On April 14 he said: “_The Tribune_ says of the approaching convention, ‘We are choosing which way the country shall go in the era that is now opening, just as our fathers chose the nation’s path in the days of 1860.’ This sentence should be in the mind of every man who at Chicago next June takes part in formulating the platform and naming the candidate. The men at Chicago should act in the spirit of the men who stood behind Abraham Lincoln.... There is one great issue on which the fight is to be made if the highest service is to be rendered the American people. That issue is that the American people must find its own soul. National honor is a spiritual thing that cannot be haggled over in terms of dollars. [He refers to the issue of the tariff which had been prominently brought forward.] We must stand not only for America First but for America first, last, and all the time and without any second.... We can be true to mankind at large only if we are true to ourselves. If we are false to ourselves, we shall be false to everything else. We have a lofty ideal to serve and a great mission to accomplish for the cause of Freedom and genuine democracy, and of justice and fair dealing throughout the world. If we are weak and slothful and absorbed in mere money getting or vapid excitement, we can neither serve these causes nor any others. We must stand for national issues, for national discipline and for preparedness--military, social and industrial--in order to keep the soul of this nation. We stand for Peace, but only for the Peace that comes as a right to the just man armed, and not for the Peace which the coward purchases by abject submission to wrong. The Peace of cowardice leads in the end to war after a record of shame.”