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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VI NATIONAL DEFENCE ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE NATIONAL SECURITY LEAGUE AT WASHINGTON, JANUARY 22, 1916 NATIONAL DEFENCE Mr. Chairman, Ladiks And Gentlemen, I am deeply interested in the purpose for which this National Security League has been formed. I believe your meeting here cannot fail to do good in moulding and making public opinion. But I think you will agree with me that the most important thing is that this league should so work and should use its power in such a way as to bring practical results in the shape of legislation for national defence. Even were I master of eloquence, I should not attempt it to-night. I merely wish to offer to you a few practical suggestions drawn from some years of observation in Washington. There are two kinds of questions which it is extremely difficult to argue. One is where the question is new, doubtful, intricate, and complicated. The other is when a question is so simple that it is difficult to understand how there can be any difference of opinion in regard to it. The subject of national defence belongs, to my mind, in the latter class. The proposition, as I should put it, is something like this: Every nation should have sufficient military and naval defence to maintain its own peace and security. This nation has not such defence. Therefore it is the duty of this nation to look to it that suitable provision is made. It appears to me that this little syllogism is so simple and so obvious that almost any one with the sight of an average mole could see it. And yet 1 knowthat there is a great deal of opposition, in certain quarters, to the proposition. I quite agree that it is not a party question. I should be sorry, indeed, to think that national defence could be a party question. But I will say this that if those gentlemen,..