“Millions now resident in military nations are hoping that some day they may be able to become citizens of our beloved republic, principally because it now is not, nor is it every likely to be, military.  Humanity loves peace.  Here peace abides, and, if we follow reason, will remain unbroken.

“Note the advantages of our own position.  Imagine what the task would be of landing seventy thousand hostile soldiers on our shores!  First they would need to cross three thousand miles of the Atlantic or five thousand miles of the Pacific.

“And what if they should come?  My plan of operation would be to bid them welcome as our visitors, considering them as men, not soldiers; to take them to our great interior, say, as far west as Chicago, and there to say to them: 

“’Here we shall leave you.  Make yourselves at home, if that thought pleases you; fight us if it does not.  If you think you can conquer us, try it.’

“They would make themselves at home and, learning the advantages of staying with us, would become applicants for our citizenship, rather than our opponents in warfare.

“And if they tried to fight us, what would happen to them?  Our nation is unique in an important respect.  Its individuals are the best armed in the world.  Not only, for example, are its farmers armed, but they can shoot, which is far more than can be said of those of Britain or of any other nation.

“The Governments of Europe cannot afford to give their citizenry arms, and, as for the European citizenry, it not only cannot afford to purchase arms, but cannot afford even to pay the license fees which Government demands of those possessing arms with the right to use them.

“But ours?  Most Americans can afford to and do own guns with which to shoot, and, furthermore, most Americans, when they shoot, can hit the things at which they shoot.

“Combine this powerful protective influence with the fact that thousands of any army coming to invade us would not want to fight when once they got here, but would want to settle here and enjoy peace, and we find that we thus are protected as no nation in the world ever has been protected or can be.

“Imagine the effect upon the European fighting man’s psychology if he found that an army transport had conveyed him to a land where one man’s privilege is every man’s right!  Learning this, it is not a joke to say, but is a statement of the probable fact, that the invading soldiery would not want to fire its first volleys, but would want to file its first papers.  They would not ask for cartridges, but for citizenship.

“America is protected by a force incomparable, which I may call its peaceful militia, and the man who, above all other men, I most should wish to see appointed to its command would be Gen. Leonard Wood were it not for the fact that there would be some danger that in such an eventuation his professional training would carry him beyond the rule of reason.