I may not believe that my home will burn down or that I am going to die within the period of my expectancy, but nevertheless I carry fire and life insurance to the full insurable value on my property and on my life to the extent of my ability. The only insurance of our liberties as a people is full preparation for a defense adequate against any attack and made in time to fully meet any attack. We do not _know_ the attack is coming; but to wait until it does come will be too late. Our present weakness lies in the wide-spread opinion among our people that this country is invincible because of its large population and vast resources. This I believe is true if, and only if, we use these resources or a small part of them to protect the major part, and if we train at least a part of our people how to defend the nation. Under existing conditions we can hardly hope to have an effective army in the field in less time than eight or ten months. To-day not one per cent of our people know anything about rifle shooting. I quote these two out of many letters, because they sum up the general feeling of men of vision. Both of my correspondents are most sincerely for peace. No man can possibly be more anxious for peace than I am. I ask those individuals who think of me as a firebrand to remember that during the seven and a half years I was President not a shot was fired at any soldier of a hostile nation by any American soldier or sailor, and there was not so much as a threat of war. Even when the state of Panama threw off the alien yoke of Colombia and when this nation, acting as was its manifest duty, by recognizing Panama as an independent state stood for the right of the governed to govern themselves on the Isthmus, as well as for justice and humanity, there was not a shot fired by any of our people at any Colombian. The blood recently shed at Vera Cruz, like the unpunished wrongs recently committed on our people in Mexico, had no parallel during my administration. When I left the presidency there was not a cloud on the horizon--and one of the reasons why there was not a cloud on the horizon was that the American battle fleet had just returned from its sixteen months’ trip around the world, a trip such as no other battle fleet of any power had ever taken, which it had not been supposed could be taken, and which exercised a greater influence for peace than all the peace congresses of the last fifty years. With Lowell I most emphatically believe that peace is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards; and the fool and the weakling are no improvement on the coward.