FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 251 



say that our country will maintain its honorable standing in the world 

 without armed conflict; or who will say that we may safely cast aside all 

 preparation for national defense. 



In time of war the safety of our country must rest with people; our 

 homes must be defended by the volunteer armies that would rise at the 

 call of our President. But war is a complicated science, and the art of 

 handling troops comes only with deep study and long experience. It is 

 necessary in time of peace to educate the body of our young men in the 

 elements of the soldier's profession. And upon each young, man who 

 enjoys the benefits of our free institutions is laid that obligation to 

 defend, if need be, his country, and to prepare himself that he may 

 intelligently do so. It is the duty of all to cultivate patriotism and to 

 make the evidences and emblems of patriotism honored and respected. 

 Our youth should be encouraged to enlist in the national guard of the 

 State, the uniform should be an honorable badge, entitling the wearer 

 to increased consideration; those little badges upon the breast of our 

 soldiers should be passports to our goodwill, our kind treatment, and 

 our thoughtful respect. 



But, though we may not see any foreign war before us, no one can 

 be blind to the dangers from within. That the pleasures, profits and 

 benefits of life are not evenly distributed, no one can question. That 

 unequal burdens are the results of class laws, at least one great political 

 l^rtyhas long taught. That the machinery of government is all wrong 

 to right evils many people believe. 



The teachings of anarchists are scattered broadly over the land, and 

 are widely read by those easily infiuenced by such arguments as they 

 find therein. Mingling with our people, especially in the large cities, we 

 have a class of men who would overturn, by fire and bloodshed, every 

 existing order of things. 



The anarchist, and in that class I include all that mass of people who 

 believe that liberty is absence of law — the anarchist is ready at any 

 moment to precipitate a bloody social war, through which none of our 

 present forms of government shall live. 



Above the anarchist, distrusting all that he teaches, and in no way 

 in symp.athv with his doctrines, we have the great mass of people, the 

 laborers. And yet the laboring man, under intense excitement and 

 great provocation, is too often inclined to employ the methods of the 

 anarchist to right private wrong by great public harm. The strike and 

 boycott, on a large scale, are almost synonymous with bloodshed, riot 

 and ruin. Our civil law has often failed in times of great peril. The 

 future promises only more terrible conflicts, and if our country is to be 

 preserved, its laws must again and again be upheld at the point of the 

 bayonet. The national guard of the various states has been repeatedly 

 called upon to suppress disorders. Its services will be needed more in 

 the future than in the past. A military training for our young men 

 seems so necessary that its utility cannot be called in question. 



I want to speak briefly of some of the benefits that flow from a sys- 

 tematic military training, and to more clearly illustrate my remarks I 

 will give the aims and results of the military department of the Agricul- 

 tural College. 



