Remarks at Fort Warren, Cheyenne, Wyo.

General Humphreys, ladies and gentlemen:

I am glad to come back here. As you know, I am not a stranger. I think it was in 1920 that I first came to Fort D. A. Russell. I was here four years ago after the name had been changed in honor of a very old friend of mine, Senator Warren. I am glad to come back here today, not only because it is Sunday, and a day off, but also because it is an anniversary. This happens to be Mrs. Roosevelt's birthday. So I am having a very nice home party.

I was telling the General when we were out a little west of here and saw the rifle ranges, that my only worry was that these boys who learned to shoot in this clear atmosphere would not be able to see the targets when they get back to the effete east.

It's a grand country. In traveling through this part of the West I always feel that Cheyenne is a sort of crossroads of all this part of America. It corresponds, as I said to Senator O'Mahoney this morning, to the same position in our country as the Panama Canal occupies between North and South America-one of the crossroads of travel from the north to the south and the east to the west, and it is a pretty fine crossroads to come back to.

As a matter of fact, one of the great things that has happened is the pick-up in travel. I am very, very happy back in the State of New York, when I hear of people who are going to get in their automobiles and get to know their own country. There are more and more of them doing it every year. There are more and more people from the coast and the plains who are coming East each year and seeing some of our scenery. In up-state New York, you know, we are quite proud of that scenery, even though our highest point is only about five thousand feet, about a mile lower than you are here. But a mile up in the air in New York State seems very, very high.

Every year that goes by we in this country are getting to know each other better. It seems to me that sectional lines are getting narrower and narrower. We are beginning to appreciate more deeply that we talk the same language and have the same point of view about life.

It is fine that this Nation is setting an example for peace in the world. And that is a good thing to say on a Sunday; it is also a good thing to say at an Army fort; and I know that the Army agrees with me in that statement just as much as you men and women civilians do.

And that is one reason why we have a very fine though a very small Army—because we are keeping our Army in training in the interest of peace. I think we are making strides in the sense that we are setting an example for other Nations in the way of peace. Certainly on this continent our neighbors to the north in Canada, and to the south, all the way down to Cape Horn, have begun to realize the point and the objective of the ideal of the good neighbor. In this entire hemisphere, all the way from the North Pole down to the South Pole, there isn't any war going on anywhere at the present time, and we are very proud of that.

I have talked about travel, about getting to know our own country. In December there is going to be held in the capital of the Argentine Republic a great conference of the twenty-one American Republics in the interest of more firmly cemented peace in this hemisphere. I think probably one of the topics down there is going to be the building of a great highway all the way from North America down through Central America and into South America. By such a highway, we people up here can get to know our neighbors on the south—can take a holiday, put the family into an automobile and drive down through Central America and across the Panama Canal and all the way through to Chile or the Argentine.

It will give us, a Nation of one hundred and twenty-five million people, a chance to get to know those other Americans who are pretty fine human beings and should get to be better known. It will give them a chance to meet us up here and see more of us. That is the kind of thing which is going to help keep peace in the world—a better knowledge of the peoples of the world.

I always reflect about this when I come to a place like Cheyenne, where there are hundreds of people passing through every hour. I am glad they are able to come here to get some of the fine spirit of Wyoming. I know a good deal about it, not just because Senators and Representatives from Wyoming tell me about it, but because I have seen it first hand. I am very glad to have been able to have this holiday with you today, and I hope to come back and see you again very soon.