PREPAREDNESS AND PEACE

ADDRESS AT TOLEDO, JULY 10, 1916

MY FELLOW CITIZENS:

This is an entire surprise party to me. I did not know I was going to have the pleasure of stopping long enough to address any number of you, but I am very glad indeed to give you my very cordial greetings and to express my very great interest in this interesting city.

General Sherwood said that there were many things We agreed about, there is one thing we disagree about. General Sherwood has been opposing preparedness, and I have been advocating it, and I am very sorry to have found him on the other side. Because, I think, you will bear me witness, fellow citizens, that in advocating preparedness I have not been advocating hostility. You will bear me witness that I have been a persistent friend of peace and that nothing but unmistakable necessity will drive me from that position. I think it is a matter of sincere congratulation to us that our neighbor Republic to the south shows evidences of at last believing in our friendly intentions; that while we must protect our border and see to it that our sovereignty is not impugned, we are ready to respect their sovereignty also, and to be their friends, and not their enemies.

The real uses of intelligence, my fellow citizens, are the uses of peace. Any body of men can get up a row, but only an intelligent body of men can get together and co-operate. Peace is not only a test of a nation's patience; it is also a test of whether the nation knows

how to conduct its relations or not. It takes time to do intelligent things, and it does not take any time to do unintelligent things. I can lose my temper in a minute, but it takes me a long time to keep it, and I think that if you were to subject my Scotch-Irish blood to the proper kind of analysis, you would find that it was fighting blood, and that it is pretty hard for a man born that way to keep quiet and do things in the way in which his intelligence tells him he ought to do them. I know just as well as that I am standing here that I represent and am the servant of a Nation that loves peace, and that loves it upon the proper basis; loves it not because it is afraid of anybody; loves it not because it does not understand and mean to maintain its rights, but because it knows that humanity is something in which we are all linked together, and that it behooves the United States, just as long as it is possible, to hold off from becoming involved in a strife which makes it all the more necessary that some part of the world should keep cool while all the rest of it is hot. Here in America, for the time being, are the spaces, the cool spaces, of thoughtfulness, and so long as we are allowed to do so, we will serve and not contend with the rest of our fellow men. We are the more inclined to do this because the very principles upon which our Government is based are principles of common counsel and not of contest.

So, my fellow citizens, I congratulate myself upon this opportunity, brief as it is, to give you my greetings and to convey to you my congratulations that the signs that surround us are all signs of peace.

ADDRESS ON ACCEPTING RENOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1916 1

In foreign affairs we have been guided by principles clearly conceived and consistently lived up to. Perhaps they have not been fully comprehended because they have hitherto governed international affairs only in theory, not in practice. They are simple, obvious, easily stated, and fundamental to American ideals.

We have been neutral not only because it was the fixed and traditional policy of the United States to stand aloof from the politics of Europe and because we had had no part either of action or of policy in the influences which brought on the present war, but also because it was manifestly our duty to prevent, if it were possible, the indefinite extension of the fires of hate and desolation kindled by that terrible conflict and seek to serve mankind by reserving our strength and our resources for the anxious and difficult days of restoration and healing which must follow, when peace will have to build its house anew.

The rights of our own citizens of course became involved: that was inevitable. Where they did this was our guiding principle: that property rights can be vindicated by claims for damages when the war is over, and no modern nation can decline to arbitrate such claims; but the fundamental rights of humanity cannot be. The loss of life is irreparable. Neither can

'Only that part of the speech is given which concerns international relations.