The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1915-06-16
RoosEvELT's VIEWS
Attacks Pacifists and Wants Country
to Prepare.

40 ~ates, from 25 states assembled
in ~ * Monday in two-day
peace and preparation conference
held under the auspices of the nation
al security league, at which Ameri-
cas- military needs were down on the
program for discussion by three for
mer secretaries of war, two former
secretaries of the navy and other
speakers The meeting opened with
an address of welcome by City Con
troller William Prendergast, and was
next addressed by Hudson Maxim, in
ventor of several types OF smokeless
powder, who concluded his remarks
with letter from Col Theodore
Roosevelt, in which Mr.. Roosevelt
asserted that the prime duty OF the
nation was to prepare itself SO 1t
could protect itself.
The enrolment and military in
struction of every able-bodied man in
the United States between the ages of
Is and 45 was recommended in the
report of the militia committee OF
the league at the first session late
Yesterday. National and state laws
to this effect should be passed with
out delay, in the opinion of the com
mittee, which is headed by Col.
Charles e. Lydecker
Courses In military education and
field hygiene should be embodied i'll
the curriculum of every college, in
the committees opinion, and the
huge enrolment of citizens, it is urg-
ed, should be affiliated as reserve
more closely with the regular army
than the national guard now is aiiili-
ated Certain changes in the law now
governing the national guard are
recommended to attain this end,
among them being that the national
guard training should be lightened
A school for officers to train the citi-
zen soldiery is also advocated.
After referring to letters on un-
preparedness sent Mr.. Maxim by Os-
car Straus and others. Col Roose-
yelts missive continued:
Il was saddned by the extraordi-
nary letter sent You by the three
Young men who purported to speak
for the senior class of the college OF
which they are members. The course
of conduct which these men and
those like them advocate for the ma
tion would. of course, not only mean
peculiarly craven avoidance OF na'
tional duty by our people at this tirnc
but would also inevitably tend per
manently to encourage the spirit of
individual cowaIdice no less than OF
national cowardice.
"The professional pacihsts, the
professional peace-at-any-pric men,
who during the last five years have
been so active, who have pushed the
mischieyous allarbitration treaties at
Washington, who have condoned our
criminal inactivity as regards Mexi-
co, and above all as regards the ques-
tion raised by the great world war
now raging, and who have applauded
our abject failure to live up to the
ppilSdtlDilo lliBoOtu uRbh TO 90 -
signatory power of the Hague con
vention, are at best an unlovely body
of men, and taken as whole are
probably the most undesirable citiz-
ems that this country contains. .....
THE advocates of pacifism .... have
been preaching poltroonery. Such
preaching, If reduced TO practice, is
ruinous to national character. These
men have been doing their best to
make us the China of the Occident.
"The prime duty for this nation is
to prepare itself so that it can pro
tect itself. I. Rigllteousness. must
be put before peace. 10 is wicked to
be neutral between right and wrong;
and this statement can be successful
ly refuted only by men who are pre-
pared to hold up Pontius PLATE, the
arch-typical neutral of all time, as
worthy of our admiration. An ig-
noble peace may be the worst crime
against humanity and righteous war
may represent the greatest service a
nation can at given moment render
to itself and to mankind"
The honor and safety of the Unit
ed States have been put in jeopardy
by the failure of ''our public ser
wants to do their duty in providing
adequately for defense in case of
war, said Charles j. Bonaparte, for
mer attorney general. He advocated
that prompt steps be taken to siren
gthen the army and navy, a program
that must bear fruit tomorrow or
the day after, not in the distant days
of the dim future"
BY reason of the vast development
of merchant marines of military ma
tions, the United States was in far
greater danger of invasion than it
was 100 or even so years ago, said
the speaker Even if the French
army had been no larger last August
than our regular army is today" he
declared, "still the Germans would
have needed twice as much time to
march 100000 men into Paris than
they would need to put the same
force in Washington or New York,
| had they command of the sea-"
Mr.. Bonaparte spoke of the enor-
nous modern armaments and then
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