The Sunday telegram. [volume] (Clarksburg, W. Va.) 1914-1927, 1915-12-12
In the United States if the Ma.
tlonal Defense Program
Should Fail to Pass.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11.--Secretary
Garrison declares in his annual .e-
port to the president, Just made. that
II the administration plan for a con-
t!nental army fails. the United States
Will face some form of compulsory
military service.
In what many men in official life
characterize as the most remarkable
report ever made by secretary Of
war. Mr.. Garriosn passes quickly over
the widespread routine activities of the
war department and devotes practical
~ all his words to the subject O. mil
itary preparedness, the need for which
he sums up by saying:
SO long as right and wrong exist
in the world there will be IN inevitable
conflict between them. The rightdoers
must be prepared to protect and de-
fend the right as against the wrong"
unsparing In his arguments in an
swer to those who would have no in
crease in the country's military pre-
paredness, Secretary Garrison de-
clares that the American people must
view their responsibilities and meas
ure up to them and then goes on to
take up the various arguments of the
opposition separately.
Moral Phases
There are some who do not feel
free to base their conduct upon a con
sideration OF facts or conclusions of
reason. because Of their interpreted
ton Of Divine injunction" he says,
They do not believe in resistance to
physical force; and those whose con-
sciences are SO convinced surrender
life and all that they cherish and love
at the behest Of the aggressor. This
attitude concerns the individual, and
him alone. 1t cannot be made the gen.
eral rule Of conduct under our form
OF government without departing from
the basis upon which our government
is founded. One is impelled to query
upon what proper consideration there
Is based any distinction between the
right or necessity or desirability Il
using mental force to repel error,
moral force to repel evil. and physical
force to repel wrong. 1t would seem,
II reason were applied, that in each
instance the situation is identical: and
that II we should properly prepare
our minds to be strong SO that we can
reject error, and our moral charac-
tiers to be strong so that we can re-
1ect evil, we should likewise make our
physical force strong in order that we
may maintain the right as against
those who would physically impose the
wrong upon US.
There are others concerning whose
clarity OF vision we are not advised,
and concerning whose soundness of
reason we are not informed because
the attitude which they take is admit
tedly not based upon either vision or
reason. They are those who predict
that'war will never come to this coun-
try, and assert that therefore precau-
tons with respect thereto are unwise
and needless Since wars have come
upon nations from the earliest date
of recorded history to this moment,
there is no basis Of fact for such po-
sition but an actual demonstration Of
the nonexistence OF such basis. We
were early warned that there woIld
be wars and rumors of wars, and that
nation would rise against nation and
kingdom against kingdom and the end
was not yet; and that prediction has
been fully verified. There is no basis
and no foundation to conclude that
this great evil has been eliminated,
and 1t therefore must be treated as
are all other existing evils and must
be prepared again. Surely. as between
resting upon prediction or upon prep
uration, wisdom would not hesitate.
Mistrust Nation.
There are others among US who
are too intelligent and clear sighted
not to see the facts and to realize their
significance. but who counsel inaction
because they mistrust themselves and
the nation. Those to whom now re-
Ter do not believe in the doctrine of
non-resistance; they do not rest upol
the prediction that an evil which has
existed since the world began has
ceased to exist and been abolished
and should not therefore be conslt-
cred as one to be prepared against: