minds:
Do not think that I have come to talk to you about these things because
I doubt whether they are going to be done or not. I do not doubt it for
a moment, but I believe that when great things of this sort are going to
be done the people of this country are entitled to know just what is
being proposed. As a friend of mine says, I am not arguing with you; I
am telling you. I am not trying to convert you to anything, because I
know that in your hearts you are converted already, but I want you to
know the motives of what is proposed and the character of what is
proposed, in order that we should have only one attitude and counsel
with regard to this great matter.
It is being very sedulously spread abroad in this country that the
impulse back of all this is the desire of men who make the materials of
warfare to get money out of the Treasury of the United States. I wish
the people that say that could see meetings like this. Did you come here
for that purpose? Did you come here because you are interested to see
some of your fellow-citizens make money out of the present situation? Of
course you did not. I am ready to admit that probably the equipment of
those men whom we are training will have to be bought from somebody, and
I know that if the equipment is bought, it will have to be paid for; and
I dare say somebody will make some money out of it. It is also true,
ladies and gentlemen, that there are men now, a great many men, in the
belligerent countries who are growing rich out of the sale of the
materials needed by the armies of those countries. If the Government
itself does not manufacture everything that an army needs, somebody has
got to make money out of it, and I for my part have been urging the
Congress of the United States to make the necessary preparations by
which the Government can manufacture armor plate and munitions, so that,
being in the business itself and having the ability to manufacture all
it needs, if it is put upon a business basis, it can at any rate keep
the price that it pays within moderate and reasonable limits. The
Government of the United States is not going to be imposed upon by
anybody, and you may rest assured, therefore, that while I believe you
prefer that private capital and private initiative should bestir
themselves in these matters, it is also possible, and I assure you that
it is most likely, that the Government of the United States will have
adequate means of controlling this matter very thoroughly indeed. There
need be no fear on that side. Let nobody suppose that this is a
money-making agitation. I would for one be ashamed to be such a dupe as
to be engaged in it if it had any suspicion of that about it, but I am
not as innocent as I look; and I believe that I can say for my
colleagues in Washington that they are just as watchful in such matters
as you would desire them to be.
And there is another misapprehension that I do not wish you to
entertain. Do not suppose that there is any new or sudden or recent
inadequacy on the part of this Government in respect of preparation for
national defense. I have heard some gentlemen say that we had no coast
defenses worth talking about. Coast defenses are not nowadays
advertised, you understand, and they are not visible to the naked eye,
so that if you passed them and nothing exploded, you would not know they
were there. The coast defenses of the United States, while not numerous
enough, are equipped in the most modern and efficient fashion. You are
told that there has been some sort of neglect about the Navy. There has
not been any sort of neglect about the Navy. We have been slowly
building up a Navy which in quality is second to no navy in the world.
The only thing it lacks is quantity. In size it is the fourth navy in
the world, though I have heard it said by some gentlemen in this very
region that it was the second. In fighting force, though not in quality,
it is reckoned by experts to be the fourth in rank in the world; and yet
when I go on board those ships and see their equipment and talk with
their officers I suspect that they could give an account of themselves
which would raise them above the fourth class. It reminds me of that
very quaint saying of the old darky preacher, "The Lord says unto Moses,
come fourth, and he came fifth and lost the race." But I think this Navy
would not come fourth in the race, but higher.
What we are proposing now is not the sudden creation of a Navy, for we
have a splendid Navy, but the definite working out of a program by which
within five years we shall bring the Navy to a fighting strength which
otherwise might have taken eight or ten years; along exactly the same
lines of development that have been followed and followed diligently and
intelligently for at least a decade past. There is no sudden panic,
there is no sudden change of plan; all that has happened is that we now
see that we ought more rapidly and more thoroughly than ever before to
do the things which have always been characteristic of America. For she
has always been proud of her Navy and has always been addicted to the
principle that her citizenship must do the fighting on land. We are
working out American principle a little faster, because American pulses
are beating a little faster, because the world is in a whirl, because
there are incalculable elements of trouble abroad which we cannot
control or alter. I would be derelict to the duty which you have laid
upon me if I did not tell you that it was absolutely necessary to carry
out our principles in this matter now and at once.
And yet all the time, my fellow-citizens, I believe that in these things
we are merely interpreting the spirit of America. Who shall say what the
spirit of America is? I have many times heard orators apostrophize this
beautiful flag which is the emblem of the Nation. I have many times
heard orators and philosophers speak of the spirit which was resident in
America. I have always for my own part felt that it was an act of
audacity to attempt to characterize anything of that kind, and when I
have been outside of the country in foreign lands and have been asked if
this, that, or the other was true of America I have habitually said,
"Nothing stated in general terms is true of America, because it is the
most variegated and varied and multiform land under the sun." Yet I know
that if you turn away from the physical aspects of the country, if you
turn away from the variety of the strains of blood that make up our
great population, if you turn away from the great variations of
occupation and of interest among our fellow-citizens, there is a
spiritual unity in America. I know that there are some things which stir
every heart in America, no matter what the racial derivation or the
local environment, and one of the things that stirs every American is
the love of individual liberty. We do not stand for occupations. We do
not stand for material interests. We do not stand for any narrow
conception even of political institutions; but we do stand for this,
that we are banded together in America to see to it that no man shall
serve any master who is not of his own choosing. And we have been very
liberal and generous about this idea. We have seen great peoples, for
the most part not of the same blood with ourselves, to the south of us
build up polities in which this same idea pulsed and was regnant, this
idea of free institutions and individual liberty, and when we have seen
hands reached across the water from older political polities to
interfere with the development of free institutions on the Western
Hemisphere we have said: "No; we are the champions of the freedom of
popular sovereignty wherever it displays or exercises itself throughout
both Americas." We are the champions of a particular sort of freedom,
the sort of freedom which is the only foundation and guarantee of
peace.
Peace lies in the hearts of great industrial and agricultural
populations, and we have arranged a government on this side of the water
by which their preferences and their predilections and their interests
are the mainsprings of government itself. And so when we prepare for
national defense we prepare for national political integrity; we prepare
to take care of the great ideals which gave birth to this Government; we
are going back in spirit and in energy to those great first generations
in America, when men banded themselves together, though they were but a
handful upon a single coast of the Atlantic, to set up in the world the
standards which have ever since floated everywhere that Americans
asserted the power of their Government. As I came along the line of the
railway to-day, I was touched to observe that everywhere, upon every
railway station, upon every house, where a flag could be procured, some
temporary standard had been raised from which there floated the stars
and stripes. They seemed to have divined the errand upon which I had
come, to remind you that we must subordinate every individual interest
and every local interest to assert once more, if it should be necessary
to assert them, the great principles for which that flag stands.
Do not deceive yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, as to where the colors
of that flag came from. Those lines of red are lines of blood, nobly and
unselfishly shed by men who loved the liberty of their fellow-men more
than they loved their own lives and fortunes. God forbid that we should
have to use the blood of America to freshen the color of that flag; but
if it should ever be necessary again to assert the majesty and integrity
of those ancient and honorable principles, that flag will be colored
once more, and in being colored will be glorified and purified.