FORE-ARMED
FORE-ARMED
How to Build a Citizen Army
By
GRANVILLE FORTESCUE
_Author of_
“At the Front with Three Armies.” “What of the Dardanelles?”
“Russia, the Balkans, and the Dardanelles,” etc.
PHILADELPHIA
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1916, by
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.
TO
G. F.
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD 9
THE SWISS MILITARY SYSTEM 13
THE GERMAN MILITARY SYSTEM 37
THE FRENCH MILITARY SYSTEM 59
THE AUSTRALIAN MILITARY SYSTEM 73
THE ENGLISH MILITARY SYSTEM 90
THE NEW ERA IN WARFARE 105
THE STRATEGIC POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES 122
THE INSTINCT OF DEFENSE 146
WHAT SHALL WE DO? 163
FOREWORD
Since many citizens of the United States have become convinced of
the necessity of preparedness against war, this book is presented in
order to make available information as to the methods in use in other
countries, where preparedness has long been accepted in principle and
practice. From the experience of other nations, we may receive the
light wherewith to resolve our own problem.
Out of a study of the defense-service of other peoples, American
citizens can decide which plan, if any, best suits our race and our
traditions. No system of citizen soldiery was evolved in a day.
Undoubtedly legislators and staff officers will have to experiment
largely with different schemes before our people are satisfied with
results. If we begin on the right principle, however, it is safe to
assume that American business sense will gradually build up a defensive
organization commensurate with the needs of our menaced position.
But we must begin and we must work on the right principle.
As an indication of the unpreparedness of the United States, the
maneuver problem suggested in Chapter VII was, in a measure, worked
out on the Mexican border. With the greatest difficulty, and with
the forces stationed in close vicinity of the expected conflict, an
ill-proportioned American brigade was mobilized for active service
within eight days. What would be the outcome, were we menaced by a
first-class power, can easily be deduced.
I have availed myself of the publications of the War Department for
many of the facts herein contained. Where my personal opinion is
advanced, it is based upon ten years’ service in the United States
Army, together with observations made during the Spanish-American war;
Philippine insurrection; as military attaché with the Japanese army in
front of Port Arthur; as correspondent in Morocco during the Riff war;
and finally from experiences with the different armies in the European
war of 1914.
Recent legislation affecting the military organization of the United
States, is more a compromise with partisan politics than an honest
effort in the line of preparedness. The Army Bill of 1916 was accepted
by Army officers, Senators, and Congressmen who understand its faults,
because it contains certain commendable features (such as helping the
enlisted men more easily to obtain commissions, as suggested in this
book on page 174, and the enlargement of West Point), and, under the
antagonisms of parties, the advocates of preparedness were obliged to
accept a large proportion of faulty provisions, or see all military
legislation fail. It follows that such procedure is fundamentally
wrong. But in the end, the plain people of the United States will
determine the military course of the country. A knowledge of the plans
in practice in other lands may help towards a correct decision of our
country’s most urgent problem.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
CHAPTER I
THE SWISS MILITARY SYSTEM
The average American, tackling the subject of preparedness for the
first time, will wade through reams of rhetoric until his mind is a
mass of undigested military facts and fancies. Glib and generous are
the admonitions to prepare; yet the sum and substance of much that is
being spoken and written on the subject, when skimmed of patriotic
phrases, leaves but a residue of glittering generalities.
After listening to all the speeches pronounced at national defense
conventions, and after reading all the data appearing in print,
the average American still realizes how little he knows of what is
comprised in the term “citizen soldiery.”
If any economic revolution is to follow the drafting of the majority of
our younger citizens into a national militia, the voter wants to know
it before he supports the Continental, Federal or any other kind of
army.
The economic side of the question is particularly puzzling. Our kings
of commerce, who resolve their problems into terms of business, would
rarely send their sons into the army to work up from the bottom.
As a business proposition the army is negligible. Commercial and
professional life offer more substantial rewards. On the other hand, if
the available youth of the country were subjected to a short period of
military service, would this handicap our national development? How has
it worked out in other nations?
The three most thoroughly tested citizen services are the Swiss, the
German and the French. The Australian system, although not tested long
in time, has proved its value in a manner worthy of close study. But
let us begin with the Swiss. All military authorities agree on the
proposition that the descendants of William Tell have evolved a nearly
perfect national militia system; but these authorities insist that the
Swiss plan is essentially militia and not regular. This distinction
need not bother us, for no one wants to turn the great mass of male
Americans into professional soldiers. My dictionary defines militia as
citizen soldiery, and it is on that basis I shall lay before you the
workings of the Swiss system.
