NATIONAL DEFENCE.
If Heaven helps only those who help themselves the United States will be
deplorably helpless the first time they fall into difficulty with any
foreign power.
Ever since the late civil war ended the general of the army has annually
given us earnest and intelligent warning as to the incomplete state of
our fortifications, and the inability of our artillery for offensive and
defensive operations against the improved armaments with which other
nations have amply supplied themselves. The admiral of the navy has made
similar reports. For a little while this looked like unnecessary
precaution or what a distinguished Congressman once called old woman’s
fussiness. Hadn’t we just triumphed over the largest armies that had
been brought into the field, except by ourselves, in half a century?
Hadn’t we organized a navy out of nothing, armed it splendidly, and done
with it whatever was desirable that the naval power of the country
should attempt? To be sure, our forts were few, but so were our harbors.
The construction of some of the harbor forts in the United States was
admired by the engineers of all the other civilized powers only thirty
years ago, and the public knew of it. To afterward be told that these
splendid and expensive structures were of no use, that they were
inadequate, that two or three guns on a second or third-rate ship of
some second or third-rate naval power could knock them to pieces would
have been humiliating had it not been enraging.
Attempts were made from time to time, in the earlier years following the
close of the war, to keep our military and naval establishment in fine
condition. We had admirable staff departments, and large “plants” for
the manufacture of almost everything required in ordnance and
ammunition. We had the nucleus of a navy and army from which a peace
establishment unequalled by any on the face of the earth might have been
selected. But we let it all go. No such spectacle as the disbandment and
disappearance of the great armies of the North and South was ever before
seen, and historians have glorified in this. Soldiers, however, whose
opinions we may yet be called upon to respect, regarded the spectacle in
entirely a different light. We had once before been caught--by
England--napping in a most unexpected way, said these old fellows; we
paid dearly for our neglect; but now we are repeating exactly the same
blunder. Excellent men who
[Illustration: MINES BUILDING.]
were willing to remain in the service were allowed to go, material of
every kind was disposed of at auction as rapidly as possible, and
nothing was provided to take its place. The numerical force of the
standing army was reduced more and more until even the Indians held us
in contempt. Indian massacres on the border have frequently been charged
to the rascality or duplicity of the white men. Undoubtedly the Indians
have had a great many provocations, but, so far as restraint through
fear is concerned, they have been subjected to very little of this very
necessary discipline. Large bands of armed Indians have been able to
keep brave but small detachments of United States troops within small
camps or forts, to isolate them and taunt them for days in succession,
to steal cattle, murder settlers, desolate the country, all because they
had contempt for an army which was so small that it never could oppose
more than a handful to any Indian raid which might suddenly be made.
Just look at some of the warnings we have had during recent years. In
his last report as commander of the army (1887), General Sheridan said:
“The condition of our sea-coast defences has continued to deteriorate
during the year, and the majority of them, both as regards the material
of which they are built, their location and present armament, would
prove of but little real service in time of foreign war.”
What was done about it? Nothing.
General Sheridan further advised that we should adopt some modern
magazine rifle for our soldiers, as all foreign nations had refitted
their armies with these guns.
What was done about it? Nothing.
General Sheridan further said: “I am strongly in favor of the general
movement extending all possible aid to the National Guard of the
different States, as they constitute a body of troops that in any great
emergency would form an important part of our military force.”
What was done about it? Nothing.
Before Sheridan, General Sherman made clear, vigorous, sensible protests
every year against our neglect to maintain good defences, but nothing
came of it in the way of improvement. After Sheridan’s death, General
Schofield, the ranking officer of the army, continued the good work;
only two or three months ago General Schofield said in his report that
the new guns we are making will make an increase in the number of
artillerists indispensable, and he urged the formation of two new
regiments at once. Does any one expect to see them?
Admiral Porter has been hammering away valiantly for years at
Congressional thick-heads for the neglect of the navy, but it was not
until the late Samuel J. Tilden gave his own party a blast on the
subject did we begin to construct a navy. Even now there is persistent
halting; Congress, regarding the navy, is like the girl of a certain
class regarding her suitors--so anxious to get the very best that she is
in danger of not getting any.
Both political parties seem agreed on the reduction of the regular army
to the smallest possible numerical force. While the Republicans were in
power some officers of the army used to hope for a change of
administration, and consequently change of party at the head of affairs
so that the army might “have a show.” But when the Democrats came in
with President Cleveland, there was no perceptible difference, except
that there was more trouble than before in obtaining ammunition with
which to salute the flag morning and evening. The army, small as its
maximum strength is according to law, has not been full in years, and
there are grave doubts among some of the higher officers of the army as
to whether it can be made full.
Why? Because men desert--run away at a rate unheard of in the army of
any other nation. General Schofield, in his annual report, says _there
were two thousand four hundred and thirty-six desertions last year--more
than ten per cent. of the entire army!_ Fear of punishment seems to have
no effect, and General Schofield felt obliged to recommend that a full
half of each enlisted man’s pay shall be retained until the end of the
period of enlistment. Isn’t this a humiliating state of affairs for the
army of the freest nation in the world?
