Americanization; Citizenship; Speeches, addresses, etc.
The American people should itself do these things for the immigrants.
If we leave the immigrant to be helped by representatives of foreign
governments, by foreign societies, by a press and institutions
conducted in a foreign language and in the interest of foreign
governments, and if we permit the immigrants to exist as alien groups,
each group sundered from the rest of the citizens of the country, we
shall store up for ourselves bitter trouble in the future.
MILITARY PREPAREDNESS.
I am certain that the only permanently safe attitude for this country
as regards national preparedness for self-defense is along its
lines of universal service on the Swiss model. Switzerland is the
most democratic of nations. Its army is the most democratic army
in the world. There isn’t a touch of militarism or aggressiveness
about Switzerland. It has been found as a matter of actual practical
experience in Switzerland that the universal military training has made
a very marked increase in social efficiency and in the ability of the
man thus trained to do well for himself in industry. The man who has
received the training is a better citizen, is more self-respecting,
more orderly, better able to hold his own, and more willing to respect
the rights of others and at the same time he is a more valuable and
better paid man in his business. We need that the navy and the army
should be greatly increased and that their efficiency as units and in
the aggregate should be increased to an even greater degree than their
numbers. An adequate regular reserve should be established. Economy
should be insisted on, and first of all in the abolition of useless
army posts and navy yards. The National Guard should be supervised and
controlled by the Federal War Department. Training camps such as at
Plattsburg should be provided on a nationwide basis and the government
should pay the expenses. Foreign-born as well as native-born citizens
should be brought together in those camps; and each man at the camp
should take the oath of allegiance as unreservedly and unqualifiedly
as the men of its regular army and navy now take it. Not only should
battleships, battle cruisers, submarines, ample coast and field
artillery be provided and a greater ammunition supply system, but
there should be a utilization of those engaged in such professions
as the ownership and management of motor cars, in aviation, and in
the profession of engineering. Map-making and road improvement should
be attended to, and, as I have already said, the railroads brought
into intimate touch with the War Department. Moreover, the government
should deal with conservation of all necessary war supplies such
as mine products, potash, oil lands and the like. Furthermore, all
munition plants should be carefully surveyed with special reference
to their geographic distribution and for the possibility of increased
munition and supply factories. Finally, remember that the men must be
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