US Presidency
1915

I am interested to fix your attention on this prospect now because unless you take it within your view and permit the full significance of it to command your thought I can not find the right light in which to set forth the particular matter that lies at the very font of my whole thought as I address you to-day. I mean national defense. No one who really comprehends the spirit of the great people for whom we are appointed to speak can fail to perceive that their passion is for peace, their genius best displayed in the practice of the arts of peace. Great democracies are not belligerent. They do not seek or desire war. Their thought is of individual liberty and of the free labor that supports life and the uncensored thought that quickens it. Conquest and dominion are not in our reckoning, or agreeable to our principles.