There are boys and young men now of the best age for soldiers, who have been born since the war. It is the lot of most of the sons of men to live their appointed time, do their appointed work and die - their lives uneventful, their names soon fading out of memory, their work on earth forgotten. It was not our fate thus to live out all our days. We were not different from other boys of our age or from any of the generations of boys that grow up. All the races that blend to make this composite.
American people are the best soldier races of the world.
No generation of American, English, Irish, German or Norwegian boys ever lived that did not have in them superb material for soldiers. And these young men of each generation as they come upon the stage of manhood are the grand army of the American republic. We need no great standing army. The record of what they have done is an earnest of what they can and will do when occasion calls. That record written with sword and bayonet in the most glorious of the annals of war is before the world, and all the nations take due notice and govern themselves accordingly.