Excerpt from The Bulletin of the Pennsylvania, Vol. 5: Dept of Labor and Industry A year ago I was in France. I mentioned that at a meeting here in this ball that Commissioner Jackson presided over. At that time I had a day or two's notice, and was prepared with an address. It would seem from the introduction that I am expected to say something of war conditions. Now this country does not yet fully realize that it is at war. If the war continues another year, as in all probability it will, and possibly longer, you will all find that we are at war; we will feel it in every direction. It is my opinion that every able bodied man and woman in this entire country should be conscripted. I don't exactly like that term. I like selected bet ter. Our soldiers, by the way, are not conscripts but selected men. They ought to be called selected men; should not be spoken of as con scripts. My friends, the Secretary of War and the Secretary Of the Treasury, fully agreed with me when we had a talk about it the other day. Selected men is the better term to use. We all should be willing to do our part. Every one should live, move and have his being in the winning of the war. The war was forced upon us. We could not possibly avoid it. Anyone who has given careful study to the matter will see that. I have been a strong peace man all my life; was at the Hague, at the Arbitration Confer ence in England, where I became acquainted with Mr. Lloyd George; was also a regular attendant at the Lake Mohonk Conferences. But as a strong peace man I am ready to fight for peace, and we cannot Obtain permanent peace except by putting down Prussian Militarism, and we must carry the war to a successful conclusion if we are ever to have lasting peace. Practically, in a sense, this is a Holy War, a war in which we should all take our part and do our best to carry it to a successful end. There is no question about that in my mind. I want to speak a word as to the war as I saw it in France a year ago. I was in the trenches for about five days under fire. We were entertained specially by the French Government. I was on the Com mission invited by the Government to study industrial conditions, which is a very serious matter in France. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.