The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-12-08

NATIONAL DEFENSE
 There is, I venture to point out, an especial significance just now attaching to this whole matter of drawing the Americas together in bonds of Honorable partnership and mutual advantage be- cause of the economic readjustments which the world must inevitably witness within the next generation, when peace shall have at last resumed it's healthful tasks. In the performance of these tasks I believe the Americas to be des- tined to play their parts together. l 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 cannot find the right light in which to set forth the particular matter that lies at the very front of my whole thought as I address you today. I mean national defense.
 No one who really comprehends the spirit of the great people for which we are appointed to speak can fail to per- ceive 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 indi- vidual 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. But just because we demand unmolested development and the undisturbed government of our own lives upon our own principles of right and liberty, we resent, from whatever quar- ter it may come, the aggression we our selves will not practice. We insist upon security in prosecuting our Self-chosen lines of national development. We do more than that. We demand it also for Ot We pntbu- siasm for individual liberty and free na- tional development to the incidents and movements of affairs which affect only ourselves. We feel it wherever there is 8 people that tries to walk in these difficult paths of independenc and right. From the first we have made common cause with all partisans of liberty on this side the sea, and have deemed 1t as important that our neighbors should be free from all outside domination as that We ourselves should be- have set America aside as a whole for the uses of independent nations and political free men.
 Out of such thoughts grow all our po,i- cies. We regard war merely as means of asserting the rights of people against aggression. And we are as fiercely jealous of coercive or dictatorial power within our own nation as of aggression from without. We will not maintain a standing army except for uses which are as neces- sary in times of peace as in times of war, and We shall always see to it that our military peace establishment is no larger than is actually and continuously needed for the uses of days in which no enemies move against us. But we do be- lieve in a 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 confi- dence has been that our safety in times of danger would lie in the rising of the na- ton to take care of itself, as the farmers rose at Lexington.
 DISCIPLINED MIGHT
 But war has never been a mere matter of men and guns It is a thing of dis ciplined might. If our citizens are ever to fight effectively upon sudden sum- mons they must know how modern fight ing is done, and what to do when the summons comes to render themselves im- mediately available and immediately ef- fective. And the government must be their servant in this matter, must supply them with the training they need to take care of themselves and of it. The mii- tary arm of their government, which they will not allow to direct them they may properly use to serve them and make their independence Secure-and not their own independence merely, but the rights also of those with whom they have made com mon cause, should they also be put in jeo- pardy They must be fitted to play the great role in the world, and particularly in this hemisphere, for which they are qualified by principle and by chastened ambition to play.
 It is with these ideals in mind that the plans of the department of war for more adequate national defense were conceived which will be laid before you, and which l urge you to sanction and put into effect as soon as they can be properly scrutin- ized and discussed They seem to me the essential first steps. and they seem to me for the present sufficient
 INCREASE IN ARMY
 They contemplate an increase of the standing force of the regular army from it's present strength of 5023 officers and l02,9S5 enlisted men of all services to a strength of 7136 officers and 134 TOY enlisted men, or 141,S4 all told, all services, rank and file, by the addition of 52 compa nies of coast artillery, b companies of engi- neers, 10 regiments of infantry, four regi- ments of field artillery, and four aero squadrons, besides 750 officers required for great variety of extra service espe- cially the all important duty of training the citizen force of which I shall pres ently speak, TSP noncommissioned officers Tor service in drill recruiting and the like, and the necessary quota of enlisted men for the quartermaster corps, the hospital corps, the ordnance department, and other similar auxiliary services. These are the additions necessary to ren- der the army adequate for it's present duties, duties which it has to perform not only upon our own continental coasts and borders and at our interior army posts. but also in the Philippines, in the Ha- Waifan Islands, at the isthmus, and in Porto Rico.
 By way Of making the country ready to assert some part of it's real power promptly and upon a larger scale, should occasion arise, the plan also contemplates supplementing the army by force of 4OO eco disciplined citizens, raised in incre- ments or l33,OOO year throughout a period of three years. This it is proposed to do by process of enlistment under | which the serviceab,e men of the coun- try would be asked to bind themselves to | serve with the colors for purposes of | training for short periods throughout l three years, and to come to the colors | at call at any time throughout an addi- tional 'furlough" period of three years This force of 100000 men would be pro- Vlded With personal accoutrements as fast as enlisted and their equipment for the | field made ready to be supplied at any time. They would be assembled for train l ing at stated intervals at convenient places in association with suitable units of the regular army. Their period of an- nual training would not necessarily ex. ceed two months in the year
 l It would depend upon the patriotic
 feeling of the younger men of the country whether they responded tc