Utter and complete lack of preparation on our part did not prevent our entering into war with Great Britain in 1812 and with Mexico in 1848. It merely exposed us to humiliation and disaster in the former war; in the latter, Mexico was even worse off as regards preparation than we were. As for civil war, of course military unpreparedness has not only never prevented it but, on the contrary, seems usually to have been one of the inciting causes. The fact that unpreparedness does not mean peace ought to be patent to every American who will think of what has occurred in this country during the last seventeen years. In 1898 we were entirely unprepared for war. No big nation, save and except our opponent, Spain, was more utterly unprepared than we were at that time, nor more utterly unfit for military operations. This did not, however, mean that peace was secured for a single additional hour. Our army and navy had been neglected for thirty-three years. This was due largely to the attitude of the spiritual forebears of those eminent clergymen, earnest social workers, and professionally humanitarian and peace-loving editors, publicists, writers for syndicates, speakers for peace congresses, pacificist college presidents, and the like who have recently come forward to protest against any inquiry into the military condition of this nation, on the ground that to supply our ships and forts with sufficient ammunition and to fill up the depleted ranks of the army and navy, and in other ways to prepare against war, will tend to interfere with peace. In 1898 the gentlemen of this sort had had their way for thirty-three years. Our army and navy had been grossly neglected. But the unpreparedness due to this neglect had not the slightest effect of any kind in preventing the war. The only effect it had was to cause the unnecessary and useless loss of thousands of lives in the war. Hundreds of young men perished in the Philippine trenches because, while the soldiers of Aguinaldo had modern rifles with smokeless powder, our troops had only the old black-powder Springfield. Hundreds more, nay thousands, died or had their health impaired for life in fever camps here in our own country and in the Philippines and Cuba, and suffered on transports, because we were entirely unprepared for war, and therefore no one knew how to take care of our men. The lives of these brave young volunteers were the price that this country paid for the past action of men like the clergymen, college presidents, editors, and humanitarians in question--none of whom, by the way, risked their own lives. They were also the price that this country paid for having had in previous cabinets just such incompetents as in time of peace Presidents so often, for political reasons, put into American cabinets--just such incompetents as President Wilson has put into the Departments of State and of the Navy.