Briefly, military service is compulsory and universal, with almost no
exemptions save for actual physical disability. Citizens excused from
service, as well as those called but rejected for mental or physical
deficiencies, in lieu of service pay three special taxes. As nearly
fifty per cent of all men annually called to the colors are rejected,
those taxes amount to quite a tidy revenue.
The military taxes must be paid by every Swiss citizen, at home or
abroad, who is not enrolled in the active or reserve armies. So, in
addition to the men rejected, all citizens excused from military
service for whatever cause are liable for these assessments, which
are of three kinds: first, a military poll tax of six francs
(approximately $1.20); second, the military property tax, which is 0.15
per cent of assessed value of property exceeding in amount $200; and
third, a military income tax of 1.5 per cent on income. Military taxes
are paid only during military age limits; that is, from the ages of
twenty to forty-four. As a concession to the depreciation of a man’s
usefulness as a soldier with increasing age, the taxes are half the
stated sums between the ages of thirty-two and forty-four.
Of course, these taxes are assessed in addition to all other payments
to the State and they are rigorously exacted, but no one person can be
assessed a total military tax to exceed $600.
With a people so devoted to physical exercise, the number of rejections
must seem high. We reconcile the paradox when we understand that the
physical tests of the Swiss army are more severe than in Germany
or France. The Swiss system is extremely selective. For example,
the endurance tests, adequately severe, take the character of long
tramps across country, something after the fashion of the test former
President Roosevelt inaugurated for swivel-chair army officers, and
the men who show physical deterioration under this ordeal are passed
over for the more fit. Of course, the organization of the Swiss army
is based upon the expected average annual recruitment, and it would
seriously inconvenience the training staff and tax the depots and
supply departments if an unusual number of recruits were accepted.
So whenever the “class” is exceptional, the standard is, in a sense,
raised by more rigorous selection. In time of emergency, all available
men conforming to regulation requirements would be accepted.
Theoretically, liability to serve begins when the citizen is seventeen
years of age and ends at the close of his forty-eighth year. In
practice, actual service begins at the age of twenty. For the first
twelve years service is with the first-line troops, called the _Auszug_
or _Elite_; the following eight years the Swiss passes in the first
reserve, or _Landwehr_; and the last eight years of service is with
the second reserve, or _Landsturm_. This division does no military
service except in war time.
Under this system Switzerland, which boasts approximately 4,000,000
population, has developed a defensive army of 150,000 soldiers with
the colors, 120,000 in the first reserve, and 250,000 in the second
reserve--a total of over 500,000 trained fighting men. Pausing to
consider that Switzerland is but one-third the size of the State of
Pennsylvania, with about half as many inhabitants as crowd the Quaker
commonwealth, we must admit that the Swiss system produces results.
The total training of the Swiss infantry soldier is sixty-five days
the first year (seventy-five days for field artillery and ninety days
for cavalry), and only eleven days a year for seven (eight in case of
cavalry) succeeding years. The first reserve, or _Landwehr_, is called
out only once, for eleven days’ service.
Thus the first training period of the Swiss infantry soldier is one
hundred and forty-two days. Beyond this time he spends the eleven days
mentioned in the _Landwehr_ with his company and in addition there are
certain inspections prescribed that bring the entire time of training
up to one hundred and sixty-three days.
The military instruction of the Swiss recruit follows accepted lines
and begins with periods of elementary training in what is commonly
known as the “awkward squad.” The teaching is carried on much the same
as at West Point with the fourth-classmen or with newly joined recruits
in any of our National Guard organizations. The recruits arrive and are
divided into companies, sections, squads under competent instructors.
The training proceeds. The men are taught the facings, marching
in single and double rank, and given a full course of setting-up
exercises. For a month the men are grounded in the rudiments of squad
and section drill. The manual of arms is taken up as soon as the
recruit has mastered the simple marching maneuvers and the facings.
