Therefore there may at any moment come a time
when I cannot preserve both the honor and the peace of the United
States. Do not exact of me an impossible and contradictory thing, but
stand ready and insistent that everybody who represents you should stand
ready to provide the necessary means for maintaining the honor of the
United States.
I sometimes think that it is true that no people ever went to war with
another people. Governments have gone to war with one another. Peoples,
so far as I remember, have not, and this is a government of the people,
and this people is not going to choose war. But we are not dealing with
people; we are dealing with Governments. We are dealing with Governments
now engaged in a great struggle, and therefore we do not know what a day
or an hour will bring forth. All that we know is the character of our
own duty. We do not want the question of peace and war, or the conduct
of war, entrusted too entirely to our Government. We want war, if it
must come, to be something that springs out of the sentiments and
principles and actions of the people themselves; and it is on that
account that I am counseling the Congress of the United States not to
take the advice of those who recommend that we should have, and have
very soon, a great standing Army, but, on the contrary, to see to it
that the citizens of this country are so trained and that the military
equipment is so sufficiently provided for them that when they choose
they can take up arms and defend themselves.
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