One very rainy day my regiment was marching through that gloomy red-mud
country of North Georgia. We were cold and tired, and our shoes were
heavy as suit-cases. Our camping-place was to be at a little town of
Jasper. We had trudged along for about ten miles when we came to a sign
which said: “Seven miles to Jasper.” That was encouragement. Only seven
more miles. The old Sergeant near me set his jaw. In a few minutes
we came to another sign which said: “Seven miles to Jasper.” The old
Sergeant glared at the words as if he could bite them. In about ten
minutes we came to a third sign which said: “Seven miles to Jasper.”
It was too much for the Sergeant. He plunked his foot down in the mud.
“Well,” he said, “thank God, we’re holding our own.”
As we look over the history of our country, we can sincerely thank
God that we’ve held our own. For we didn’t do much of the holding
ourselves. In every one of our major wars, some outside influence,
some accident, some big defect of our enemies, some miracle pulled us
through to safety. In every big fracas we were caught napping--caught
saying there wouldn’t be a war--caught in the midst of brazen defiance
of simple protection. Our utter weakness didn’t keep us out of war.
In fact we chose our weakest times because our extreme anger wouldn’t
wait for anything. We’d have gone in with pitchforks, we were so
hot. That was courage all right, but it was stupid courage--and
slaughter--unnecessary slaughter of our finest young men by the
hundreds of thousands--young men we hadn’t given even a fighting
chance, young men whose dying voices call to us today to give our
manhood a little break--a little break against that sudden hurricane of
anger which dashes a whole people into war.
Listening to these voices after the World War, we raised our army
to two hundred eighty thousand. We were going to be organized on
a business basis for defense. We were at last going to obey the
Constitution and give our manhood a chance. The soldier went to work to
build for safety. But his efforts were short-lived. In 1922 Congress
reduced the army to one hundred and seventy-five thousand men for one
hundred twenty million people. Over one thousand officers and one
hundred thousand enlisted men were cast out of the service. Then the
parings of the budgets began. Since that time the army has never been
greater than one hundred nineteen thousand and often less--about
forty-two per cent of what in 1920 we felt proper. Today the C.C.C.
outnumbers the army three to one--and organized crime many times. We
have but fifty-five thousand soldiers in the United States, subtracting
for foreign possessions and overhead. They would make a small crowd in
the Yale Bowl. It would be difficult to get two divisions of regular
troops together. The National Guard has been similarly cut down. In
1920 it was given a strength of four hundred twenty-five thousand.
Today it is about one hundred ninety thousand--a reduction of fifty-six
per cent. The Reserve Officers number but eighty-nine thousand and
their active duty training--their opportunity to keep abreast--has been
sliced to the bone. Since 1920 their efficiency has been slowed down
sixty per cent. Altogether our land defense in manpower is more than
fifty per cent lower than it was fifteen years ago.
Our material deficiency is even greater. Our tanks are hopelessly out
of date. We have only twelve modern ones--and only one of them is the
most efficient type. We have aged field artillery, practically worn
out. Our rifles are older. We have only eighty new semi-automatics--the
normal weapon of the foot-soldier nowadays. Our ammunition is
tremendously short. We have the barest few modern anti-aircraft guns
and devices. Our motor vehicles are way behind in numbers. Our
airplanes are excellent in quality but slim in quantity. All these
supplies would take from a year to two years to manufacture. Does this
condition remind you of anything before our other wars? Does it give
you a little feeling of the days before the Spanish-American tragedy?
Our problem of National Defense has not been critically analysed since
1920. It is due the public to know where we stand. For it’s the public
only that can make or break national defense.
The soldier doesn’t want a big army. He wants a safe army. He’s not
after a large military nation. That would be contrary to American
ideals and traditions. After all he’s simply an American citizen. He
wants only a well-knit skeleton upon which flesh and blood can be laid
in case of emergency. He wants the protection of a real defense man
to pull through a possible conflict without unwarranted killings. He
wants himself and every other man in his nation defended. He doesn’t
want to see the waste of money and life that has characterized all our
wars, because we were unskilled, unmanned, careless, neglectful. If he
were after a large force, he’d ask for a million men under arms. That
would be parallel to what other civilized countries are doing, but it
wouldn’t be decent for us. He doesn’t want that. He wants the barest
sufficiency to prevent habitual useless deaths. But he sees our woeful
weakness now and shudders at the thought of what might happen were our
country suddenly to become angry, as it has too often done in the past.
