Arizona republican., 1917-04-29

tory service used in order to make all men serve who ought to serve. But do not hinder men, who, under con scription, would be entitled to stay at home, from volunteering to go to the front if they can render good service. Under the bill proposed to congress by the war department, many millions of excellent fighting men would be ex> empt from service, while a long time would elapse before the others are sent to the front. Under these conditions, we ought to use the volunteer system to fill the gap; it opens to us at once a great possibility; let it be used, and used exclusively to give to those who would otherwise be exempt an oppor- tunity to go to the front without claim ing exemption.
 T most earnestly hope that we shall avoid any policy of delay. Congress has passed without a dissenting vote. a bill to appropriate seven billions of dollars as representing part of our contribution to the great war. This is fine; but only on condition that we also put our men into the fighting line Half of this great sum is to go to the Allies; that is, it is to be spent by them in getting their men up against the German and Austrian and Turkish shells and bullets. Now, we Americans have always prided ourselves on being able to do our own fighting It is right i to help others to fight in the common cause for which we are engaged. But ! 1t is even more necessary that we should fight ourselves.
 Tt would be an evil thing, a lasting calamity to this country, if the war i ended, and found us merely preparing an army in safety at home, without having sent a man to the firing line; merely having paid some billions of dollars to other people so that with the bodies of their sons and brothers they might keep us in safety.
 T ask that we send a fighting force over to the fighting line at the earliest possible moment, and I ask it in the name of our children and our child ren's children, so that they may hold their heads high over the memory of what this nation did in the worlds great crisis. I ask it for reasons of national morality no less than for our material Sel-interest. 1 ask it for the sake of our self-respect, our self esteem. Our children will have to read the history of what We have done dur ing this war. Let us make the chapter that yet remains to be written one that
 our children shall read with pride; and
 they will read it only with a feeling of
 reimbursement unless they read that
 in the times that tried mems souls we
 have shown valor and endurance and
 proud indifference to life when the
 honor of the flag and the welfare o1 mankind were at stake.
 At the earliest possible moment send an eXpeditionary force abroad show our German foes and our Allied
 friends that we are in this war in dead ly earnest, that we have put the flas , on the firing line, and that we shal steadily increase the force behind tha l flag to any limit necessary in order t, bring the peace of victory in th l great contest for democracy, for civili Zation and for the rights of free peo ples.-.
 Now that we are at war, let us mak
 it real war, not make-believe war
 not a war of limited liability w
 have walked into the ring; and nov
 we must fight. No fight ever wa
 won yet except by hitting. We hay ! gone into the fight; we have deter : mined to hit; and we must not hi
 soft.
 We owe our safety at this momen
 to the British fleet and the Frenc ' and British armies. l, for one. am no ' content to rest under that kind of ob
 ligatiOn; and l do not believe that m - fellow cOuntrymen are content to res