“That is likely to be the most serious trouble with the trained soldier.  The doctor wants to dose, the parson to preach, and the soldier to fight.  Professional habit may make any of us dangerous.

“But if it came to fighting I do not consider it within the bounds of possibility that we could lose.  I once asked Gen. Sherman how the troops which he commanded during the civil war compared for efficiency with European troops.  His answer was: 

“’The world never has seen the army that I would be afraid to trust my boys with, man for man.’”

Would Surprise the Enemy.

“That thought of welcoming an invading army appeals strongly to me.  The hostile General would be amazed by the ease with which he got his forces in, but he would be more startled by the difficulty he would find if he tried to get them out.  If they once learned the advantages of our liberties they would find it hard not to get away, but to go away.  I restrain my temper with difficulty when I contemplate the foolishness of the people who discuss with gravity the possibility of a successful invasion of these United States by a foreign foe.  The thought always arises when I hear these cries from our army and naval officers for a greater armament:  ‘Are these men cowards?’ I don’t believe it.  It is their profession which makes them alarmists.

“Not only are the physical difficulties which would hamper an invasion practically insuperable, but the reception enemies would get, if any of them landed, would be wholly without parallel in the world’s history.

“If our liberties really were threatened, every man, and very nearly every woman, in our vast population would rise to their defense as never any people yet has risen to any national defense.  Americans, young and old, en masse, would sweep to the protection of what they know, and what the world knows, would be the cause of right and human liberty.

“I, myself, should wish to be invited to advance and meet invading forces if they came.  I would approach them without any weapons on my person.  I would not shoot at them.  I would make a speech to them.

“‘Gentlemen,’ I would say, ’here’s the chance of your life to win life’s chief prize.  Now you are peasant soldiers.  You have the opportunity to become citizen kings.  We are all kings here.  Here the least of you can take a rank much higher than that of any General in your army.  He can become a sovereign in a republic.’

“I think they would hurrah for me, not harm me, after they had heard my speech.

“Striving for peace, we shall become so powerful that if war comes we shall be invincible.  Peace, not war, makes riches; the rich nation is the powerful nation.

“Perhaps I was as much a peace man in my youth as I am now, but when I was asked, during the civil war, to organize a corps of telegraph operators and railroad conductors and engineers and take them to Washington, I considered it the greatest of all privileges to obey the order.