[Released March 28, 1931. Dated April 19, 1930]
My dear Mr. James:
The Citizens' Military Training Camps have through ten years proved themselves important agencies of physical and moral health in the individual and of civic welfare in the Nation. The willingness of young men to devote a month to this training program for better citizenship is proof of good-will in the generation on which will presently devolve the maintenance of our social and political institutions.
I commend the Citizens' Camps to all fathers and mothers and to young men of suitable age in the hope and belief that the camps will show themselves as useful in the future as they have been in the past.
Yours faithfully,
HERBERT HOOVER
[Mr. George F. James, National Executive Secretary, Military Training Camps Association, 705 Tower Building, 6 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois]
Note: The letter was made public by Maj. Gen. Hanson E. Ely. The Military Training Camps program, which provided summer camps for civilians to receive military instruction, was established by the War Department in 1921.
Herbert Hoover, Message Endorsing Military Training Camps. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/211908