A young farmer lad was once leading a calf by a rope down a road. He
came to a narrow bridge where the animal balked. An automobile moving
up behind the pair had to stop. The boy turned to the car and yelled:
“Toot!” The driver gave a great, loud blast from his deafening horn.
The calf, thoroughly frightened, galloped madly over the bridge and
down the road, pulling the poor boy at a break-neck run for half a
mile. When the automobile caught up to the pair, the lad, gasping
for breath, blazed out at the driver, “I--ugh--said ‘Toot!’--but
not--ugh--so loud!”
One shouldn’t toot too loud about the soldier. It isn’t done. But since
his horn has been so seldom blown, I take the liberty to honk just a
trifle. Some of the noise may leave us breathless, but I hope it won’t
scare the calf.
Yellow fever. We saw last time how Major Walter Reed stopped that
disease and saved to date some thirty million lives. Long before his
time another army surgeon by the name of William Beaumont had a patient
who had been accidentally wounded through the stomach. The case was
felt hopeless by other doctors. Beaumont not only cured the man, but
took advantage of the large hole to study for the first time the action
of digestion in a living body. His pioneer work paved the way for cures
later. Tropical anemia! When our country took over Porto Rico, the
island was helpless against the disease! Army doctors, after baffling
set-backs finally found the cause. Their work saved the Porto Ricans
from a scourge that would have stopped their development forever.
Dengue fever! Again army surgeons found the mosquito was the cause.
The remedy was simple. Empyema, tuberculosis, beriberi, surra and bone
deformities have been signally and notably helped by contributions of
army surgeons. Rinderpest--a disease that had been carrying off the
cattle by the thousands in the Philippines for half a century. The
plague was all the more hurtful since cattle are Philippines’ beasts
of burden and the key to their whole commercial life. Colonel R. A.
Kelser, who is now in Massachusetts, with other soldiers, went deeply
into the study of the disease. After patient efforts he developed a
vaccine, which prevents its occurrence. What that discovery has done
for those islands, cannot be measured.
As with disease, so with disaster. Early one morning in 1906, San
Francisco was suddenly buried in flames. Transportation, telephone and
telegraph lines were broken down. Hospitals and fire departments were
out of commission. The police force was helpless. Riot and anarchy were
expected. No organized body of relief was possible but the Army. In
less than three hours after the first blow to the city, General Funston
with troops was on the scene. The soldier dealt out nearly a million
rations, set up bakeries and coffee kettles, gave havens of comfort,
controlled looters, opened stores, supervised hospitals and got the
fire under control. One private soldier assembled several hundred
refugees, organized them, got eating utensils and put up a field
bakery. Many a soldier did not sleep while the emergency lasted.
In great catastrophes the soldier has been the first one to deliver
supplies, succor the helpless and keep order. The story of our floods,
tornadoes, cyclones, typhoons, bursting dams, ice-jams, coal mine
disasters, explosions, earthquakes and forest fires is the story of
relief by the soldier. In one Mississippi flood the army dealt out
over two and one-half million dollars worth of provisions for two
hundred forty-three thousand people. It _gave_ everything from stoves
to post-hole diggers. In Montana blizzards, Texas floods, Michigan
snow-storms, Florida disasters and Ohio overflows, the soldier was
there to help the helpless. In the last New England floods, army
trains were the first to reach the sufferers with food and relief, and
soldiers at great risk made temporary bridges and opened roads. In the
Porto Rico hurricane, army transports arrived first with supplies and
help for the needy, and brought the island to a state of recovery. We
hear much of Mr. Hoover’s magnificent relief in Europe, but whoever
told you that five army colonels were his principal assistants and that
three hundred twenty officers and four hundred sixty-four enlisted men
made up his agencies distributing American relief? The Russian relief
was wholly the work of our soldiers.
The triumph of service by the army in our possessions of Alaska, Guam,
the Philippines, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Canal Zone doesn’t often
come to the ear of the average citizen. In the great archipelago of the
Philippines, the soldier calmed strife between savage tribes, built
roads, railroads, schools, churches, gave spiritual aid and comfort,
and was at once, instructor, leader, governor, judge, jury, councilor,
constructor, almsgiver and peacemaker. He did more in 20 years to make
the Philippinos a united people than had been done in the previous
centuries. It was his labor largely that caused their great desire to
retain the supervision of the United States. Alaska, too, knows the
army as a friend in need. When the territory was bought, soldiers were
immediately sent there to keep order and open up the land. In the
pioneer days, under great hardship, the army made surveys and kept
watch over the frontiers. In the Klondike rush, it opened the harbors,
built the roads and trails leading to gold, and protected newcomers
against mob rule and lawlessness. In order to make the only link with
the mainland of the United States, the soldier laid four thousand,
five hundred eighty-eight miles of cable and built six hundred miles
of telegraph, all of which he operated. He largely administered the
government of the territory and at low cost furnished to business
millions of dollars worth of returns. The signal corps soldier gave
during the Civil War the greatest boost to our telegraph systems. As
late as 1877, he operated three thousand miles of telegraph in the
South. Today in Washington he operates the largest radio net in the
world, handling messages for forty-eight departments of the government.
In one year for this service the Army was able to turn over to the
United States Treasury, two hundred sixty-eight million dollars. It was
General G. O. Squier, Chief Signal Officer, who made the outstanding
invention of sending a number of telephone and telegraph messages over
the same line at the same time. His work improved and revolutionized
that industry. It was the soldier, too, who took the lead in
developing the short wave, high frequency transmission and opened up
vast channels through the air. It was the soldier who developed the
radio beacon, which guides the airman through fog, cloud and darkness
safely. It was the air soldier who perfected the parachute which has
already saved many fliers. Of course everyone knows how the soldier
helped the Wright Brothers in their great pioneer flying, and men like
Lieutenant Selfridge sacrificed their lives for the sake of progress.