He asks now for one hundred sixty-five thousand regulars, two hundred
ten thousand National Guardsmen and one hundred twenty thousand reserve
officers. He asks that thirty thousand reservists receive active duty
training--every year. He asks that our supply of materials be brought
up to standard. Such a force is less than sixty per cent of what we
felt necessary in 1920. After General Staff study it is the bare
minimum for our protection--very bare. The change would make us the
sixteenth land power in the world instead of the seventeenth. But the
soldier doesn’t care whether we’d be the sixteenth, the seventeenth,
the second or the thirty-second. He wants enough to ensure our safety
and keep us from being swept into eternity as the British regular army
was in 1914. We have seen that an economy which cripples National
Defense is extravagance past the point of folly. On the other hand, we
see that too great a National Defense is also extravagance.
If you ask the average citizen how many wars we’ve had he’ll answer
offhand, “O, about six.” That reply illustrates our knowledge of our
past. We’ve had actually one hundred and ten wars, great and small--an
average of one oftener than every year and a half. We’ve fought all
told eighty-six hundred battles. Compare this record with that of
Germany, who from 1870 to 1914--44 years--had continuous peace while
she was the most powerful military nation in the world. During that
time we were one of the weakest nations and were almost constantly at
war. A study of history proves that strength or weakness has nothing
to do with the motives of war in a republic. It’s the temper and urge
of the people as a whole when suddenly, unexpectedly they’re provoked.
So we must be thinking about a possible catastrophe as we live under a
volcano of human emotions.
Is the soldier thinking about war? Of course--but only to stop it as
quickly as possible if it comes--only to prevent its coming to us by
being strong. He’s hired by this nation to study war as the doctor
studies disease, as the fireman studies fire, as the federal agent
studies crime. Does a fireman want fire? Does the federal agent want
crime? No more does the soldier want war, but he wouldn’t be a true
American, if he didn’t want to do a good job, if war comes. Does the
doctor know when an epidemic will break out? Does the fireman know when
a fire will start? Do federal agents and policemen know when a crime
will be committed? No more does the soldier know when war may start.
For it always has started with us suddenly--when people scoffed at our
getting into it. Does the surgeon scoff at the possible outbreak of an
epidemic, the fireman at the possible outbreak of a fire, the federal
agent at the possible outbreak of crime? He’d be silly to do so. Yet
fire, disease, crime are easier to lessen than war. For the cause of
war is not a thing. It’s a frenzy of emotions. Education and experiment
help prevent fire, crime and disease. But they value little with
emotions. The office manager is as likely to lose his temper as the
janitor. If you don’t believe it, try it out. But when a nation loses
its temper, it’s a boiling pot. Nothing can stop its mass hatred. It’s
like a plague of grasshoppers, Japanese beetles or white ants. We rush
to force whether we are weak or strong. And how we sacrifice our young
men when we are weak.
We look at war as a horrible thing. It is. So are crime, fire and
disease. But we don’t do away with policemen, firemen and doctors
when we want to stop those ills. Yet that’s what we’ve done in this
country about war. We’ve trimmed down our soldiers after every one of
our conflicts. Trimmed them so that when we were hit by the next one,
we squandered life like confetti. In our short history we’ve had in
campaign over one million two hundred thousand casualties. At least a
million of these frightful deaths and sufferings need never have been,
had we been strong. Bereaved mothers all over this land have mourned
and cried out against war. It is only natural they should. We all hate
war--no one more than the soldier, for he knows what it is. But it
would have been a lot more practical to have faced the facts and cried
out against our unreadiness. That is the only real thing we can lay our
hands on which could have stopped or lessened the slaughter. To cry
out against war, much as we want to do away with it, is like crying
out against fire, crime or disease. We must work on the human soul to
keep from anger--on human souls to keep from mass anger. Therein lies
the great cause of war. But who can tell when a nation may lose its
temper? To be ready against that explosion is not contrary to trying
to abolish war. The two go hand in hand, as all history teaches. Each
may be a preventive, but readiness is also a safe-guard. The great harm
which some peace movements are doing lies in their attempt to make us
weak--in doing away with the safeguard, while they push along a royal
road to eternal peace. Let them push along that road. Let’s all help.
