The Wrangell sentinel., 1924-09-04
More About Defense Day
Chilkoot Barracks, Alaska,
 August 20th, 1924.

JuuCous <hiaSnAs
 My Dear Stroller:
 AS usual, was perusing the Weekly, and ran into your para graph on Defense Day: There seems to be considerable indiffer- ence throughout the country as to whether National Defense Day, Sep tember 12, is observed or not. In military circles it will probably be made something of, but if the aver age citizen does not become wildly hilarious oyer it, it is no sign he is not a patriotic American"
 I think you express very we'll the attitude of the average good, com- mon-sense citizen toward the De- . fense Test and military matters ir general You civilian citizens are good friends of the Army people with whom you may come in con tact; they and you have mutual re spect and the best of feelings for each other personally. But civil affairs in the past didn't much in terest the Army and the Army mat ters were no cause for the citizenry to be, as you put it, wildly hilar- ious."
 But the late swatfest with Ger many, ct al, convinced us that the Army and the citizenry are inex- tricably interlaced. It showed us that the Regular Army and Nation al Guard are merely citizens who are specialists in military matters to train and direct the other citi- zens when a national military emer- gency arises. We are not separ- ate group isolated from the rest of the country. And since the war we have made a sincere effort to take our part in all the activities of the communities in which we may have been stationed. For my own part during the last two years I have been an Alaskan in thought and feeling and I hope in fact, and now that I am leaving Alaska I expect to speak and act for this Territory whenever I can, as would any other Alaskan who goes outside"
 We Army people hope that the civilian citizenry of the country will also realize that the civilian and the military are bound togeth- er by common aims and interests and that they will come to take more active interest in military as we'll as other governmental affairs. There is no citizen who, under our laws and Constitution, is not atleast potentially a military man. even though he may not in every day life wear the olive drab livery of our branch of the public service. Even if he be physically unfit to shoulder a rifle and withstand the hardships of field service, in time of national danger he would unques- tionably have to shoulder his share of the burden in an essential in- dustry.
 Here in a Territory which aspires to statehood and with so many ac- tivities of governmental nature, it behooves the citizenry to take even more active interest in governmental affairs than it does citizens in the States where more matters are con- trolled by local authorities. And this extends also to military matters. The Army has been a paramount factor in the development of the Territory. It has led in making roads upon which the future of the country de pends: it has established the tele- graph and cable, by which Alaska Is linked to the rest of the world by rapid communication. In the days when civil law prevailed not north of '59, the Army protected the pio- neer prospector. trapper, trader and missionary in possession of his life and property. Only when the Army was withdrawn did lawlessness for short time prevail.
 I know you and other pioneer