THE INSTINCT OF DEFENSE
“If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments
of our growing prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times
ready for war.”--GEORGE WASHINGTON.
The instinct for defense is as old as the world. It grew out of the
habit of the strong to prey upon the weak. In the dawn of civilization,
the cave man would shoulder his bludgeon and go forth to slay any
brother whose stores or woman he coveted. Later, the bold and unthrifty
raided the weak and saving. This state of affairs drove the less
warlike together for defense and thus in due course evolved the nucleus
of national life.
Families banded together and took the necessary measures for
safeguarding mutual interests. Such was the basic element of military
evolution. True, armies were debauched from their original ends by
ambitious princes, but this does not alter the case that the function
of a military force is to protect the homes and property of peoples.
It is well, in the echo of the battle-guns of Europe, to recall these
facts.
The defenseless invite attack. Witness the plight of Belgium. With my
own eyes I have seen the penalty of unpreparedness paid in blood and
ashes. Whole cities were laid waste because the citizens were incapable
of defending them. I witnessed the flight of a nation before the tidal
wave of invasion. Man for man and woman for woman these fugitives were
the richest race in Europe. Resting on the false promises of neighbors,
Belgium made no adequate preparation for defense. Its only sin was
weakness. Because the men of Belgium had not been trained in the skill
and taught the duty of defense, their motherland lies crushed. The old
have died by the roadside, when panic drove thousands before the menace
of war unchained. Children sickened and starved. What women suffered
may not be written. Who in our country can give thought to these facts
without the chill of fear creeping into his heart. Our men are the
defenders of our women. The weak, the children of the country, are in
their charge. Pass all abstract considerations and fix alone on the
safety of the home, the protection of loved ones, and we find ourselves
back to first principles. The social state can only be preserved by
mutual support in time of attack. Thus the first duty of every citizen
is to defend his country.
In that long era when nations depended upon hirelings to do their
fighting, the significance of this duty was lost. Selfishness led
to shirking the sacrifices demanded by war. Many wars were but the
conflict of the policy of princes. Let it be hoped that conflicts
willed by the people alone will bring nations to arms in future. But
one eternal human law will forever urge man to settle his last battle
through trial by blood. That law is the struggle for existence. War
today is only the continuation of national policy.
While the American people have shown themselves averse to war, who
demands that in order to avoid bloodshed we abandon the Monroe Doctrine
or surrender our rights in the markets of the world? No man dare say
war will never again visit America.
Study the table of the world’s greatest producing nations. Foremost
among all others you will find the United States. Nature has given
us enormous riches. The ingenuity of our people has developed and
amplified national resources. In twenty years we will have forged so
far ahead of the other nations of the earth that our position will be
the envy of the world. With wealth will come weakness. Unless a radical
change develops in the policy of this country looking towards greater
national security, when we reach the zenith of our prosperity we will
invite attack from every side.
No better parallel can be found showing the fate in store for the rich
but unprepared nation than the extinction of ancient Peru. Before the
advent of Columbus, a happy and prosperous people lived in the Andean
valleys. Ruins of wonderful cities, once adorned with temples and
palaces, testify to the wealth of the Empire of the Incas. Fabulous
ornaments of gold and silver beautified these buildings. From the
scanty records remaining, we know the ancient Peruvians enjoyed a
highly developed social system. They excelled in the arts of peace.
Relying on the towering crags that surrounded their valley-land, the
Peruvians forswore and condemned all military effort, and devoted
themselves assiduously to husbandry. Down the slopes of the valley of
Cuzco winds an irrigation system challenging the best of modern times.
Here is testimony enough of the prosperity of the subjects of the Incas.
The race lived long in peace, secure in the impregnability of the
mountain ramparts. The fable of their riches and their cities spread.
The population of the kingdom was estimated from 2,000,000 to
7,000,000. Those 2,000,000, let us say, were conquered by 184 Spanish
“gun men.” The Peruvians saw their cities sacked, their women violated,
their ruler murdered. The men, women and children were sold into
slavery, where they toiled out a miserable existence, delving in mines
that had been the source of their own wealth, to satisfy the avarice
of the conquerors. Study the story of the conquest of Peru and learn
the consequences of unpreparedness. You will find there a parallel for
every incentive and every act of modern war. From the history of the
Incan kingdom two obvious facts stand out. First, natural resources,
wealth, is more a temptation to neighbors than a factor of strength.