All instruction is conducted out of doors, and from the beginning war
conditions are simulated. Sometimes stress of weather makes indoor
drilling necessary, but this is rare. Armory drilling is scorned in
Switzerland. In barracks the men are taught to keep their kit clean, to
assemble and take apart their rifles, pointing and aiming drill, the
theory of shooting and the Swiss regulations. Besides these military
duties, recruits are taught to cook and are given some notions of
hygiene.
With the exception of Sunday, work goes on without interruption for
eight hours each day.
The Swiss recruit begins his target practice as soon as he has shown he
is able to handle his army rifle. Each recruit is allowed ninety blank
and two hundred ball cartridges. A man is allowed to expend fifteen
ball cartridges in preliminary shooting, eighty in individual practice,
and one hundred and five in field war practice. As soon as the recruits
are graduated from the “awkward squad” and commence company drills,
they are taken on marches, which are gradually extended till the men
can cover twenty-five miles without unusual fatigue and spend two
nights in bivouac.
The whole purpose of military training in Switzerland is to approximate
war conditions as nearly as possible. So it has been said with truth
that the progress of training of the Swiss militia is exactly the
reverse in theory and fact of that in operation with the militia in the
United States. Actual work under war conditions being the end and aim
of the Swiss system, and the time of training being so restricted, the
instruction begins and ends in the open country. To quote from a report
of a former military attaché, Major T. B. Mott, U.S.A.:
“After a thorough course in the school of the soldier and squad, work
out in the open fields is begun and the recruit comes face to face with
the primitive problems of a campaign and learns at the very start ‘what
he is there for.’ He is taught to march correctly in column, form line
and march in line, but these exercises are made an incident of going
to and coming from ‘work.’ The real business of his life, he learns,
is to march steadily under a heavy pack, shoot straight, take cover,
and obey his squad leader.... The fifth and sixth weeks entire are
spent on a long march in rough country, where the battalion acts for
the most part as if in the presence of an enemy, maneuvering by day,
establishing outposts at night, and conducting combat exercises with
ball cartridges.
“The contrast between this sort of militia training and that seen in
America or England is most marked. The psychological effect on the men
is certainly important. The first conceptions of the real business of a
soldier, his whole reason for existence, are apt to produce a lasting
impression on a young man. In our (American) service the recruit’s
first enthusiasms are concentrated (and dissipated) in the grind of
barrack-yard drill, where no man need, or is expected to use his head.
As these same recruits, whether fourth-class cadets or regular enlisted
men, grow old in the service, and in turn have to instruct others, the
ideas crystallized in them during their first training prevail, and
instinctively they give importance to the things that have been most
deeply impressed upon them....
“In Switzerland there are no parades or reviews or drills beyond the
company or battalion ... through the push of stern necessity the Swiss
has sifted out the absolute essentials to fitness for war, and these
essentials, field exercises and good shooting, he works at to the
exclusion of everything else.”
Such in outline is the Swiss plan; but there are certain factors and
conditions in the Alpine nation that make the development of a national
militia a much simpler proposition than, for example, would be the
case in the United States. In the first place, the Swiss are a nation
of patriots. Reference again to my dictionary brings out the fact
that a patriot is a lover of his country. Not to make any invidious
insinuations about the quality of patriotism in this or any other land,
if I were the chief of the World’s Bureau of Political Statistics,
and had to compile a comparative table of the patriotic qualities of
the peoples of the earth, I should begin with the Swiss and work
down. A lover of his country. The phrase does not half convey how the
Swiss feels toward his lakes and mountains. Why, he regards them with
passionate adoration. The Swiss is a super-patriot.
The next factor bearing largely upon the problem of speeding up the
soldier-making plant is the physique of the raw material. Search as
you may the Swiss vocabularies--French, German and Italian are the
languages spoken--and you will find no term for molly-coddle. After
spending some time in Switzerland I am convinced that both soil and
climate preclude the cultivation of the said human species. Of course,
imported varieties thrive in the steam-heated hotels perched on the
sides of the mountains, but no indigenous specimens exist. At a guess I
should rate the Swiss as the physical equals of the best human beings
produced on this globe. You cannot live in Switzerland without taking
exercise. The character of the terrain demands it. So, making a virtue
of necessity, the average Swiss, boy and man, takes more general
exercise than the upper-class Englishman.
