Note 40 — Chapter XIV · The Taft Commission
Reading edition
As for my share as a soldier in that Philippine Insurrection, admitting, as I now do, that it was a tragedy of errors, the President of the United States would indeed be a very impotent Chief Executive if it were every American’s duty to deliberate as a judge on the Bench before he decided to answer a president’s call for volunteers in an emergency. I am not yet so highly educated as to find no inward response to the sentiment, “Right or wrong, my country.” If this sentiment is not right, no republic can long survive, for the ultimate safety of republics must lie in volunteer soldiery.