Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 71, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1914 — SOME STRIKING SENTENCES FROM WILSON’S MESSAGE [ARTICLE]

SOME STRIKING SENTENCES FROM WILSON’S MESSAGE

I*resident Wilson, in addressing congress yesterday, said in part: “We are the champions of peace and of control, and we should be very jealous of this distinction which we have sought to earn. “If asked, ‘Are you ready to defend yourselves?’ We reply: ‘Most assuredly, to the utmost,’ and yet we shall not turn Amer, ica into a military camp. “We will not ask our young men to spend the best years of their lives making soldiers of themselves. “The United States should be ready, as never before, to serve itself and to serve mankind; ready with its resources, its energies, its forces of production and its means of distribution. “We shall not alter our attitude toward our army and navy lidcause some among us are nervous and excited. “While we have worked at our tasks of peace the circumstances of tiie whole age have been altered by war. “A powerful navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural means of defensd, and it has always been of defense that we have thought, never of aggression or of conquest. “We have grossly drred in the way in which we have stunted and hindered the development of our merchant marine. “Our program of legislation with regard to the regulation of business is virtually complete. The road at last lies clear and firm before business.

“Give a larger self-government to the people of the Philippines. “The country has been misinformed; we have not been negligent of national defense. What is needed shall bd adequately done. “Of course we are not ready, on brief notice, to put a nation in the field; a nation or men trained for arms. We shall never bd in time of peace, so long as we retain our present political principles and institutions. “We have always found means to defend ourselves against attack and shall find them whenever it is necessary, without calling our peopld away from their necessary tasks to render compulsory military service in times of peace. “And especially when half the world is on fire, we shall be cardful to make our moral-insurance against the spread of the conflagration very definite and certain and adequate indeed. “We must depend, in every time of national peril, in the future as in the past . . .. upon a citizenry accustomed and trained to arms. “The national guard of the states would be developed and strengthened by every means which is not inconsistent with our obligations to our own people or with the established policy of our government. “It is our dearest present hope that this character and reputation (as champions of peace) may presently bring us an opportunity such as has seldom been vouchsafed any nation—the opportuinty to counsel and obtain peace in the world.”