He was made the scapegoat for our National shortcomings.

The fault was not his; the fault and responsibility lay with us, the people, who for thirty-three years had permitted our representatives in Congress and in National executive office to bear themselves so that it was absolutely impossible to avoid the great bulk of all the trouble that occurred, and of all the shortcomings of which our people complained, during the Spanish War.

The chief immediate cause was the conditions of red-tape bureaucracy which existed in the War Department at Washington, which had prevented any good organization or the preparation of any good plan of operation for using our men and supplies.

The recurrence of these conditions, even though in somewhat less aggravated form, in any future emergency is as certain as sunrise unless we bring about the principle of a four years' detail in the staff corps--a principle which Congress has now for years stubbornly refused to grant.
There are nations who only need to have peaceful ideals inculcated, and to whom militarism is a curse and a misfortune.

There are other nations, like our own, so happily situated that the thought of war is never present to their minds.