methods taken by Jefferson and the Americans of Jefferson’s day to accomplish this object were fatally defective. But their purpose was the same that those who think as we do now put forward. The difference is purely that we present efficient methods for accomplishing this purpose. Washington was a practical man of high ideals who always strove to reduce his ideals to practice. His address to Congress in December, 1793, ought to have been read by President Wilson before the latter sent in his message of 1914 with its confused advocacy of unpreparedness and its tone of furtive apology for submission to insult. Washington said: “There is much due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace ... it must be known that we are at all times ready for war,” and he emphasized the fact that the peace thus secured by preparedness for war is the most potent method of obtaining material prosperity. The need of such a system as that which I advocate is well brought out in a letter I recently received from a college president. It runs in part as follows: What the average young fellow of eighteen to thirty doesn’t know about shooting and riding makes an appalling total. I remember very well visiting the First Connecticut Regiment a day or two before it left for service in the Spanish War. A good many of my boys were with them and I went to see them off. One fellow in particular, of whom I was and am very fond, took me to his tent and proudly exhibited his rifle, calling attention to the beautiful condition to which he had brought it. It certainly was extremely shiny, and I commended him for his careful cleansing of his death-dealing weapon. Then I discovered that the firing-pin (it was an old Springfield) was rusted immovably into its place, and that my boy didn’t know that there was any firing-pin. He had learned to expect that if you put a cartridge into the breech, pulled down the block, and pulled the trigger, it would probably go off if he had previously cocked it; but he had never done any of these things. It was my fortune to grow up amid surroundings and in a time when every boy had and used a gun. Any boy fourteen years old who was not the proprietor of some kind of shooting-iron and fairly proficient in its use was in disgrace. Such a situation was unthinkable. So we were all fairly dependable shots with a fowling-piece or rifle. As a result of this and subsequent experience, I really believe that so long as my aging body would endure hardship, and provided further that I could be prevented from running away, I should be a more efficient soldier than most of the young fellows on our campus to-day.