Thomas Marik's State of the League Address, January 3040
My Fellow-Countrymen
Now, at the expiration of nearly ten years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to ten years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While my father's succession was being debated in Parliament, devoted altogether to 'saving' the League without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to 'destroy' it. Seeking to dissolve the League and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would 'make' war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would 'accept' war rather than let it perish, and thus the war came.
To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend their own interests was the object for which the insurgents would rend the League, even by war, while Parliament claimed no right to do more than to restrict the abuses of the Home Defense Act and unfounded aggression against our neighbors. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the 'cause' of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. The prayers of both could not be answered. Thankfully this turbulent period has finally come to an end. This great League once again being whole.
From this point forward, with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
-Thomas Marik, Captain-General FWL