It’s a fine thing. But let us not at the same time open up an avenue to
the murder of our young men.
False views--errors of fact--lead many to believe that mechanisms,
machines, devices will make war impossible. We’ve felt that way before
many wars. Far back in history people were sure that there’d be no
more war when the blunderbuss took the place of the bow and arrow.
We’ve found out for centuries that machines can’t do the trick. We’ve
found out scientifically that man is the big factor. Weapons change
but principles don’t. The only thing man runs from or ever has been
known to run from, is another man. He just won’t be stampeded by
engines, machines, mechanisms or missiles. He digs in. He protects
himself. There’s not a thing man invents that man can’t find a reply
to. Machines are for only one purpose--to help the man on the ground
get forward. Battles in the air may help the man on the ground, but
they wouldn’t settle anything. They couldn’t end the war. All this
hysteria about the machine being the answer is unscientific, untrue
and sensational. And bombing, gassing, strafing communities or cities
not in the fight, or not with the army, is just as absurd. It would
be the last thing a trained general would undertake. Nothing could be
worse for his own side and his own success. Only the untrained general
would indulge in such errors--and even he would soon learn his mistake.
And as for wiping out whole cities by air bombing or by gas it’s
mechanically impossible. Why, there’s not enough gas in the world to
destroy New York City alone. And if there were it would take fifteen
thousand airplanes, unhampered, to make any impression. And where would
fifteen thousand airplanes come from at a hundred thousand dollars a
throw? Don’t be fooled by these silly flights of fancy of unschooled,
untaught, unscientific blunderers.
Then there’s the cry of militarism against decent readiness.
Militarism. Why there never has been such a thing in the United
States--and least of all with the soldier, and there’s no reason to
believe there ever will be. I defy anyone to show me a single instance
of it in any group at any time in this country. If more people knew
our true state, our true history, they’d see the rotten absurdity
of shouting against it. But theorists, revolutionary socialists,
peacebreakers are using this cunning false method of gulling our youth
into striking against any little strength the United States might have.
It’s a day of questionnaires, of polls of votes. We’ve gone wild
with them. The college youth particularly is pursued by this plague.
Led on by a professor who either doesn’t know our true history or
doesn’t care about our country, the poor lad is gulled into blowing
pledge-bubbles. The questions in themselves are so degrading that
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, all our presidents, would sicken
at the sight of them. “Would you bear arms in any war of your country?”
is the favorite. The poor lad, without background of our whole history
wavers. Under the glamorous, treacherous teachings of his professor, he
writes: “No.” And he believes what he says. He has no idea he’s giving
voice to a flimsy New Year’s resolution. Let me ask him now what he’d
do if a bandit attacked his home and tried to ruin his sister. Would he
bear arms? He’d bear everything he had to fight with or he wouldn’t be
worthy of the name of a man. Yet he said he’d never bear arms against
an enemy attacking another home. What of the golden rule? What of
selfishness? What of American sportsmanship?
Our nation’s ability to protect itself is its highest insurance. For
our insurance companies would be nowhere, our commerce, our comfort,
our happiness would be nowhere, if our defense broke under attack.
There is no insurance to compete with National Defense. For it’s
our blanket insurance. It’s just plain business sense. The soldier
realizes that we have that sense in almost everything else but National
Defense. He realizes we’re living in a world--not heaven, Utopia or the
millennium. He’s got to face proven experience and facts as they are,
like the doctor, the fireman, the federal agent. He wonders whether
we can hold our own against the signs of the times. Or whether we must
have just faith without works.
_Other Books Recommended_
_The History of the United States Army_--Colonel William Addleman
Ganoe--D. Appleton-Century Co., 35 West 32nd Street, New York City.
★
_Chasing Villa_--Colonel Frank Tompkins--The Military Service
Publishing Co., 100 Telegraph Building, Harrisburg, Pa.
★
_Inevitable War_--Lieut. Col. Richard Stockton--The Perth Co.,
393 Seventh Ave., New York City.