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Rh people, that you could raise an army of one million men between sun and sun; but I tell you that your million men, without the proper equipment of artillery and the other machinery of war, would be but a mob one million strong. Before I take my seat, Mr. President, I shall make so bold as to suggest to you in this hour of great peril (in which I see you actually facing the very crisis and conditions against which my predecessors in office have warned the country and its Congress for many years past), that the naval, and particularly the military situation, is such that, in his dealings with the German Government, it would be advisable that your Secretary of State should put on kid gloves of the very softest texture."

And the Secretary of State did so.

But, six hours after that Cabinet meeting closed, Germany declared war on the United States.