Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1915 — PRESIDENT BARES DEFENSE PLAN TO GUARD AMERICA [ARTICLE]

PRESIDENT BARES DEFENSE PLAN TO GUARD AMERICA

Asks Country to Support Program to Protect Nation. WILSON ASKS BIGGER ARMY Wants 400,000 Citizens Trained In the Next Three Years Through Voluntary Enlistment and Approves Large Naval Increase— Hits "Alien Voices." New York, Nov. 5. —President Wilson outlined last night the program for national defense which he will place before the next congress, and appealed to the whole country for support. * In an address before the Manhattan club- at its fiftieth anniversary dinner the president expounded his plans on preparedness and his views on other national questions. President Wilson’s speech in part was as follows: Mr. Tpastmaster and Gentlemen: I warmly felicitate the club on the completion of fifty years of successful and Interesting life. I shall assume that around the dinner table on this memorial occasion our talk should properly turn to the wide and common interests which are most in our thoughts, whether they be the Interests of the community or of the nation. Tells of New Problems. A year and a half ago our thoughts would have been almost altogether of great domestic questions. They are many and of vital 1 consequence. We must and shall address ourselves to their solution with diligence, firmness and self-possession, notwithstanding we find ourselves in the midst of a world disturbed by great disaster and ablaze with terrible war; but our thought is now inevitably of new things about which formerly we gave ourselves little concern.

We are thinking now chiefly of our relation with the rest of the world — not our commercial relations; about those we have thought and planned always—but about our political relations, our duties as an individual and independent force In the world to ourselves, our neighbors and the world itself. U. S. Champion of Liberty. Our principles are well known. It is not necessary to avow them again. We believe in political liberty, and founded our great government to obtain it, the liberty of men and of peoples—of men to choose their own lives and of peoples to choose their own allegiance. Our ambition, also, all the world has knowledge of. It is not only to be free and prosperous ourselves but also to be the friend and thoughtful partisan of those who are free or who desire freedom the world over. If we have had aggressive purposes and covetous ambitions, they were the fruit of our thoughtless youth as a nation and we have put them aside. Wants No More Conquest. We shall, 1 confidently believe, never again take another foot of territory by conquest. We shall never in any circumstances seek to make an independent people subject to our dominion; because we believe, we passionately believe, in the right of every people to choose their own allegiance and be free of masters altogether.

For ourselves we wish nothing but the full liberty of self-development; and with ourselves in this greater matter we associate all the peoples of our own hemisphere. We wish, not only for the United States, but for them the fullest freedom of independent growth and of action. United States' Duty on Military. All this is very clear to us and will, I confidently predict, become more and more clear to the whole world as the great processes of the future unfold themselves. It isjwith a full consciousness of such principles and such ambitions that we are asking ourselves at present what our duty is with regard to the armed force of the nation Force everywhere speaks out with a loud and Imperious voice in a titanic struggle of governments, and from one end of our own dear country to the other men are asking one another what our own force is, how far we are prepared to maintain ourselves against any interference with our national action or development. * In no man’s mind, I am sure, is there even raised the question of willful use of force on our part ..against any nation or any people. No matter what military or naval force the United States might develop, statesmen (Continued ou four./