Second, no nation can avoid war and exist when another nation wishes to
force war upon it.
There are those who point to the wonderful natural and artificial
resources of the United States and deduce from these great strength.
In war our wealth would simply be a spur to the enemy. To put the
discussion in colloquial analogy, who would win in a fight between Mr.
J. Pierpont Morgan and “Jack” Johnson?
Because we are a peace-loving people it does not follow we shall remain
immune from attack. Let us labor for our ideals, but do not let our
most ardent impulses for world betterment blind us to the basic facts
of human nature. God has been good to the people of the United States.
No other nation enjoys the fruits of the earth and of industry in so
great a measure as we do. It is easy for us to advocate universal peace
and the arbitration of all disputes, because we have everything to gain
from peace and everything to lose by war. To put the matter bluntly,
universal peace and unlimited arbitration implies we can shirk our
manifest responsibilities.
We are confident in the forensic skill of our advocates. But is it
possible for any rational being to reconcile the existence of The Hague
Peace Palace, with its thousands of volumes of words on the abolition
of war, and the settlement of all disputes according to the decisions
of a few ideal personages with God-like attributes, with the furious
whirlwind of battle sweeping Europe today? The print was hardly dry on
the type recording the polished rhetoric of peace before the armies of
the belligerents were marching to mutual slaughter. Peace is the vapor
of words, war the substance of deeds. Differentiate the fact of war,
and the strong probability of the continuation of war by such nations
as find the method suiting their self-interests, from the abstract
discussions of a millennium when all national contests will be settled
by a set of incorruptible and infallible judges. While man remains
finite in his wisdom and judgment, blood conflict will continue.
We may not wish war, but what shall we do if an aggressive adversary
attacks us? Hostilities may develop from the flimsiest foundations. Our
political attitude, our wealth, our geographic position invite attack.
It is highly rational to consider aggression possible. What should we
do if New York and Washington were captured? Surrender the occupied
territory and live in sweet peace with our conquerors (who doubtless
would rest content with the easily acquired provinces and cities),
purchase an evacuation (which would assure immunity for the future,
perhaps), or fight? Is there an American citizen worthy of the name who
would hesitate in his choice?
I remember what I reverently think of as my first glimpse into the
soul of soldiers fighting, as our fathers fought at Lexington and
Brandywine. I had left the German lines in Belgium, passed the last
patrol of Uhlans at Middlekerke, crossed the few kilometers separating
the opposed forces, until at Westende I stopped my motor beside the
foremost Belgian picket. He was a boy in his twenties. Fresh from the
sight of the masterful mechanism of the German war organization, this
sentry looked like a child in the path of the Juggernaut. After showing
my papers I offered to carry him into his lines at Nieuport.
“The Germans are not more than five kilometers away, you know; they
are coming.”
His eye flashed scorn at my suggestion.
“My place is here. Let them come.”
Outside Nieuport an outpost was dug in along the road. The blue barrel
of a machine gun shining out of the trench-top looked like the rigid
body of a snake stretched along the macadam. A bearded sergeant took
my papers. While he studied them I found myself under the eyes of a
war-worn group. What a story those eyes told! They held an unearthly
light. It seemed as if they were looking beyond me and the sand dunes,
the sea even, into another world. Trench-soiled, uncouth, bearded with
the tangled growth of hard campaigning, the eyes of those soldiers
seemed to shed a radiance about them. If the eye is the window of
the soul, I saw into the spirit of these men. Enshrined there was an
ideal--the sacrifice of self for country.
When the sergeant gravely returned my papers I raised my hand sharply
to my hat rim, the group as a man returned my salute. I drove on with
the old Roman words of death defiance uppermost in mind: _Morituri
salutamus_.
Horrors, or atrocities, as they are designated in war, are almost
always confined to the operations of invading armies. So it is a
country such as the United States, where traditions and geographic
position place us on the defensive, that must suffer most should an
enemy strike. It is unthinkable that our nation will ever engage in
an armed adventure of aggrandizement. Those who rant against adequate
measures for protection insult the majority of the American people by
crying out that making our citizens into competent defenders of their
homes, property and families means sowing the seed of world conquest.
If this were true, it were better we disarm and perish than continue
to enjoy the liberty for which our forefathers suffered and died. We
are not worthy of the liberty secured to us by the blood spilled from
Bunker Hill to Yorktown, from Bull Run to Appomattox, if we are not to
be trusted with the weapon necessary for our self-preservation.
