bundant materials out of our fields and our
mines and our factories with which not only to clothe and equip our own
forces on land and sea but also to clothe and support our people for
whom the gallant fellows under arms can no longer work, to help clothe
and equip the armies with which we are cooeperating in Europe, and to
keep the looms and manufactories there in raw material; coal to keep the
fires going in ships at sea and in the furnaces of hundreds of factories
across the sea; steel out of which to make arms and ammunition both here
and there; rails for worn-out railways back of the fighting fronts;
locomotives and rolling stock to take the place of those every day going
to pieces; mules, horses, cattle for labor and for military service;
everything with which the people of England and France and Italy and
Russia have usually supplied themselves but cannot now afford the men,
the materials, or the machinery to make.

It is evident to every thinking man that our industries, on the farms,
in the shipyards, in the mines, in the factories, must be made more
prolific and more efficient than ever and that they must be more
economically managed and better adapted to the particular requirements
of our task than they have been; and what I want to say is that the men
and the women who devote their thought and their energy to these things
will be serving the country and conducting the fight for peace and
freedom just as truly and just as effectively as the men on the
battlefield or in the trenches. The industrial forces of the country,
men and women alike, will be a great national, a great international,
Service Army,--a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the
nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of free men
everywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise
liable to military service will of right and of necessity be excused
from that service and assigned to the fundamental, sustaining work of
the fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of the
great patriotic forces of the nation as the men under fire.

I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word to the farmers of
the country and to all who work on the farms: The supreme need of our
own nation and of the nations with which we are cooeperating is an
abundance of supplies, and especially of food-stuffs. The importance of
an adequate food supply, especially for the present year, is
superlative