rming service for the nation with singleness of
purpose in a common cause--preparedness for defense: preparedness to
discharge our plain duty whatever it may be. Such service will make
for national solidarity, the doing away with petty distinctions of
class and creed, and fuse the various elements of this people into
one homogeneous mass of real Americans, and leave us a better and a
stronger people.

Once such a moral organization is accomplished, the remaining
organization will be simple. This will include an organization of
transportation, on land and sea, and of communications. An
organization of the nation's industrial resources so that the energy
of its great manufacturing plants may be promptly turned into making
what they can best make to supply the military needs of the nation.
By military needs we mean all the complex requirements of a nation
engaged in war, requirements which are, many of them, requirements
of peace as well as of war. It will also include a thorough
organization of the country's chemical resources and the development
thereof, so that we may be as little dependent as possible upon
materials from oversea. At present many important and essential
elements come from oversea nations and would not be available in
case of loss of sea control. We must devise substitutes or find
means of making these things. Chemistry is one of the great weapons
of modern war. There must also be organization which will provide a
regular army organized on sound lines, supplied with ample reserves
of men and material; an army adequate to the peace needs of the
nation, which means, among other things, the secure garrisoning of
our oversea possessions, including the Philippines and the Hawaiian
Islands. These latter are the key to the Pacific, and one of the
main defenses of the Pacific Coast and of the Panama Canal. Whoever
holds these islands will dominate the trade routes of the Pacific,
and in a large measure the Pacific itself.

The regular army should also be sufficient for the secure holding
and safeguarding of the Panama Canal, an instrument of war of the
greatest importance, so long as it is in our control, greatly
increasing the value of our navy, and an implement of commerce of
tremendous value, a possession so valuable and of such vital
importance to us that we cannot allow it to lie outside our secure
grasp.

It must also be adequate to provide garrisons in Porto Rico and
Alaska, and at the same time main