The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1917-05-07
My Fellow Countrymen:

The entrance of our own beloved
country into the grim and terrible
war for democracy and human rights
which has shaken the world creates
so many problems of national life
and action which calls for immediate
consideration and settlement that
hope you will permit me to address
to you a few words of earnest cOun.
sci and appeal with regard to them.
We are rapidly putting our navy
upon an effective war footing and
are about to create and equip great
army, but these are the simplest
parts of the great task to which we
have addressed ourselves. There is
not single selfish element, SO far
as 1 can see, in the cause we are
fighting for. We are fighting for
what we believe and wish to be the
rights of mankind and for the future
peace and security of the world. To
do this great thing worthily and sue
cessfully we must devote ourselves
to the service without regard to
profit or material advantage and
with an energy and intelligence that
will rise to the level of the enter
prise itself. We must realize to the
full how, great the task is and how
many things, how many kinds and
elements of capacity and service and
self-sacrifice, it involves.
These, then, are the things we
must do, and do we'll, besides fight
ing,-the things without which more
fighting would be Ruthless:
We must supply abundant food
for ourselves and for our armies
and 0ur seamen not only, but also
for large part of the nations with
whom we have now made common
cause, in whose support and by
whose sides we shall be fighting.
We must supply ships by the
hundreds out of our shipyards to
carry to the other side of the sea,
submarines or no submarines, what
will every day be needed there, and
abundant materials out of our fields
and our mines and our factories with
which not only to clothe and equip
our own forces on land and sea but
also to clothe and support our people
for whom the gallant fellows under
arms can no longer work to help
clothe and equip the armies with
which we are cooperating in Europe
and to keep the looms and manu-
factories there in raw material; coal
to keep the fires going in ships at
sea and in the furnaces of hundreds
of factories across the sea; steel out
of which to make arms and ammuni-
ton both here and there; rails for
WORKOUT railways back of the fight
ing fronts; locomotives and rolling
stock to take the place oftthose
every day going to pieces; mules,
horses, cattle for labor and for mill
tary service; everything with which
the people of England and France
and Italy and Russia have usually
supplied themselves but cannot now
afford !. the men, the materials, or
the machinery to make.
1t is evident to every thinking
man that our industries, ON the
farms, i'm the shipyards, in the
mines, i'm the factories, must be
made more prolific and more effici-
emit than ever and that they must
be more economically managed and
better adapted to the particular re-
guirements of our task than they
have been; and what l want to say
Is that the men and the women who
devote their thought and their
energy to these things will be serv-
Ing the country and conducting the
fight for peace and freedom just as
truly and just as effectively as the
men ON the battlefield or i'm the