New Britain herald., 1915-08-26

1 fight for the rights Of the weak who are wronged. The greatest service ! that has ever been rendered mankind | has been rendered by the men who | have shrunk from righteous war in i order to bring about righteous peace, 1 by soldier statesmen of the type of 1 Washington, by statesmen of the type 1 of Abraham Lincoln, whose work was 1 done by soldiers. The men of the Revolution and the men of the civil war, and the women who raised these men to be soldiers, are the men and women to whom we owe a deathless
 debt of gratitude.
 Americas Ignoblc Part This means that all our young men should be trained so that at need they can fight. Under the conditions of modern warfare it is the widest non- sense to talk of men springing to arms in mass, unless they have been taught
 how to act in mass and how to use
 the arms to which they spring For
 thirteen months America has played
 an ignOble part among the nations. We have tamely submitted to seeing the weak, whom we had cOvenanted
 to protect wronged. We have seen our own men, women and children
 murdered on the high seas without ac- tion on our part. During this time our Nation has not taken the smallest
 step in the way of preparedness to de- fend our own rights. f ct these thlr- teen months have made evident the I lamentable fact that force is more | dominant now in the affairs of the
 world than ever before, that the most 1 powerful of modern military nations 1 is utterly brutal ana ruthless in it's 1 disregard of international morality,
 and that righteousness divorced from | force is utterly futile.
 This camp has lasted two months. | It has done immense good to you who | have been able to come here-al- ] though, by the way, you must not l think that it has more than marked l the beginning of training you to your 1 duties. But you have been able to come because you are either yourself fairly well-to-do or else because you happen to serve employers who are
 both public-spirited and fairly we'll to-do and who give you holidays With pay. The government mas not paid a
 dollar toward your direct expenses. Inasmuch as we as nation have done nothing whatever for national defense
 during the past thirteen months, the time when during all our history it was most necessary to prepare for self defense it is well that private in- dividuals should have tried however,
 insufficiently, to provide some kind of
 substitute for proper governmental
 action.
 High Praise for Camps.
 "The army officers and enlisted men
 have put all good Americans under
 a fresh debt by what they have done
 in connection with this camp; and
 we owe much to the private citizens
 who have advanced the money with
 out which the camp could not have
 been held. But you men have had
 to buy your own uniforms; you have
 had to spend money in fifty different
 ways; in other words you have had
 to pay for the privilege of learning
 how to serve your country This
 means that for every one man like
 yourselves who can afford to come
 here there are a hundred equally
 good American citizens equally pa
 triotic who would like to come and
 are unable to-
 Ut is undemocratic that the young
 farmer, that the young hired man
 on farm that the hard-Workin:g
 clerk or mechanic or day laborer, all
 of whom wish to serve the country
 as much as you do and are as much
 entitled to the benefit of this camp
 as you are, should be unable to at
 tend such a camp. They cannot at tend it unless the Nation does as Switzerland has done and gives the
 opportunity for every generous and right-thinking American to learn by, say six months actual service in one year or two years, how to do his duty to the country if the need arises