Chairman. zealous and anxious as. I believe. all Members of this House are. now that we are committed to war. to prosecute that war with vigor. that early victory may bring an early peace. 1. for one. am not willing to sacrifice to that end or take legislative steps to place in jeopardy those institutions of American liberty that are of greater and more enduring value to humanity than any victory of arms which we may achieve on European battle fields. -We can not afford to sacrifice the greater for the lesser. Certainly the Congress of the United States. which is by far the greatest legislative forum and repository of human rights and immunities in the world and in history. should be the last legislative body on earth to undermine by its own acts the immunitis which have made America the asylum of freemen from every land and. least of all. to substitute for these immunities the very system of military conscript and universal military service. from which the great body of our immigrant citizeihship sought freedom when they gave up the Old World for the New. Of what avail is it to the freedomloving and peaceloving citizen of a foreign country to leave his fatherland to escape military conscription and universal military servitude imposed by a military bureaucracy and make this his adopted country. only to find that the country of his adoption is setting lip another military bureaucracy to conscript him and impose upon his sons the system of universal service patterned after that of the fatherland from which he has flown? How can we with any logical consistency preach against Prussian autocracy as the "foe to liberty" if we adopt the same system of military conscription and training which makes Prussian autocracy the foe to liberty?
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immigrant