Finally, the tradition of William Tell inspires the race. The Swiss
are a nation of sharpshooters. Up to within fifty years the organic
law of the land prohibited any male from taking unto himself a mate
until he furnished proof that he owned a musket and convinced the
authorities that he knew how to use it effectively. One of the first
provisions of the Swiss Constitution decreed that every citizen must
be ready to defend his country. Under this law, as soon as the state
could afford it, every male in the Alpine nation was furnished a gun
and ammunition. The ancient idea persists today. Every village has its
rifle range. Consistently the descendants of William Tell have adopted
target shooting as their national game. In these perilous times it is a
more-to-be-recommended sport than baseball.
Taking it for granted that some of my readers have not heard the
story, I give here a conversation which took place several years ago,
when the Emperor of Germany was the guest of the President of the Swiss
Republic. Wilhelm was in a waggish mood.
“What is the total fighting force, Mr. President, Switzerland could
muster in an emergency?” asked the Emperor.
“Some five hundred thousand men at a pinch,” the Swiss President
replied.
“So few!” exclaimed Wilhelm. Then, with a mischievous twinkle in his
large eyes, he continued, “Why, I could send two and a half million men
to attack Switzerland. What would happen then?”
The President answered, with a rather bored air:
“In that case, sire, I fear each Swiss soldier would have to expend
five cartridges.”
If you have ever seen the Swiss shooting clubs in action you will know
the President was no braggart.
I am firmly convinced that, instead of a rattle, the infant Switzer
is given a miniature rifle. From earliest days his associations
center round firearms and musketry practice. Be he the child of even
the poorest peasant, his first recollections are of seeing his father
cleaning and polishing a Swiss army rifle. That weapon is a household
god. Sometimes, if he is good, the youngster may draw the oiled rag
through the barrel during the cleaning process. He will trail his
father to the village range. He will hear scores discussed, his
father’s chances of winning a local prize, and how warmly his mother
would welcome the prize money. His youthful experiences may include
following the great federal shooting matches at Fribourg.
Imagine the sensations of the American boy if he could combine a
week’s picnicking with a championship baseball game each day, and
you will conjure up something of the feeling of the Swiss child when
attending the great triennial shooting competition. The prize winners
in the shooting contests fill the same niche in the Swiss small boy’s
heart-shrine as Christy Mathewson does with the American youth. In
a sentence, the whole population of Switzerland interests itself in
shooting, and can shoot.
Thus, the raw material furnished, being one part patriot, one part
physical fitness and one part sharpshooter, the problem of producing an
army in Switzerland is readily solved. All that is necessary is some
supplementary special training in team-work. Every American knows the
significance of that word, and I do not hesitate to pronounce that the
whole secret of an efficient army is compassed in the team-work idea.
When he is nineteen the young Swiss presents himself at the mayor’s
office of his town and undergoes a rigid physical and moderate mental
examination. If he passes the physical test, which includes running
and walking endurance trials, and fails mentally, he is sent to night
school until it is time to report for military training. Physical
failure debars a man from service. Such a misfortune is considered
almost a social calamity. The town belles have little time for those
rejected on this count. The severity of the examination is attested
by the fact that, out of approximately 40,000 young men who annually
present themselves, 20,000, or 50 per cent, are rejected.
The following spring the accepted recruit receives notice directing him
to report to the nearest training ground--there are eight scattered
over Switzerland--and then he begins his sixty-five days’ work in the
Recruit School. Here the tyro soldier is supplied with a uniform,
complete accoutrements for field service, a rifle and ammunition. This
equipment is his property until the end of his liability for military
service. When not in use he keeps the complete outfit in his home.
This Swiss militia is a business army. From the first the recruit is
trained under field conditions--no fancy manual-of-arms exercises in
million-dollar armories; no reviews; no parades. The recruits devote
a full eight-hour day to intensive training. All exercises take place
out of doors. The corps of instructors, a specially trained staff, who
perform their never-ending duties with religious idealism, cram more
specific military instruction into a given time than is the case with
any other army in the world. A fourth class-man at West Point--and he
has few idle moments--has a sinecure compared with the Swiss recruit.
Night work, long, fatiguing marches and trench digging bring no let-up
in the usual eight-hour-day schedule of exercises. The men come through
the course as lean as leopards. Perceptions are razor sharp. Faculties
are on edge. This sixty-five-day period of concentrated military toil
completed, the militiaman goes home. He has a solid foundation in all
the duties of a soldier.
The annual eleven-day terms of instruction are picnics compared with
the Recruit School. Of course, a man is assigned to his home company.
