The people of the United States are developing an anti-military spirit. Things military are struggling for existence. The principle that the military should be subordinate to the civil authority is being interpreted in a spirit more adverse to the military than in any other powerful country. The proper balance between the civil and the military is being lost. Military necessities are pushed too far into the background of the national thought and conscience.
On the army and navy devolves the task of keeping them in the foreground. If this be not done, the insistent requirements of business, society, and pleasure will monopolize the attention of the nation, military character will deteriorate, the martial spirit will be smothered, and this rich but unwieldly nation will meet disaster, through lack of martial power.
We must insist that adequate martial power shall be supplied. To supply adequate martial power in any nation requires self sacrifice and labor, but the effort develops character and health. It creates the ideal state for both the individual and the nation. When that state has been attained, when the martial power of a country is just enough to impart stability to the government and sturdiness to the people, national character and national happiness reach their highest plane. In that serene and sane condition confidence pervades the air, wisdom and strength guide the counsels of the nation, peace rests secure, honor is the watchword, law and order reign.
The conservative influence of a highly trained army and navy gives a country a stability that no other means can give. Political parties come and go; theories of government have their ephemeral vogue; standards of conduct change; great families rise and wane; wealth accumulates and dissipates; individuals strut their brief hours of triumph on the stage. But the army and navy go on, essentially unchanged, from generation to generation, the only lifelong representatives of the country as a whole; the actual force that held—and still holds—the separate states together; the enduring tie that unites them as a nation; the trustees of the military spirit of our fathers, that made the nation strong.
To keep alive the spirit of our fathers amid the harsh realities of war and the soft forgetfulness of peace, is the paramount duty laid upon us. To do this duty well must be our ceaseless and supreme endeavor: to the end that we may pass along the sacred fire, received from Washington and Grant and Sherman and Jones and Farragut and Barry; to the end that the honor of the country shall not perish in our keeping; to the end that we may be a safeguard to the United States of America, a security to every ship with friendly mission that shall sail upon the sea.