We need good laws and we need above all things the hearty aid of good citizens in supporting and enforcing the laws. Nevertheless, men and women of this great State, men and women of the Middle West, never forget that law and the administration of law, important though they are, must always occupy a wholly secondary place as compared with the character of the average citizen himself. On this trip I shall speak to audiences in each of which there will be many men who fought in the civil war. You who wore the blue and your brothers of the South who wore the gray know that in war no general no matter how good, no organization no matter how perfect, can avail if the average man in the ranks has not got the fighting edge. We need the organization, the preparation; we need the good general; but we need most the fighting edge in the individual soldier. So it is in private life. We live in a rough, workaday world, and we are yet a long way from the millennium. We can not as a nation and we can not as individuals afford to cultivate only the gentler, softer qualities. There must be gentleness and tenderness――the strongest men are gentle and tender――but there must also be courage and strength. I have a hearty sympathy with those who believe in doing all that can be done for peace; but I have no sympathy at all with those who believe that in the world as it now is we can afford to see the average American citizen lose the qualities that in their sum make up a good fighting man. You men must be workers who work with all your heart and strength and mind at your several tasks in life; and you must also be able to fight at need. You women have even higher and more difficult duties; for I honor no man, not even the soldier who fights for righteousness, quite as much as I honor the good woman who does her full duty as wife and mother. But if she shirks her duty as wife and mother then she stands on a par with the man who refuses to work for himself and his family, for those dependent upon him, and who in time of the nation’s need refuses to fight. The man or woman who shirks his or her duty occupies a contemptible position. You here are the sons and daughters of the pioneers. I preach to you no life of ease. I preach to you the life of effort, the life that finds its highest satisfaction in doing well some work that is well worth doing. So much for what concerns every man and every woman in this country. Now, a word or two as to matters which are of peculiar interest to this region of our country.