Later others made the great good-will flight to South America, covering
twenty-two thousand sixty-five miles in two hundred sixty-three and
one-quarter hours of flying time. Lieutenants Maitland and Hegenberger
made this first non-stop flight from our west coast to Honolulu. Army
pilots have photographed thirty-five thousand square miles in eighteen
states for geological survey maps. Others have covered half a million
square miles of our forests and reported hundreds of beginnings of
fires. Others gave Colonel Lindbergh and many commercial pilots
advanced training in flying.
In a different field, it was the soldier who started our steel
industry, developed the tractor and was the first to bring
interchangeable parts to machinery--making possible American mass
production.
There is much false prejudice against our Chemical Warfare Service.
Did you know that since the war it has done much for life and progress?
It has aided industry by developing gas masks against the deadly carbon
monoxide in mines, the fumes from burst pipes of ammonia refrigeration
and from cyanide gas. It has aided the Public Health Service in the
successful fumigation of ships; the Bureau of Biological Survey in
ridding the commercial world of rats, gophers, locusts, grasshoppers,
the boll weevil, marine borers, vermin and moths. At a cost of $106
in a western plant, it saved $75,000 worth of cloth goods by a
single fumigation. With the air service it developed a quick method
of spraying fruit trees, has aided police departments immeasurably
with chemicals against mobs and bank robbers, and led the way in the
foundation of the American dye industry.
There is scarcely any path of our progress that the soldier has not
made or followed with helpfulness. His activities turn into so many
avenues that I’m unable to give more than a hint tonight. Here is a
late one.
Within two weeks after President Roosevelt’s inauguration a bill to put
a quarter of a million jobless men in Reforestation work was passed by
Congress. The army didn’t want the task of taking over a mass of men
twice its size, of butting in on the Forest Service, and of robbing
the soldier of his peace time training. The army’s representative so
stated to the White House. The reply was: “You have given all the
reasons in the world why the Army should do this job. As a matter
of fact all the reasons you state show that nobody else can do it.”
The army got the job. The General Staff was wisely ready for that
possibility. A month later at the rate of one thousand five hundred
thirty a day, fifty-two thousand were enrolled, and forty-two camps had
been established. Fifty-one days after that three hundred ten thousand
had been enrolled. The rate of reception and caring for this vast
number was greater than for both the Army and Navy during the World
War. And this was peace time when the spirit, money and cooperation
of the people were not so great. And what did the soldiers have to do
for these men? Everything and more than a preparatory boarding school
must do for its students. It had to examine them physically, classify
them, clothe them, feed them, transport them, do all the work of paying
them, put up their camps in the wilderness, and supervise their moral,
mental and spiritual welfare and conduct. Army training stopped. The
soldier had to put every ounce of his energy into the task and spent
many sleepless, working nights, if it were to be a go. The little
available army not one-eighth the size of those finally enrolled had
to press these raw men from every walk of life through their new work
in a fair and orderly way. The entering C.C.C. boys were of equal rank.
There were no seniors, no foremen, no variations--just a crowd. They
were not being received into any organization. The whole structure
had to be built from the ground up. The situation was as strange to
the soldier as to the C.C.C. boy. The only recourse the Army Officer
had for keeping contentment, orderliness and efficiency were precept,
example and expulsion from camp. He could not use even minor forms of
correction. He wasn’t allowed to make the boy stand up, look one in the
eye, or say “Yes, sir” or “No, sir.” It was a fearful handicap, when
he was responsible for their safety, good order and reputation in a
strange community. But the records show surprisingly little discord for
the vast numbers taken in. The records also show how proper sanitation,
a balanced diet, daily medical attention and patient supervision
turned out. An inventory of one hundred ten camps reveals that the
boys gained from five to twenty-seven pounds. Only five per cent left
camp--a surprisingly small proportion when you realize that their
main qualification was lack of a job. Under skillful guidance they
developed rapidly. The white anemic faces and flabby arms of early
spring were changed into bronzed skins and bulging muscles in late
summer. Professor Nelson C. Brown, New York State College of Forestry,
says: “The usual army disciplinary methods were not permitted, but by
precept and example and by an exhibition of tolerance and patience, and
a friendly attitude of helpfulness, the camp commanders and forestry
officers have made a really notable contribution to the upbuilding of
character and good citizenship in this great army of young men.” But
let no one think for a moment that it is an army, or even the barest
beginning of one. These young men are no more soldiers than any other
rugged young men of our country. They have had no more military drill,
military teaching, military environment, military discipline, military
progress than high school lads at a fire drill. Why they’re not even
allowed to have military books in their libraries. To be soldiers, they
would have to start at the bottom in everything--forms of courtesy,
upright posture, neatness in dress, obedience, discipline, team work,
scouting and patrolling, guard duty, the use of weapons and all the
thousand and one things that the trained man must know. The fact that
C.C.C. boys wear parts of army uniform misleads many. That clothing,
salvaged from the war, was all the country had to give them. The army
dispensed it to keep the lad covered up. But a lion skin doesn’t make
a lion. No, anyone seeing an army post and then a camp of the C.C.C.
boys would notice the complete difference. The C.C.C. is wholly a
peacetime project for the interior development of our country, the
largest one ever undertaken in the United States.
Today nearly a million C.C.C. boys have passed through the soldier’s
hands. Ninety-four per cent of the camps are now under Reserve Officers
from civilian life, who are carrying on with great efficiency and
success. This vast enterprise is just another by-product of the army’s
normal work of being fit and ready against an emergency. And all of
these services of the soldier come to the average taxpayer for less
than a penny a day.
Do I toot too loudly--do I scare the calf?
_IV_