There must be serious reason for this anomalous condition of the
military force. Our soldiers are better fed, better clothed, and far
better paid than those of any other country. An American soldier
receives, outside of his allowance for rations and clothing, more money
in a day than the British soldier can show to his credit in a week. His
term of enlistment is shorter and his possibilities of duty are
pleasanter, or should seem so to men of intelligence. Yet to enlist,
which is the first suggestion that presents itself to a man out of work
in a foreign country, seems to be the least popular in the United
States.
Undoubtedly one reason is, that among the inducements to enlist, we are
entirely lacking in anything that approaches the glory of war. Our only
enemies are Indians, the meanest, most sneaking, most treacherous foemen
that any civilized nation is fighting at the present time, and there is
less glory in capturing one of them or a great many of them than in any
taking of prisoners in ordinary war. The soldiers of other countries see
at least a great deal of the pomp of war, if very little of its
circumstance. Showy dresses, frequent parades, numerous occasions of
display, encampment in the vicinity of large cities and towns, freedom
to go about and spend money among civilized people, are all inducements
to men to join and remain in a foreign army at the present time.
But what inducement is offered the American soldier? He is put in a camp
of instruction as soon as he enlists, and sent to the border as soon as
he is fit for service. The border is a delightful country, according to
dime novels, but no sober man with his eyes open finds it anything but
dull. It is a sparsely settled country, uninteresting to every one but
the speculator and hunter. The soldier has nothing to speculate with,
and is very seldom allowed to go hunting. He is kept within narrow
bounds, sees almost no one but his own officers and comrades, has
nothing but camp duty to do, except when on long scouts outside camp
lines, or, still more unpleasant, when detailed for police, gardening,
or other laborious duties within the camp. It naturally occurs to the
American soldier that if he is to work eight hours a day in building
houses or stables, or digging wells, or throwing up embankments, or
ploughing the soil, or hoeing garden crops for the benefit of the post,
that he might as well be doing the same sort of work in the States at a
dollar and a half a day, and have his freedom between sunset and
sunrise.
Except that police precautions against the Indians are still necessary,
the only excuse that any one, except the military officer, seems
inclined to discover for the existence of our army at all, is that we
should have a nucleus of a military establishment in case of necessity.
But what is the nucleus worth? Two thousand officers, among whom
undoubtedly are a number of the best educated soldiers in the world,
constitute nearly all of our military force upon whom we could
confidently rely in case of trouble. The enlisted man, taking him as an
average character, is practically worthless at a time when the
enlargement of the army may suddenly become necessary. In France or
Germany officers may at any time be selected from the ranks. Of course
the systems of the two countries differ greatly from ours. Conscription
and the requirement that every adult man shall serve a portion of his
time in the army, makes a soldier of every one.
But is it not rather significant that the better class of men, to whom
we would have to look for additional officers in case of the necessity
of suddenly making a large army, are seldom found among our own
regulars? Some of the reasons for this deplorable deficiency of valuable
material have already been suggested. There is nothing to induce a man
to enter military life, and the enlisted man is too frequently used as a
common laborer.
But beside this, there is a greater grievance. It is that ours is as
aristocratic an army as any in the world, and that the distance of the
officers from the enlisted men is so great as to be simply immeasurable.
Volunteers used to grumble that some of their officers “put on airs.” It
is scarcely fair to say that regular officers put on airs, but it
certainly is true that the enlisted man, as a rule, is generally treated
by his superiors as a being of an entirely different order. Few men rise
from the ranks. Some men now high up on regimental rosters used to be
private soldiers, and a few instances of the kind occur nowadays, but
the vacancies are too few to attract good men to the ranks. Let any one
live at a military post a little while and explain, if he can, how any
one with sufficient self-respect to be fit for military rank of any kind
can bring himself to enlist in the United States army at all.
All this could be changed, without increasing the numerical strength of
the army, by an entire change of method which would not create any
friction, disorganization or reorganization, but which nevertheless
would encourage a better class of young men to enlist--a change which,
indeed, would secure some of the very best in the country. An army so
small as ours should be in the highest sense a military school. There is
nothing to prevent it. There is no army which has more leisure at its
disposal or officers more competent to act as instructors. No army in
the world has a greater percentage of highly educated officers. No
country can show a larger proportion of well-educated, restless,
unemployed, aspiring young men. There is no engineering party for a
railroad, a mine, a river improvement association, a drainage company or
anything else requiring applied mathematical and mechanical skill but
can secure a large staff of intelligent young men at an expense not
exceeding that of the ordinary soldier. These men generally work harder
and fare worse, regarding personal comfort, than the meanest of
soldiers, yet they are not only entirely satisfied with their chance,
but elbow each other fiercely in their desire to get it.
