This general policy should be kept in effect.  Here and there temporary changes may be made in personnel to meet requirements in other directions.  Attention should be given to submarines, cruisers, and air forces.  Particular points may need strengthening, but as a whole our military power is sufficient.

The one weak place in the whole line is our still stupendous war debt.  In any modern campaign the dollars are the shock troops.  With a depleted treasury in the rear, no army can maintain itself in the field.  A country loaded with debt is a country devoid of the first line of defense.  Economy is the handmaid of preparedness.  If we wish to be able to defend ourselves to the full extent of our power in the future, we shall discharge as soon as possible the financial burden of the last war.  Otherwise we would face a crisis with a part of our capital resources already expended.

The amount and kind of our military equipment is preeminently a question for the decision of the Congress, after giving due consideration to the advice of military experts and the available public revenue.  Nothing is more laudable than the cooperation of the agricultural and industrial resources of the country for the purpose of supplying the needs of national defense.  In time of peril the people employed in these interests volunteered in a most self-sacrificing way, often at the nominal charge of a dollar a year.  But the Army and Navy are not supported for the benefit of supply concerns; supply concerns are supported for the benefit of the Army and Navy.  The distribution of orders on what is needed from different concerns for the purpose of keeping up equipment and organization is perfectly justified, but any attempt to prevail upon the Government to purchase beyond its needs ought not to be tolerated.  It is eminently fair that those who deal with the Government should do so at a reasonable profit.  However, public money is expended not that some one may profit by it, but in order to serve a public purpose.

While our policy of national defense will proceed in order that we may be independent and self-sufficient, I am opposed to engaging in any attempt at competitive armaments.  No matter how much or how little some other country may feel constrained to provide, we can well afford to set the example, not of being dictated to by others, but of adopting our own standards.  We are strong enough to pursue that method, which will be a most wholesome model for the rest of the world.  We are eminently peaceful, but we are by no means weak.  While we submit our differences with others, not to the adjudication of force, but of reason, it is not because we are unable to defend our rights.  While we are doing our best to eliminate all resort to war for the purpose of settling disputes, we can not but remember that the peace we now enjoy had to be won by the sword and that if the rights of our country are to be defended we can not rely for that purpose upon anyone but ourselves.  We can not shirk the responsibility, which is the first requisite of all government, of preserving its own integrity and maintaining the rights of its own citizens.  It is only in accordance with these principles that we can establish any lasting foundations for an honorable and permanent peace.