158 Presidential Addresses 



Those are all qualities that go to the very essence 

 of good soldiership, and I am not surprised at what 

 General Sherman said. In raising my own regi 

 ment, which was raised mainly in the Southwest, 

 partly in the Territory in which Mr. Sargent him 

 self served as a soldier at one time in Arizona 

 I got a number of railroad men. Of course, the first 

 requisite was that a man should know how to shoot 

 and how to ride. We were raising the regiment in 

 a hurry, and we did not have time to teach him 

 either. He had to know how to handle a horse and 

 how to handle a rifle, to start with. But given the 

 possession of those two qualities, I found that there 

 was no group of our citizens from whom better men 

 could be drawn to do a soldier's work in a tight 

 place and at all times than the railroad men. 



But, gentlemen, the period of war is but a frac 

 tional part of the life of our Republic, and I ear 

 nestly hope and believe that it will be an even smaller 

 part in the future than it has been in the past. It 

 was the work that you have done in time of peace 

 that especially attracted me to you, that made me 

 anxious to come down here and see you, and that 

 made me glad to speak to you, not for what I can 

 tell you, but for the lesson it seems to me can be 

 gained by all of our people from what you have 

 done. 



At the opening of the twentieth century we face 

 conditions vastly changed from what they were in 

 this country and throughout the world a century ago. 

 Our complex industrial civilization under which 