Suppose that instead of selecting men merely for their physical quality
and their supposed capacity for obedience, the standard of admission to
the ranks of the army should be as high as that of admission to West
Point. Suppose the Government were to assure the people that the
recruits would be treated as well as the cadets at the military or naval
academy; in an instant the army might have its choice from a hundred
thousand intelligent, well-born, well-bred, honorable, aspiring young
men. As already said, there is no trouble in getting any quantity of men
of this class to go out under the control of engineers for hard and
unpleasant duty. The inducement, beside the financial compensation, is
that they will be enabled to fit themselves, at least to some extent,
for the class of work which their superiors are already engaged in. They
are close observers, earnest students, intelligent assistants, and the
beginning of many an engineer, now prominent, has been in just such
parties.
The United States army might as well be one great school of engineering
and military tactics. It is well known that the mere company drill,
which is almost all the drill the American soldier is ever subjected to,
thanks to the distribution of the force in such a way that scarcely any
regiment has been together within a single period of enlistment of any
soldier in the army, requires very little time. It is no harder to
become proficient in than that of the militia of the various States and
cities. Indeed, with company drills once a week, almost any militia
regiment or company can present a finer appearance upon parade than any
but two or three “show” companies of regulars. The remainder of military
life consists in guard duty, the details of camp duty and of applied
engineering, which each man can learn as rapidly by experience as an
equal number of assistants in a construction party anywhere else. It is
known well enough at the West that the construction parties of railways
contain, beside a mass of common laborers, a great many intelligent
young fellows who have put on flannel shirts and cow-hide boots, have
taken pick and shovel and wheelbarrow, not so much for the wages that
are paid them as for what they are learning of the art of railroad
building. If such men can put up with the treatment ordinarily accorded
the section hands of a railway constructing party, they certainly would
be satisfied with the manners of officers of the United States army.
But--and here is an important distinction--no railway boss, however much
of a tyrant he may be, would dare to order one of his hands to cook his
supper or wait at his table or groom his horse or do any other service
of the quality commonly known as menial, but the American soldier in the
regular army is sometimes obliged to regard such demands as a matter of
course.
A plan was suggested a short time ago, by a military officer of
experience, by which the army might be reorganized on this basis without
any additional expense and without any possibility of friction. Several
years ago Major Sumner, of the regular army, himself a son of an old
regular of national fame, suggested a similar plan regarding a single
branch of the service--the cavalry. His plan was to select from among
the floating population of wild boys of the different cities a number of
the more intelligent, and organize from them a single regiment of
cavalry, to be carefully trained and specially educated, the more
promising and deserving recruits to be placed in the line of promotion,
and all to be encouraged to look to possible rank, responsibility, and
position as part of the compensation for the necessary restraint to
which they might be subjected. This restraint could by no possibility be
more severe and continuous than that of West Point.
All that has been said about the army applies with equal force to the
navy. When the apprentice system was formulated there was hope expressed
by hundreds of officers who had served in one branch or other of the
service during the late civil war, that it might afford a stepping-stone
to ambitious young men who wished to adopt a seafaring career, but were
unable to obtain admission to the naval academy, or in any other way to
gain a sufficient education in seamanship and gunnery, which are the two
principal requirements of the American naval officer. But if any number
of naval apprentices have yet reached officers’ uniforms or see before
them any hope of such advancement, the country has not heard of it;
neither has the naval department. The boys are treated kindly, well fed,
well clothed, educated to a certain extent and trained by officers
carefully selected for their intelligence, forbearance, patience, and
tact. But has any one seen any recommendation either to the naval
department or to members of Congress that the apprentice ships should be
schools for naval officers?
The consequence is that in case of our becoming suddenly involved in
war with any power we would be in as bad a position as we were when the
civil war broke out. At that time there was a sudden demand for twenty
times as many trained military officers as the regular army and the
graduating class at West Point could supply, and the demand became
greater every month during the time in which our first million of men
were enlisted. The scarcity of available material was so deplorable that
many lieutenants of regulars were called to the command of volunteer
regiments. Did any one think to go to the ranks of the regular army for
officers? At that time there were in the army thousands of sergeants,
any one of whom, had he been in the militia in a corresponding position,
would have been considered amply fit to organize, drill, and otherwise
care for a company of a hundred men. But there were no such demands, and
had they been made the proper men would not have been forthcoming to any
extent. The lack was not of military skill, but of the many other
qualities which go to the make-up of a soldier. And first among these is
a high degree of self-respect--a quality which has never been nourished
among enlisted men of the regular army of the United States.
The real trouble is lack of proper public spirit. During a recent chat
with Admiral Porter, that fine old sea-dog and fighter bemoaned the
lack of any proper public sense of caution.
“Why don’t you write up the subject yourself?” I asked.
“Write!” exclaimed the veteran, in his energetic way; “I’ve almost
written my finger-nails off, and do not believe it has done a particle
of good. Nothing would please me more than to be able to infuse a
patriotic spirit into the American people--make them feel that they have
a flag and need a navy to protect it. I wish we had some of the energy
and patriotism exhibited by our forefathers, for, according to present
indications, we will one day be humiliated by some fifth-rate naval
power which will come to our shores and teach us a lesson. No reason
exists why we should be exempt from war, for we are easily excited, and,
like the school-boy, dare any one to knock the chip from our shoulder,
though not able to fight.”
So say we all of us--all who give the subject intelligent thought.