157 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
The Presidents Message to Farmers 
and Horticulturists 
The White House, Washington. 
My Fellow Countrymen: 
The entrance of our own beloved country into the grim 
and terrible war for democracy and human rights which * 
has shaken the world creates so many problems of na¬ 
tional life and action which calls for immediate consider¬ 
ation and settlement that I hope you will permit me to 
address to you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal 
with regard to them. 
W e are rapidly putting our navy upon an effective war 
footing and are about to create and equip a great army, 
but these are the simplest parts of the great task to which 
we have addressed ourselves. There is not a single 
sellish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are 
lighting for. We are lighting for what we believe and 
wish to be the rights of mankind and for the future 
peace and security of the world. To do this great thing 
worthily and successfully we must devote ourselves to 
the service without regard to prolit or material advan¬ 
tage and with an energy and intelligence that will rise 
to the level of the enterprise itself. We must realize to 
the full how great the task is and how many things, how 
many kinds and elements of capacity and service and 
self-sacrifice, it involves. 
These, then, are the things we must do, and do well, 
besides lighting,—the things without which mere light¬ 
ing would be fruitless: 
We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for 
our armies and our seamen not only, but also for a large 
part of the nations with whom we have now made com¬ 
mon cause, in whose support and by whose sides we 
shall be fighting. 
We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our ship¬ 
yards to carry to the other side of the sea, submarines 
or no submarines, what will every day be needed there, 
and abundant materials out of our fields and our mines 
and our factories with which not only to clothe and 
equip our own forces on land and sea but also to clothe 
and support our people for whom the gallant fellows un¬ 
der arms can no longer work, to help clothe and equip 
the armies with which we are cooperating in Europe, 
and to keep the looms and manufacturies there in raw' 
material; coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and 
in the furnaces of hundreds of factories across the sea; 
steel out of which to make arms and ammunition both 
here and there; rails for w^orn-out railways back of the 
fighting fronts; locomotives and rolling stock to take the 
place of those every day going to pieces; mules, horses, 
cattle for labor and for military service; everything wdlh 
W'hich the people of England and France and Russia 
have usually supplied themselves but cannot now' afford 
the men, the materials, or the machinery to make. 
It is evident to every thinking man that our industries. 
on the farms, in tlie shipyards, in the mines, in the fac- 
toiies, must be made more j)rolili(* and more ellicicijt 
than ever and that they must be more economically man¬ 
aged and better adapted to tlie pai’ticulai' rc(juirem(*nts 
of our task than they have been; and what I want to say 
is that the men and tlie women who devote their thought 
and their energy to these things w ill be serving the coun¬ 
try and conducting the fight for peace and freedom just 
as truly and just as effectively as the men on the battle¬ 
field or in the trenches. The industrial forces of the 
country, men and women alike, will be a great national, 
a great international, Serviee Army,--a notable and hon¬ 
ored host engaged in the service of the nation and the 
world, the efficient friends and saviors of free men every¬ 
where. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of 
men otherw ise liable to military service will of right and 
of necessity be excused from that sm-vice and assigned 
to the fundamental, sustaining work of the fields and 
factories and mines, and they will be as much part of the 
great patriotic forces of the nation as the men under lire. 
I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word 
to the farmers of the country and to all wiio work on 
the farms: The supreme need of our own nation and 
of the nations with which wo are cooperating is an abun¬ 
dance of supplies, and especially of food stuffs. The 
importance of an adequate food supply, especially for 
the present year, is superlative. Without abundant 
food, alike for the armies and the peoples now' at war, 
the whole great enterprise upon which we have em¬ 
barked will break down and fail. The world’s food re¬ 
serves are low . Not only during the present emergency 
but for some time after ])eace shall have come both our 
own people and a large proportion of the peot)le of 
Europe must rely upon the harvests in America. Upon 
the farmers of this country, therefore, in large measun*, 
rests the fate of the war and the fate of the nations. May 
the nation not count upon them to omit no stej) that will 
increase the production of their land or that w ill bring 
about the most effectual cooperation in the sale and dis¬ 
tribution of their products? The time is short. It is of 
the most imperative importance that everything possible 
be done and done immediately to make sure of large har¬ 
vests. I call upon young men and old alike and u])on 
the able-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon 
this duty,—to turn in hosts to the farms and make cei- 
tain that no pains and no labor is lacking in this great 
matter. 
I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to 
plant abundant food-stulfs as w(dl as cotton. They can 
show their patriotism in no better or more convincing 
way than by resisting the great temptation oi the present 
price of cotton and hel])ing, heli)ing upon a great scale, 
to feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are 
fighting for their liberties and for our ow n. The var- 
