nemy.

"That thought of welcoming an invading army appeals strongly to me. The
hostile General would be amazed by the ease with which he got his forces
in, but he would be more startled by the difficulty he would find if he
tried to get them out. If they once learned the advantages of our
liberties they would find it hard not to get away, but to go away. I
restrain my temper with difficulty when I contemplate the foolishness of
the people who discuss with gravity the possibility of a successful
invasion of these United States by a foreign foe. The thought always
arises when I hear these cries from our army and naval officers for a
greater armament: 'Are these men cowards?' I don't believe it. It is
their profession which makes them alarmists.

"Not only are the physical difficulties which would hamper an invasion
practically insuperable, but the reception enemies would get, if any of
them landed, would be wholly without parallel in the world's history.

"If our liberties really were threatened, every man, and very nearly
every woman, in our vast population would rise to their defense as never
any people yet has risen to any national defense. Americans, young and
old, en masse, would sweep to the protection of what they know, and what
the world knows, would be the cause of right and human liberty.

"I, myself, should wish to be invited to advance and meet invading
forces if they came. I would approach them without any weapons on my
person. I would not shoot at them. I would make a speech to them.

"'Gentlemen,' I would say, 'here's the chance of your life to win life's
chief prize. Now you are peasant soldiers. You have the opportunity to
become citizen kings. We are all kings here. Here the least of you can
take a rank much higher than that of any General in your army. He can
become a sovereign in a republic.'

"I think they would hurrah for me, not harm me, after they had heard my
speech.

"Striving for peace, we shall become so powerful that if war comes we
shall be invincible. Peace, not war, makes riches; the rich nation is
the powerful nation.

"Perhaps I was as much a peace man in my youth as I am now, but when I
was asked, during the civil war, to organize a corps of telegraph
operators and railroad conductors and engineers and take them to
Washington, I considered it the greatest of all privileges to obey the
order.

"I was the last man to get on the last train leaving Burkes Station,
after Bull Run,