The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1918-08-27
ROOSEVELT SAYS !.
WE MUST SPEED
UP WAR WORK
Would Send 100000 Fighters
BY April |.
SCORES ALL PACIFISTs
Says We Must Make Ready to Solve
Industrial Problems That Come
With Peace.

Springne d, H., Aug. 26.-Specd
up the war, prepare to defend our
selves afterward and make ready TO
solve the industrial social problems
which will come with peace, were the
demands of Theodore Roosevelt ex-
pressed in an address he delivered
here today at the centennial celebra-
tion of the admission of llinois to
stathOod.
THE two great needs of the mo-
ment," said the Colonel, ARE to insist
upon thorough going and absolute
Amercanism throughout this land
and to speed up the war; and second.
ari to these needs come the needs
OF beginning even now to make ready,
to prepare for the tasks that are to
come after the war, the task of pre-
pairing so that never again shall war
find us helpless, and the task OF pre-
pairing for the social and industrial
problems which this earthing conflict
of gians will leave in its ruinous
wake.
ITO insist upon thorough going, 100
per cent. Americanlsm among all our
people in merely another way of say
ing that we insist upon being nation
proud OF our national past and conf
dent of our future as the greatest OF
the nations of mankind; for If We per-
nit our people to be split into score
OF different nationalities, each speak
ing a different language and each pay
ing its real soul homage to some ma
tional ideal overseas, we shall not be
nation at all, but merely polyglot
boarding house, and nobody feels
much loyalty TO a pOlyglot boarding
house or is proud to belong to it,
Let onr people remember that for
the two and half years before we Ell
tered the war the paciflsts clamor
ously insisted that If we kept unpre-
pared we would avoid war. Well, we
tried the experiment We kept com
pletely unprepared Even after we
broke off diplomatic relations with
Germany we refused to make the
slightest preparation, and neyerthe-
( less we drifted into the war. Paci-
fsm and unpreparedness never keep
nation out of war They invite war
and they insure that il war comes it
shall be costly and longdrawnout and
/ bloody.
( Let us remember this when the
peace comes Don't trust the pa
ciGs;s they are the enemies of right
eousness. Don't trust the interna-
tionalists; they are the enemies of
nationalism and Americanism.
When peace comes let us accept
any reasonable proposal whether
calling for a league of nations or for
am other machinery, which We can
in good faith act upon, and which
doe5 really offer some chance of les
sen.ng the number of future wars and
diminishing their area. But let us
never forget that any promise that
such league or other piece of ma
chircry viii definitely do away with
war Is either sheer nonsense or rank
hyr1crisy.
"l. ct us rest orr strength on an
army which shall consist not of a
spceial casts, but Of the people them
re- cs. on an army produced by the
universal obligatory training Of all
our yoang men sometime between the
ages of 10 and u.
This is for the future. Our imme-
diaie duty is to win the war. We
must spccd up the war TO the limit.
We must try to finish 1t at the earli-
est possible moment. but be resolved
to finish it, no matter how long It
takes. We must insist on the peace
of complete and overwhelming vic
tory We must remember that a
huge army put in the field in driblets
can never accomplish We have q
much larger population and much
greater natural resources than Ger
many or than France and England
combined.
Therefore by next spring we
should have thousands of our own
field guns, and scores of thousands OF
our own airplanes at the front, and an
enormous ship tonnage in which to
ferry across the ocean so many troops
that by April we may have 4,OOO,OOo
trained fighting men at the front not
counting noncombatants and reserves
The age limit for the draft should be
greatly increased and the exemptions
q eroatlV diminished