New Hampshire Farmer And Weekly Union

NATION'S NEED
OF PREPAREDNESS
Discussed by Clarence E. Carr
Before Tilton Men's
Club

TILTON, Feb. 17.—Hon. Clarence E. Carr of Andover spoke tonight on "Preparedness" at the meeting of the men's club of Trinity
Episcopal
church.

In the absence of President Charles E. Tilton, Stanton E. Smith presided.

Mr. Carr said, in part:

"Some people seem to hold that the best way to be prepared for war is to be unready. You would not think a man wholly fit to teach agriculture who advised his pupils that the best breed of turnips grew on trees. You would say immediately that his point of view was wrong or that he was Mark Twaining you. So with our esteemed friends, the pacifists. In the goodness of their hearts they imagine if the warm the Aesop snake he will be nice to cuddle; or if they give the highwayman with a gun some tracts, he will immediately become good and leave us in peace with his blessing. This is the kind of Hun they have been building out of straw. The real article is different.

"These good non-resistants have never heard of Attila of Belgium, and a scrap of paper,' or the Lusitania, or the law, duplicated in no civilized nation on earth, which was invoked as an excuse for the execution of Edith Cavell. They labor under the apprehension or misapprehension that it takes two to quarrel. It does not. It never has. The prepared with criminal intent (and those with criminal intent always seek to be prepared) attack the innocent and undefended. The thief does not seek the policeman at the corner, but the unprepared man where the loot is.

Plight of the Unprepared.

"So with nations. If this country follows the advice of the Bryan pacifists and seek to meet the world enemies with an unsupported olive branch and the tail feathers of a peace dove, when trouble comes in answer to such a state of and invitation of unpreparedness, we will find ourselves, to quote the language of John Nash, 'about as efficacious as a bunny rabbit in a cage of anaconda snakes trying to teach them the beauties of a vegetable diet.'

"We want insurance on the house of our liberties, and we mean something better than the ordinary insurance. Ordinary insurance means payment for buildings destroyed by fire. We want insurance that prevents fire.

"We want to conduct ourselves so that no nation in the world will have good reason to attack us, and be so prepared that no nation will dare do it, or can do it with reasonable hope of success. We want to insure peace here.

"'In the Father's house of all the world's in the universe are many mansions.' We have in our government one of them, defective, it is true, but the most stately, beautiful and useful national temple ever erected to Him and His glory. It shelters the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, the strong and the weak, the happy and the sorrowful, those who have been slaves and those who have been free; and cares for them all with the loving hand of equal opportunity. Its architects drew their inspiration from the teachings of the Master of Men, and its builders from the longing in human hearts for freedom. The dream of its beauty and use have not yet reached fruition, but its promise is apparent. It is fireproof against inner strifes and human passions here. It is not war-proof against greed and ambitions of men and nations, whose ideals and philosophy are those of Caesar and not of Jesus. This temple of liberty and human hope must be insured against war. Are we ready to do our part?"