Page:Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star.djvu/74

12 point, we now have the time to prepare only because the English and French fleets and armies protect us. Eight months have passed since Germany openly went to war with us. As yet we have not rifles for our infantry. As yet we have not guns for our artillery. It will be at least a year after we were dragged into the war before our army will have received the weapons with which we are to wage the war.

This is broomstick preparedness, and there is not the slightest use in trying to justify or excuse broomstick preparedness.

many years ago one of the favorite cries of those who wished to exploit for their own advantage the often justifiable popular unrest and discontent was that "the people were oppressed in the interest of the bondholders." The more ardent souls of this type wished to repudiate the national debt, to "wipe it out as with a sponge," in order to remove the "oppression." The bondholders were always held up as greedy creatures who had obtained an unfair advantage of the people as a whole.

Well, the Liberty Loan now offers the chance to make the people and the bondholders interchangeable terms. The bonds are issued in such a way that the farmer and the wage-worker have exactly the same chance as the banker to purchase and hold as