the forefront in
America the matter of military training and military service--an
adequate military preparation for purposes of defence, for full and
adequate defence, the best thought of the nation is almost a unit in the
belief that, for us as a nation, an immense standing army is unnecessary
as well as inadvisable.

No amount of military preparation that is not combined definitely and
completely with an enhanced citizenship, and therefore with an advance
in real democracy, is at all worthy of consideration on the part of the
American people, or indeed on the part of the people of any nation.
Pre-eminently is this true in this day and age.

Observing this principle we could then, while a certain degree of
universal training under some system similar to the Swiss or Australian
system is being carried on, and to serve _our immediate needs_, have an
army of even a quarter of a million men without danger of militarism and
without heavy financial burdens, and without subverting our American
ideas--providing it is an industrial arm. There are great engineering
projects that could be carried on, thereby developing many of our now
latent resources; there is an immense amount of road-building that could
be projected in many parts of, if not throughout the entire country;
there are great irrigation projects that could be carried on in the far
West and Southwest, reclaiming millions upon millions of acres of what
are now unproductive desert lands; all these could be carried on and
made even to pay, keeping busy a large number of men for half a dozen
years to come.

This army of this number of men could be recruited, trained to an
adequate degree of military service, and at the same time could be
engaged in profitable employment on these much-needed works. They could
then be paid an adequate wage, ample to support a family, or ample to
lay up savings if without family. Such men leaving the army service,
would then have a degree of training and skill whereby they would be
able to get positions or employment, all more remunerative than the
bulk of them, perhaps, would ever be able to get without such training
and experience.

An army of this number of trained men, somewhat equally divided between
the Atlantic and the Pacific seaboards, the bulk of them engaged in
regular constructive work, _work that needs to be done and that,
therefore, could be profitably done_, and ready to be called into
service at a moment's notice, woul