rld. The influences of a great war are everywhere in the air. All
Europe is embattled. 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.

"We have it in mind to be prepared, but not for war, but only for
defense; and with the thought constantly in our minds that the
principles we hold most dear can be achieved by the slow processes of
history only in the kindly and wholesome atmosphere of peace, and not
by the use of hostile force.

"No thoughtful man feels any panic haste in this matter. The country
is not threatened from any quarter. She stands in friendly relations
with all the world. Her resources are known and her self-respect and
her capacity to care for her own citizens and her own rights. There is
no fear among us. Under the new-world conditions we have become
thoughtful of the things which all reasonable men consider necessary
for security and self-defense on the part of every nation confronted
with the great enterprise of human liberty and independence. That is
all."

Readiness for defense was also the keynote of the President's address
to Congress at its opening session in December, 1915; but despite its
earnest plea for a military and naval program, and a lively public
interest, the message was received by Congress in a spirit approaching
apathy.

The President, meantime, pursued his course, advocating his
preparedness program, and in no issue abating his condemnation of
citizens with aggressive alien sympathies.

In one all-important military branch there was small need for anxiety.
The United States was already well armed, though not well manned. The
munitions industry, called into being by the European War, had grown
to proportions that entitled the country to be ranked with first-class
powers in its provision and equipment for rapidly producing arms and
ammunition and other war essentials on an extensive scale. Conditions
were very different at the outset of the war. One of the American
contentions in defense of permitting war-munition exports--as set
forth in the note to Austria-Hungary--was that if the United States
accepted the principle that neutral nations should not supply war
materials to belligerents, it would itself, should it be