not victory nor defeat. If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had
believed that peace was the end of all things, and war and strife the
worst of all things, and had acted up to their belief, we would have
saved hundreds of lives, we would have saved hundreds of millions of
dollars. Moreover, besides saving all the blood and treasure we then
lavished, we would have prevented the heartbreak of many women, the
dissolution of many homes, and we would have spared the country those
months of gloom and shame when it seemed as if our armies marched only
to defeat. We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking
from strife. And if we had thus avoided it, we would have shown that we
were weaklings, and that we were unfit to stand among the great nations
of the earth. Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers, the
men who upheld the wisdom of Lincoln, and bore sword or rifle in the
armies of Grant! Let us, the children of the men who proved themselves
equal to the mighty days, let us the children of the men who carried the
great Civil War to a triumphant conclusion, praise the God of our
fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace were rejected; that the
suffering and loss, the blackness of sorrow and despair were
unflinchingly faced, and the years of strife endured; for in the end the
slave was freed, the Union restored, and the mighty American republic
placed once more as a helmeted queen among nations....

The Army and Navy are the sword and shield which this nation must carry
if she is to do her duty among the nations of the earth--if she is not
to stand merely as the China of the western hemisphere. Our proper
conduct toward the tropic islands we have wrested from Spain is merely
the form which our duty has taken at the moment. Of course, we are bound
to handle the affairs of our own household well. We must see that there
is civic good sense in our home administration of city, State and
nation. We must strive for honesty in office, for honesty toward the