TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 479 



ADDRESS BY HON. W. L. HARDING 

 GOVERNOR OF IOWA 



Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: 



I am delighted to see so many of you gathered here from over the state 

 in this business you are engaged in. You have heard the story of the 

 man who was riding on the seat with the coachman who kept snapping his 

 whip and killing flies. Finally they came to a hornet's nest, and the guest 

 said, "Why don't you snap the hornets?" 



"Nothing doing," replied the coachman, "they're organized." 



There isn't any reason why the farmer shouldn't be on as high a plane, 

 so far as organization is concerned, as the hornets. One hornet can't do 

 very much harm; but one million of them can. One farmer alone can't 

 do very much good ; but two hundred thousand of them can. There isn't 

 any question about that. The man who thinks he can stand alone in this 

 day and age is making a mighty serious mistake. 



I was interested in what your chairman, Mr. Howard, said. And, by 

 the way, we ought to feel proud of him. Just think of it — the organized 

 agricultural Interests of the United States of America wanted a man to 

 lead them — why, naturally they would go to Iowa. It is a great honor to 

 the state. It is a great responsibility to Mr. Howard. 



I was Interested in what he was saying about universal military train- 

 ing. I was out to Camp Dodge. I had to go out there very often, because 

 in the position I occupied it was necessary for me officially to reach out 

 into the homes of Iowa and" take the best flower you had — your boy — to 

 put the uniform on him. I was out there one day after a group of these 

 lads had been gathered from the factories and the farms. They had been 

 there about three weeks. I was talking to a "West Pointah" who had a 

 peculiar little twist and turn to his speech that I could hardly understand 

 — a highly educated man — and he said: 



"Don't y'u know, suh, it's just impossible fo' me to tell these boys in 

 Iowa anything about diggin' a ditch. I've been going to an officah's train- 

 ing school for three months to leaVn this trench warfare, and these boys 

 know already how to dig a ditch." 



Do you know that the flghting that won in this last war was the open 

 fighting of the Americans? And that fighting was done in the upstairs 

 part of the American soldier's anatomy. 



This is my idea of what we ought to do in this U. S. A. in the line of 

 preparedness. I think that our boys, and our girls, too, ought to be kept 

 abreast of the times with the new methods that are being promulgated 

 throughout the world for the purpose of destruction of one nation against 

 the other, but it is not necessary to line the average American citizen up 

 and count, one, two, three, four and then say, "Forward march!" and 

 spend very much time telling him that he has to step out with the right 

 foot first. 



Xou tell that to an American boy once and he knows it forever after. 

 You don't have to bring him into meeting once a week and tell him that 

 when he starts out to march he is to put the right foot forward. It is not 



