May 4th, Congress.

The war has gone on long enough, my friends. We need to guarantee for ourselves the eventual end of war, especially after the war to end all wars. For it is in this exact environment that war-time policies begin to take hold far stronger than some of us might like, and indeed we have seen the will of the people in some of these matters.

I am not speaking here of the traitorous acts committed by some who saw them fit for resolving this situation, but of the peaceful men and women. I speak here of those who would link their hands and merely ask their Congressman: let me live. I speak here of those concerned for personal liberty from the horrors of war, and believe me - these horrors should never befall a God-fearing American.

I think all men recognize that in time of war the citizen must surrender some rights for the common good which he is entitled to enjoy in time of peace - and that will include his own body, for at times he must put it between enemy and kin. But the right to control their own Government according to constitutional forms is not one of the rights that the citizens of this country are called upon to surrender in time of war.

Rather in time of war the citizen must be more alert to the preservation of his right to control his Government. He must be watchful of the enroachment of the military upon civil power. He must be wary of all those precedents in support of arbitrary action by administrative officials that who plead necessity in war time as justification, for those precedents become the fixed rule when the necessity has passed and normal conditions have been restored.

More than anything, the citizen and his representative in Congress in time of war must maintain his right of free speech. More than in times of peace it is necessary that the channels for free public discussion of policies be open and unclogged. It is of utmost importance that we preserve the right of the citizens of this country and their representatives in Congress to discuss in an orderly way, frankly and publicly, without fear, from the platform or through the press, every important phase of this war; its causes, the manner in which it should be conducted, and the terms upon which peace should be made.

We have yet to abandon this right, even if it may at times be in peril. I contend however that through means of free expression it is becoming clear to this Government that the intervention in Russia can not go on for longer. The expansion of war beyond the reasonable confines of war, beyond what the conscripted man believed he was preparing for, is not sustainable if we look to safeguard our values of freedom at home. The Society of War is not a condition of a Republic. Throughout our history, the wisest among us have known so. Thus, all war has been prescribed to end at a point.

So I stand in front of you today to do my part in discussing frankly and publicly from the platform my view, as Commander in Chief, on the continuation of the American Expedition in what we know as Russia. Certainly there are those here with a tinge of fear for a thought of retreat from combat against this existential foe that has so recently struck at our homes. I say to you - there is no defeat in retreat, but rather a victory of conscious. Our boys have spent months in the Arctic Cold, and yet, attacks were made in the heart of our nation. The middling, if even such, chance that their presence may have a positive effect on our security back home, does not, not in a thousand years, justify the betrayal of the trust and love for their Republic that compelled them to so eagerly serve the nation in war.

Gentlemen - a soldier in Arkhangelsk, a boy Jim from Minnesota, trusts the Republic, but he does not love the Society of War.

It's time to bring them home.