private interests and unite the people of the world to preserve the peace of the world upon a basis of common right and justice. There is liberty there, not limitation. There is freedom, not entanglement. There is the achievement of the highest things for which the United States has declared its principle.

We have been engaged recently, my fellow citizens, in discussing the processes of preparedness. I have been trying to explain to you what we are getting prepared for, and I want to point out to you the only process of preparation which is possible for the United States.

It is possible for the United States to get ready only if the men of suitable age and strength will volunteer to get ready.

I heard the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce report the other evening on a referendum of 750 of the Chambers of Commerce of the United States upon the question of preparedness, and he reported that 99 per cent of them had voted in favor of preparedness. Very well, now, we are going to apply the acid test, to those gentlemen, and the acid test is this: Will they give the young men in their employment freedom to volunteer for this thing? I wish the referendum had included that, because that is of the essence of the matter.

It is all very well to say that somebody else must prepare, but are the business men of this country ready themselves to lend a hand and sacrifice an interest in order that we may get ready? We shall have an answer to that question in the next few months. A bill is lying upon my table now, ready to be signed, which bristles

all over with that interrogation point, and I want all the business men of the country to see that interrogation point staring them in the face. I have heard a great many people talk about universal training. Universal voluntary training, with all my heart, if you wish it, but America does not wish anything but the compulsion of the spirit of America.

I, for my part, do not entertain any serious doubt of the answer to these questions, because I suppose there is no place in the world where the compulsion of public opinion is more imperative than it is in the United States. You know yourself how you behave when you think nobody is watching. And now all the people of the United States are watching each other. There never was such a blazing spotlight upon the conduct and principles of every American as each one of us now walks and blinks in.

And as this spotlight sweeps its relentless rays across every square mile of the territory of the United States, I know a great many men, even when they do not want to, are going to stand up and say, "Here." Because America is roused, roused to a self-consciousness and a national self-consciousness such as she has not had in a generation.

And this spirit is going out conquering and to conquer until, it may be, in the Providence of God, a new light is lifted up in America which shall throw the rays of liberty and justice far abroad upon every sea, and even upon the lands which now wallow in darkness and refuse to see the light.

ADDRESS ON FLAG DAY, WASHINGTON, JUNE 14, 1916

MR. SECRETARY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I have not come here this afternoon with the purpose of delivering to you an elaborate address. It seems to me that the day is sufficiently eloquent already with the meaning which it should convey to us. The spectacle of the morning has been a very moving spectacle indeed an almost unpremeditated outpouring of thousands of sober citizens to manifest their interest in the safety of the country and the sacredness of the flag which is its emblem.

I need not remind you how much sentiment has been poured out in honor of the flag of the United States. Sometimes we have been charged with being a very sentimental people, fond of expressing in general rhetorical phrases principles not sufficiently defined in action, and I dare say there have been times of happy and careless ease in this country, when all that it has been necessary to do for the honor of the flag was to put our sentiments into poetic expressions, into the words that for the time being satisfied our hearts.

But this is not a day of sentiment. Sentiment is a propulsive power, but it does not propel in the way that is serviceable to the nation unless it have a definite purpose before it. This is not merely a day of sentiment. This is a day of purpose.

It is an eloquent symbol of the unity of our history