A great standing army in this country would ultimately create the same national psychological condition that existed in Germany before this last war. There were many who averred when this war broke out that it was the war of the Kaiser and his War Lords, and contrary to the spirit and wishes of the German people. The exact opposite has been thoroughly established. Strange as it may seem, we must accept the fact that the German people, as the result of generations of education from childhood to manhood, look upon war as a necessary element of German expansion and the growth of the empire to which they are all patriotically devoted. More than this, ringed about as they have been for centuries with a circle of armed adversaries, it was inevitable that a spirit should be developed in the minds of the people that their only safety as a nation lay in Militarism, however much they might deplore its necessity as individuals, groan under its burdens, or personally dread military service. The moment the people of the United States accepted as a fact the belief that a standing army large enough for national protection is the only way for this country to safeguard against an armed adversary, that moment would the attitude of mind of our people towards war become the same as that of Germany and France. After this war it will be the attitude of mind of the people of Great Britain. England has been shaken to her core, and never again will she be found unprepared for war at any moment that it may come. CHAPTER IV _The system for national defense in the United States must embrace a National Construction Reserve, organized primarily to fight Nature's forces instead of to fight the people of another nation. It must be so organized that it will furnish a substitute for the supreme inspiration to patriotism, and the tremendous stimulus to energy and organized effort that war has furnished to the human race through all the past centuries of the existence of the race._ This National Construction Reserve must be an organized force of men regularly enlisted for a term in the service of the national government. The men in the Reserve must be under civil control when engaged in construction service, and under military control when in military service in time of war. Those enlisted in the Reserve would labor for their country in construction service in time of peace, building great works of internal improvement and constructive national development, with exactly the same spirit of patriotic service that they would fight under the flag and dig trenches or build fortifications in time of war.