The confusion of thought on the question of defense has arisen from
our conception that the regular army is solely responsible for the
safety of the nation. Vaguely our citizens, who are so occupied with
other interests they cannot give the subject the thought it merits,
understand that in event of a war of the dimensions of the struggle of
1861-65, the regular soldiers would be reinforced by volunteers. But
the question of reserve, in fact, the whole problem of protection, is
pushed out of mind because it is considered a remote contingency that
this nation will again be faced with no alternative but war. In the end
it is assumed that the seas protect us.
After what has passed in Europe during the last year and a half no
man can honestly believe our regularly enlisted force, numbering not
more than 90,000 combatants, scattered over our lands from Alaska to
Florida, in Hawaii and the Philippines is competent to fend an attack
resolutely directed against this country. Since the Civil War the
United States army has been little more than a super-police force. The
comparison of the standing army of this country with the forces of
the powers that may move against us leads to absurd results. Should
an enemy elect to land on Long Island and move on New York, as Lord
Howe did in 1776, granting that it were possible to mobilize the whole
regular army to meet the invasion, it would be brushed aside more
easily than were the Continental forces of Washington. With the present
supply of ammunition the American army could not make as stubborn a
stand as did the Belgians at Liège.
The whole theory of the small regular army in this country is based
on the assumption of the availability of every fit male for military
service. This theory comes to us from colonial days. In former times,
considering the conditions that obtained, it may have been justifiable.
But today the practice of war has changed. Improvisation is no longer
possible. We live in the era of the “nation in arms.” And the nations
approaching the United States in population and material wealth drill
and arm all suitable citizens. Granting the possibility of war, to
continue in the present state of defenselessness is a stupid crime.
On the theory that our army cannot be trusted, and therefore must
be kept down to lowest strength, is it not doubly incumbent on the
citizens of the country to adopt some system of self-preparation? In
case of emergency the flower of the nation would rush to the colors.
Yes, without officers, without arms. The men who might attempt to
bulwark our shores against invasion would, to borrow a current phrase,
serve as cannon fodder.
The trouble with most of the well-intentioned citizens of this country
who argue against defense-training is that they have never actually
seen what happens when untrained and under-munitioned troops meet
highly organized opponents. The result is massacre. The braver the
untrained force, the more vicious the massacre. Men will continue to
lay down their lives for their homes and liberties, but is it not the
right of all to demand that the sacrifice be not in vain? Under the
conditions of modern life, the average man cannot train and equip
himself, and even if he could, this is far from being the sum total of
preparation for defense. An army is one of the most complex and highly
organized businesses of the times. Today the casual reader of the
daily papers must be aware of this fact. Thus we are brought back to
the problem of defense. As we are a self-governing people, so are we a
self-defending people. It is right that we continue with a reasonably
small standing army. But this implies the liability of every fit male
citizen of military age to be trained and ready to supplement the work
of our small army when the national life and liberties are endangered.
The degree of training and readiness must insure the repelling of
an enemy before material damage has been inflicted on the lives and
property of the people.
It argues a limited insight into the qualities of Americans to think
that they would not respond with their total mental and material
resources if the land should be invaded. Such is not the contention.
In plain words, when our citizen body of military age is instructed in
tactics and when the nation has a sufficient supply of war material to
arm and equip these citizen soldiers, we shall avoid death, suffering
and the horrors of war, perhaps war itself. Should war come, the
protection we can offer our women and children will be in the ratio of
our preparation.
Nations, like men, have their part to play in the march of
civilization. No nation can shirk this part and keep its own honor.
The United States boasts the only purely altruistic act credited to
a conquering sovereignty. It fought a war on sentiment, occupied
territory, and when the war and the evils that follow war were
remedied, withdrew wholly from that territory. The United States set
a new standard. Having done this, it must maintain its place among the
ranking powers of the world and bring the pressure of its influence for
good on all international questions.
Today the American republic provides no adequate protection for the
lives of its citizens or their property in case of war.
We have seen the fate of nations unprepared.
We are rich beyond all other countries. The total wealth of the United
States is $187,000,000,000; greater than Germany and Great Britain
combined.
Our greatest wealth is concentrated in cities on or near our coast
line. With bitter shame we remember how easily our capital was once
captured.
At this moment two-thirds of the world is ablaze with battle. What
will be resolved from this stupendous conflict no one can prophesy. Is
it not time for the people of the United States to put their house in
order?