Will Rogers Wisdom

These are some quotes by Will Rogers regarding The US military, war and our government. As a country do we still resemble these remarks? Rogers wasn't a peacnik or a pacifist, he was just full of common sense. Everyone listened to him and was entertained by his comments but apparently no one took him seriously or gave a whit for his advice.

Gary

"It had become almost impossible for a country to have a nice home talent little revolution without us butting in. Everywhere an American went to invest dome money in the hope of making 100 percent, why, here would be a gunboat to see he had all the comforts to which he had been accustomed."

"Did you know that we sent marines into Vera Cruz, Mexico, one time? Oh, we were in Nicaragua, Haiti, San Domingo, China, Mexico. Anywhere in the world we could find a place where we had no business, why, there we were. It was just during our adolescent period in our life as a nation., when we thought it was up to us to regulate the affairs of everybody."

"If we could just let other people alone and do their own fighting. When you get into trouble 5000 miles from home, we've got to have been looking for it."

"If we are out, upholding downtrodden nations, it will take a bookkeeper to keep track of our wars."

"Lord knows how many men we lost. Finally we got out. It's wonderful now to go to sleep at night and to know that we haven't got scouts out, looking for wars or private revolutions for us to get mixed up in. Just think of being a spectator once again!"

"Did you ever notice how much more peaceful it is all around when our marines are at home, instead of prowling around? Why, if we keep 'em at home a while, why we are liable to get out of the habit of wanting to send 'em away off, every time we heard of some little nation about to pull off a local amateur revolution."

" I told our secretary that I wished we had the biggest navy in the world, the biggest army, and by all means the biggest airforce, but to have it understood with the taxpayers that they are only to be used to defend the home grounds. Be ready for it and then just stay at home."

" These big wars over commerce are pretty bad. They kill more people, but one over religion is really the most bitter."

"Us letting the veterans entirely alone, and not caring, now that we don't need them - or think that we don't - is like lots of people we have who allow their parents, or their grandparents, to be sent to a sanatorium because they were getting to be too much trouble and too much in the way for them to take care of at home. I am not so sure myself of "No More Wars", and there is a bare possibility that we might want to use these boys again. The best insurance in the world against another war is to take care of the ones that fought the last one."

"There were bands playing, soldiers marching, orators orating, telling you it's your duty to buy Liberty Bonds . . . and now, years later, no bands, no marching, no orators, just a patriotic girl, or a broken piece of human frame, trying to sell a poppy for a few cents, made by even a more unfortunate brother in one of our veteran's hospitals. There is only one sure way of stopping war, that is to see that every "statesman" has the same chance to reflect after it is over that these boys making those poppies have had."