Carson City daily appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1907-1930, 1915-12-06
PRESIDENT Wilson's
MESSAGE READ

quarter in the radical but necessary
process. We will aid and befriend
Mexico but we will not coerce her;
and our course with regard to her
ought to be sufficient proof to all
America that we seek no political
suzerainty or. selfish control.
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 display
ed in the practice of the arts of peace.
Great democracies are not belliger-
ent. 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 agree
able to our principles. But just be-
cause we demand unmolested devel-
opment and the undisturbed govern
ment of our own lives upon our own
principles of right and liberty, we
resent, from whatever quarter it may
come; the aggression We ourselves
will not practice. we insist upon Sc
curity in prosecuting our self-chosen
lines of national development to the
incidents and movements of affairs
which affect only ourselves. We feel
it wherever there is a people that
tries to walk in these difficult paths
of independence and right. From the
first we have made common cause
with all partisans of liberty on this
side the sea, and have deemed it as
important that our neighbors should
be free from all outside domination
as that we ourselves should be; have
set Amerio< aside as a whole for the
uses of independent nations and po-
litical freemen.
Out OF such thoughts grow all our
policies. We regard war merely as
means of asserting the rights of
people against aggression. And we
are fiercely jealous of coercive or
dictatorial power within our own ma
tion as of aggression from without
We will not maintain a standing
army except for uses which are as
necessary in times of peace as in
times of war; and we shall always
see to it that our military peace es-
tablishment is no larger than is ac-
tually and continuously needed for
the uses of days in which no enemies
move against us. But we do believe
in body of free citizens ready and
sufficient to take care of themselves
and of the governments which they
have set up to serve them. In our
constitutions themselves we have
commanded that 'the right of the
people to keep and bear arms shall
not be infringed,' and our confidence
has been that our safety in times of
danger would lie i'll the rising of the
nation to take care Of itself, as the
farmers rose at Lexington
1t is with these ideals in mind that
the plans of the department of war
Tor more adequate national defense
were conceived which will be laid be-
fore you, and which l urge you to
sanction and Nut into effect as soon
as they can be properly scrutinized
and discussed. They seem to me the
essential first steps, and they seem
to me for the present sufficient
They contemplate an increase Of
the standing force of the regular
army from Is present strength of
, 5.O23 officers and 102,o85 enlisted
men of all services to strength #
i7,136 officers and 134,7O7 enlisted
men, or 14l,S43, all told. all services,
rank and file, by the addition of fifty
two companies of coast artillery, fiji
teen companies of engineers, ten reg
; iments of infantry, four regiments Of
field artillery and four aero squad
rons, besides $50 officers required
for a great variety OF extra service,
especially the all important duty of
; training the citizen force, 1872 non
commissioned officers for service in
drill, recruiting and the like, and the
necessary quota of enlisted men for
the Ouartermaster corps, the Hospl-
tai corps, the Ordnance department,
and other similar auxiliary services
, These are the additions necessary to
render the army adequate for its pres
ent duties, duties which it has to per-
/ form not only upon our own conti-
mental coasts and borders and at our
interior army posts, but also in the
Continued on Second Pagel