Page:Frank David Ely -Why defend the nation? Sound Americanism... (1924).pdf/52

48 merce, business, and the professions, and the majority with real experience in war, it is the strongest, most democratic, the widest and greatest real “He-Man Club” in America or in the world today. In peace as in war, it is a tremendous power for good.

Think what they are and where they came from—all that they represent! When this Nation was forced into war against Germany and the Central European powers, the pick of the country volunteered and entered the training camps. These men were sound of body—proved so by thorough medical examinations—strong of heart, and what is perhaps most important of all, sound in their ideas of the fundamental needs of this Nation. They offered all and many paid it. Others are living who are broken mentally or physically from the hell gone through of bullet and bayonet, gas and shell, submarine and bomb, from physical exposure to the elements and physical and mental strains long sustained. For these the Nation has the tenderest regard, the utmost gratefulness, as it has for all who thus served; and it demands that the ultimate be done toward their restoration to health and for their physical comfort. It will watch the accomplishment of these its mandates with most critical and jealous eyes. And the Administration in power is perhaps more critical, more demanding even than the body politic; and in this lies assurance and mental comfort.

The large numbers incapacitated greatly reduced the approximate 200,000 of commissioned officers. From all those remaining some seventy thousand, after another severe physical examination to prove continued fitness, have offered themselves to their country, in response to the country’s fretful call that it be not left wholly defenseless. Little did it offer—the bare honor of the old commission so gloriously held. Asking that those who enroll stand ready to serve should war ever be forced upon us, whether required at home, on the icy tundra of the North, under the scorching rays of. the tropical sun or across the seas, it yet limits the schooling of these splendid men—the guarantors of the Nation—to a mere fifteen days per year to fit them for their arduous task. When we consider the demand, and the terms imposed—those of us who know from long experience just what those demands may mean—no wonder we