that arch-Democrat, Thomas Jefferson, believed that there
ought to be compulsory military training for the adult men of the
Nation, because he believed, as every true believer in democracy
believes, that it is upon the voluntary action of the men of a great
Nation like this that it must depend for its military force.

There is another misapprehension that I want to remove from your minds:
Do not think that I have come to talk to you about these things because
I doubt whether they are going to be done or not. I do not doubt it for
a moment, but I believe that when great things of this sort are going to
be done the people of this country are entitled to know just what is
being proposed. As a friend of mine says, I am not arguing with you; I
am telling you. I am not trying to convert you to anything, because I
know that in your hearts you are converted already, but I want you to
know the motives of what is proposed and the character of what is
proposed, in order that we should have only one attitude and counsel
with regard to this great matter.

It is being very sedulously spread abroad in this country that the
impulse back of all this is the desire of men who make the materials of
warfare to get money out of the Treasury of the United States. I wish
the people that say that could see meetings like this. Did you come here
for that purpose? Did you come here because you are interested to see
some of your fellow-citizens make money out of the present situation? Of
course you did not. I am ready to admit that probably the equipment of
those men whom we are training will have to be bought from somebody, and
I know that if the equipment is bought, it will have to be paid for; and
I dare say somebody will make some money out of it. It is also true,
ladies and gentlemen, that there are men now, a great many men, in the
belligerent countries who are growing rich out of the sale of the
materials needed by the armies of those countries. If the Government
itself does not manufacture everything that an army needs, somebody has
got to make money out of it, and I for my part have been urging the
Congress of the United States to make the necessary preparations by
which the Government can manufacture armor plate and munitions, so that,
being in the business itself and having the ability to manufacture all
it needs, if it is put upon a business basis, it can at any rate keep
the price that it pays within moderate and reasonable limits. Th