The work begins with an inspection and company drill. For two days
this instruction proceeds in all detail; then the men are marched to a
point where three other companies are met, thus forming a battalion.
Exercises for this larger unit continue for two or three days, when
the battalion marches to a regimental camp. The same process is
repeated until the company passes through brigade, division and corps
training. Sometimes the work terminates with a march in field order.
All this instruction takes place within eleven days. Under this system,
supplemented by universal musketry practice, Switzerland turns out a
force entirely competent for home defense in 142 days’ actual training.
Is national life affected by this training favorably or unfavorably?
A Swiss would laugh if you asked him that question. Discounting the
patriotism of the people, you have the answer when you know that the
majority of Swiss citizens who have migrated to other countries, return
each year for their military service. Democracy is never imperiled,
for all officers are selected step by step from the ranks. I have seen
General Wille, the commander-in-chief of the forces of Switzerland, in
Berne, and no officer could possibly show less military swank.
Comparative figures on the efficiency of men who undergo the military
training and those who do not are not always obtainable. Insurance
actuaries figure that it adds an average of five years to a man’s life.
Since the system was inaugurated, the work of the juvenile courts has
perceptibly slackened. The training helps in the matter of obedience
and orderliness, and this shows in every field of industry. It is the
opinion of some of the big business men of Switzerland that the plan
is responsible for the speeding up of all work in factories. The habit
of concentration developed because of intensive training, according to
a Zurich steel magnate, is a mental improvement that has indirectly
solved some of the Alpine nation’s tremendous railroad engineering
problems.
To avoid military training interfering with economic life, the men for
the different arms in the Swiss service are selected largely according
to previous occupation. Engineers are assigned to the engineer corps,
telegraphers to the telegraph companies, young farmers to the cavalry,
the mountain guides and climbers to the mountain artillery. So, in his
training every advantage is taken of a recruit’s trade or profession,
both to help the service and improve the man’s efficiency. This method
tends to lessen the amount of special training required.
Another feature of the Swiss plan is an insurance issued by the State
on behalf of every soldier, so he is covered from loss in case of
accident in the line of peace service. Again, a common-sense measure
is a present-day tax against the cost of future wars. For fifty years
and more Switzerland has been accumulating a fund to pay the pensions
resulting from any coming conflict. This sum now amounts to $4,000,000.
Though the budgets vary somewhat each year, it can be stated that
the approximate expenditure of Switzerland on the army, annually, is
$7,000,000. Practically all of this amount is expended upon the 150,000
troops of the first line. The reserve forces cost the State little or
nothing for their upkeep.
The remarkable showing in cost is due to the fact that officers and
men are paid only during periods of training, and then merely sums
considered sufficient to cover living expenses. No table of payments
to regular troops being in existence, the militia do not expect a
professional salary. The highest officer in the army in time of peace,
a colonel, gets $3.40 a day while on instruction service, and $4.00 a
day in active duty. Under all circumstances the private receives the
sum of 16 cents per day. Here is another proof of the patriotism of the
Swiss. The American soldier costs the nation about thirty times as much
as the militiaman of Switzerland. In contra-distinction, it might be
said that the Swiss army is thirty times as effective as the American.
And this is not due so much to universal liability to training as to
the thoroughness with which the Swiss have worked out all the details
to enable the forces to take the field at an instant’s notice. It has
been the custom to say that republics never prepare sufficiently for
war emergency in times of peace. Switzerland is the exception to this
rule. Twice France has proved to be unequal to long-expected attack. In
the United States the tendency is to leave all questions connected with
the organization of military forces for settlement until the moment war
is declared. Such is said to be the distinctive trait of democracies.
If this be true, the day is not far distant when popular systems of
government will cease to exist. The Swiss, who are a people of the most
advanced type of democracy, find no menace in an army of half a million
men. The mountain nation sees nothing undemocratic in arranging every
detail of the work entailed in organizing against war; no infringement
of the rights of the people in teaching them to be able to meet an
adversary upon at least equal terms. In the last analysis, it is most
important for a republic to train its citizens for defense, as they are
the bulwark that fends the freedom of the democracy.
Switzerland needs no committee of boosters. It comes as near the
Utopian democracy in its concept as will be found on this footstool of
Providence. Here every fit male has rigorous military training; yet the
country remains without a taint of militarism.