A system of national defense would fail of its purpose if it crippled the industries of the country by depriving them of the labor necessary to their operation. In the United States, one of the most urgent reasons for having an automatically acting system of national defense perfectly organized in advance and ready in case of emergency, is to insure the continuance of the industries of the country without interruption, and to prevent any industrial depression or interference with the prosperity of the country. A system of national defense would fail of its purpose if it crippled industries by drawing away their labor. It would cause serious industrial derangement to mobilize an army of citizen soldiers from men already enlisted in the ranks of labor in mill, shop, factory, or mine. Besides that, the majority of them have families, and live from hand to mouth with nothing between them and starvation but the pay envelope Saturday night. The impracticability of recruiting soldiers or mobilizing a reserve force from wage earners or clerical employees with families dependent on their earnings for their living, must always be borne in mind. In Switzerland, the active, out-of-door life of the people makes the majority of them rugged and vigorous. They have sturdy legs and strong arms. They are sound, "wind, limb, and body." They are already inured to the work of a soldier's life and its duties, any moment they may be called to the colors. In this country the life of the apartments, flats, and tenements, and the frivolous, immoral, and deteriorating influences and evil environments of congested cities, are sapping the vitality of our people, and rapidly transforming them into a race of mental and physical weaklings and degenerates. Even now the great majority of them utterly lack the physical hardihood and vigor without which a soldier would not be worth the cost of his arms and equipment. It would overtax most city clerks and factory workers to walk to and from the football or baseball games that constitute our chief national pastime. About the only thing to which they are really inured is to sit on benches, for hours at a time, and to yell, loud and long, to add zest to games that are being played by others. It has been most truly said that "We are not a nation of athletes, we are a nation of Rooters." Many of our devotees of commercialized sport would perhaps be able to yell loud enough to scare the enemy off in case of war, but they would not be able to march to the battlefields where this soldierly aid might be required. A special automobile service would have to be provided for their transportation.