TO THE MEMBERS OF THE INTERSTATE NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

JANUARY 22, 1906 

Senator Dick; Members of the Association: 

I trust it is hardly necessary for me to say what 
a genuine pleasure it is to me to-day to greet this 
organization. I have been a member of the National 
Guard myself, and both at the time when I was 
Governor (as the present Assistant Secretary of War 
can say) and since I have been President, and even 
when I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, I have 
always done all that in me lay to further the inter 
ests of the National Guard. 

I have a good many things on hand, but one of 
the things that are interesting me most at present, 
Senator Dick, is the encouragement of rifle prac 
tice to the National Guard. I want to have it under 
stood, gentlemen, that I do not care anything like 
as much for how your regiments march and per 
form parade-ground and armory maneuvres as I 
care for how they are instructed in the work that 
would make them valuable as soldiers in time of 
war. I earnestly hope that the National Guard, 
and, Mr. Taft, the Regular Army also, especially 
the Regular Army, will more and more have the 
kind of instruction that will make it second nature 
for the man who marches to march fully equipped 
as he would be in time of war. If he is trained to 
march that way he will not throw away his equip 
ment the first time he goes to war; otherwise he 
will do it. I want to see the average National 
Guardsman know how to shoot well. I want to see 
the fund that we have for rifle practice distributed 
among the several State organizations, partly at 
least with reference to the way in which those 
State organizations promote marksmanship. I 
want to see the young fellow who has been through 
the National Guard receive a training which will 
make him able to do his work in time of war if the 
need comes. 

In a great industrial civilization such as ours we 
may just as well face the fact that there is a con 
stant tendency to do away with, to eliminate, those 
qualities which make a man a good soldier. It 
should be the steady object of every legislator, of 
every executive officer, and above all of you gen 
tlemen who have to do with the National Guard, to 
try to encourage those qualities, to try to counteract 
the tendency toward their elimination. Every offi 
cer of the National Guard should train his men the 
whole time as if he were training them with a view 
to possible action, so that the men under him will 
be trained by him to have those habits of body and 
mind which will render them formidable as soldiers 
in the field. 

You should try to train your men so 
they can live in the open; train them so they will 
know what cover is, so they will be able to take 
advantage of it, so they will know how to march 
and march well ; and you should realize the relative 
importance of what it is that the men under you 
learn, that as war is carried on nowadays, ninety 
per cent of the ordinary work done either on the 
parade-ground or in the armory, either by a militia 
regiment or a regular regiment, amounts to noth 
ing whatever in the way of training except so far as 
the incidental effect it has in accustoming the men 
to act together and to obey ; but they are not going 
to fight shoulder to shoulder when they get out 
into the field. It is absolutely not of the slightest 
consequence what their alignment is, but is of vital 
consequence that they shall know how to take cover, 
how to shoot, and how to make themselves at home 
under any circumstances. 

We have such a small regular army that you men 
of the National Guard have upon you a heavy 
responsibility. I want to say that while it is incum 
bent upon you to take your duties seriously and do 
them with all your heart, if you do even that you do 
more good to the Nation than any equal body of 
citizens to be found in our country.