344 Extracts from Addresses
issue, at whatever cost it might involve and whatever time might be
needed for the purpose. We have seen since we left our shores your
mighty transports bearing thousands of American troops to our country
and to France. We have seen the great shipbuilding yards on this side
at Hog Island. We have passed through a part of the country where
your camps are situated and have seen them in the distance. We have
seen everywhere evidences of this determination and of this spirit which
have moved the whole people as one man. We feel that we know how
much the war has done for you in drawing the people of this country
together in a way that would not have been effectuated by anything else
except a great world war.
And now we are beginning to see you make your preparations for
peace, and naturally as men of peace we personally are more concerned
in the great reconstruction process that is to follow, and more personally
able to help you, perhaps, in that than in the gigantic efforts which have
been made for the prosecution of the war. One thing, of course, must
have struck everyone in reflecting on this great war, and that is the
horrible wastage that has taken place, the horrible wastage of material,
of life, of energy, of spirit. And yet I venture to say that I hope there
will be yet a little more destruction and a little more wastage before the
conditions of peace are finally established. I hope some of those terrible
engines of war, which can serve no useful purpose in time of peace, will
be destroyed. I hope one of the effects of the joint efforts of the Allies
will be that there will be no longer need for submarines. I hope to be
able to look forward to the destruction of the submarines. I hope the
conditions of the world will be so reestablished that there will be no
longer need for the use of poisonous gas. I hope all poisonous gas that
remained unused in this war will be destroyed. I am almost tempted to
say that I wish not only all the poisonous gas, but the members of the
poisonous nation could have been destroyed. They did not give us a
chance, but I do hope there will be a permanent destruction of those
poisonous ideas that for generations have been disseminated throughout
the world by the Germans. Never again will they be able to take the
world in as they have done during the last generations. It is pitiful to
reflect how we have been misled by it. But whether they realize or not
how fully and completely they have made themselves hated and mis-
trusted by the rest of the world, it is quite certain we have had our eyes
opened, and we shall never again be misled by them in the future as we
have been in the past.
Now, speaking of reconstruction, I want to say that if it is important
for us to destroy the machinery of war and all the poisonous ideas that
led up to war, it is equally important that we should make use of the