By profession I am a soldier and take great pride in that fact, but I am prouder, infinitely prouder, to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentialities of death; the other embodies creation and life.
What they seek now is friendly guidance, understanding, and support – not imperious direction – the dignity of equality and not the shame of subjugation.
WE HAVE HAD OUR LAST CHANCE. THE PROBLEM NOW IS BASICALLY THEOLOGICAL, AND INVOLVES SPIRITUALITY AND IMPROVEMENT OF human CHARACTER. IT MUST BE OF THE SPIRIT IF WE ARE TO SAVE THE FLESH.
I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only be deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.
The soldier, above all other men, is required to perform the highest act of religious offering-sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death he discloses those divine attributes which his amke gave when he created in his own image.
Are we going to permit a continuing decline in public and private morality or re-establish high ethical standards as the means of regaining a diminishing faith in the integrity of our public and private institutions?
The issues which today confront the nation are clearly defined and so fundamental as to directly involve the very survival of the Republic. Are we going to preserve the religious base to our origin.
l know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.
Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
