and splendor invite the enemies' quest and fans into blood-red heat his
latent ire, while pride, vanity, and hate surround the heart with the
humor of death-breeding slime into which the corroding worm is spawned.
I care nothing for the shell; the fleshy parts are no longer food for
the living, but the pearl contained in this Anglo-Saxon mollusk has for
me an irresistible charm. The pure spirit of its lofty ideals, distilled
from his life and struggles, and living in quickening touch with human
thought and aspiration, like the exaltation which lingers after some
Hosanna chorus; his sublimated actions and deeds, whose swelling flood
of cadence throb with the heart-beat of universal man,--these I love
with inexpressible devotion; these are worth preserving. All else, cast
in the rubbish heap with past delusions.
Mr. Chairman, men are great and small, they roam the vast wilderness of
the stars, and soar the very empyrean of thought and action, and they
fear and crouch and kneel; and in their quaking fears and driveling
doubts seem like puny things crawling on the ground; they are saints and
sinners; sometimes emissaries of light and love, and yet again
harbingers of ill, and sometimes the very Nemesis of hate; but in the
composite elements of their human thinking, throbbing energies of heart
and mind, they are as but a single soul, governed by one law, imbued
with one spirit, hearkening to one voice, touched by the one sympathy,
inspired by one hope, and in trend of aspiration, love and ideal,
impelled by the onward flux of one great life-struggle and purpose.
What, then, are you and I but sentient units in one great evolving
process of life-activity and thought; and yet so circumvolved in that
process that the impulse, which we irradiate from the point of our
single particular seat of energy and feeling, thrills through the vast
spheres of human purpose and endeavor, and raises the standard of truth
or forwards the advance of enlightened order like each rhythmic melody
is gathered in the mightier confluence of chime and strain to swell the
torrent of a mighty symphony.
The work we have to do is not outside, but deep down in the teeming flow
of struggling human souls. Think of them as your other self, and your
own souls will interpret the meaning of their complaints, the quality of
their striving, and the measure of their justice.
You will then behold the race of men as I have beheld them once when my
single soul seemed with sympathy winged and I sat with the lowly outcast
and felt his outrage and his shame; I brooded with him over all his
wrongs; I felt within my breast the poison shaft of hate, and clinched
like him my fist, scowled, and vengeance swore on them who drove my
despair and misery to crime by scoff and rancor and unforgiving hate.
I stood amidst a motley throng and felt my brain bereft of noble
thought; I lived in a squalid home and despised the pity which the
disdainful cast upon my lot; laughed at ribald jests and quaffed the
liquid flame, and the dark-hued nectar which concealed the serpent
beneath its foam; I held my head aloft to seem with pride imbued; I
gibed at fortune's whim and grinned a soulless sneer at my fate to
conceal a deep despair.
I roamed with the savage Indians across the arid plains, stood with them
in lonely worship of the great _Unknown_, and dropped like him a silent
tear for the woodlands gone; the fleet-footed game no longer at his
door; his father's dust, scattered by winds over consecrated and
hallowed battle-plains.
I stood beside the enchanted Nile and wondered at the mystery of the
Sphinx; I felt the lure, the wanderlust of the mysterious arid plains
and laid my body down on the desert sand to sleep, a weapon by my side;
I arose to greet the rising sun and, with "_Allah_" on my tongue, bowed
my head in solemn worship towards Mecca's distant domes.
I wandered through Africa's torrid forest and scorching plains and sat
naked before a bamboo hut; I felt the savage's freedom and his ease; I
learned the songs of birds, the shriek of beasts, the omens of the
moons, and kenned the dread and sacred lore which tradition single
tongue had brought from the ages past and gone.
I walked beside the Ganges' sacred shores, worshiped at the shrine of
mighty gods and felt the spirit of the mighty _All_ vibrate through my
being. I chanted the songs whose authors are forgot, and studied strange
philosophies of sages passed; I starved and hungered on his arid plains;
I felt the whips and scorn of cast; the curse of fated birth and the
iron rule of oppression's heartless greed.
I was slave, and by fortune scorned; I felt the whip cut into my
quivering flesh and my blood rush hot to the gaping wound; I knew the
agony of unrequited toil, and with aching limbs dragged my hopeless body
to my hut, to think, but not to sleep.
I learned to dream and hate, and at Nemesis' bloody altar immolated in
thought and hope the whole detested tribe of human oppressors and cried
_Content_.
And thus I know the bondage which men endure, the realty and the
delusion in what they think and feel; and the subtlety and strength of
those evil forces which color his disposition and becloud his prospect.
And I stand amidst his turbulent fortunes and above the storm and rage
of his contentions and despairs to proclaim the divinity of his soul,
and to herald a new awakening under which his quickened energies will
yet surge forward in mighty waves of better things.
If the Republic is true to the great principles of liberty and justice
which it proclaims; if you have learned the lesson of your own history,
and appropriated the experience coined out of your own struggles, then
will Anglo-Saxon genius and achievement glow like a mighty flame to
light the path of struggling men, and Anglo-Saxon glory light angels to
restore the rights of man.
THE ARMY AS A TRAINED FORCE[34]
BY THEOPHILUS G. STEWARD, D. D.
_Chaplain 25th United States Infantry_
[Note 34: Delivered before General Conference, Chicago, Ill., 1904.]
_Reverend Bishops, and Brethren of the Ministry, and my Brethren of the
Laity:_
I thank the honorable Commission from my heart for the distinguished
favor they have conferred upon me in inviting me to address this august
assembly. Never before, during all my forty years of public life, have I
been granted so majestic a privilege; never before have I ventured to
assume so grave a responsibility; and, I may add, never before have I
felt so keenly my inability to do justice to the occasion.
I am encouraged, however, by the reflection that I am in the house of my
friends, where I may hope for an indulgent hearing, and especially upon
the subject which I have the high honor to bring before you.
The purport of my address is the conservation of life; the development
of physical and moral power as well as of mental alertness; the creation
of bravery and the evolution of that higher and broader
element--courage; the formation of character sturdy enough to upbear a
State, and intelligent enough to direct its government. What I have to
say will be toward the production of a robust and chivalric manhood, the
only proper shelter for a pure and glorious womanhood. Noble women are
the crown of heroic men. None but the brave deserve the fair, and none
but the brave can have them.
For the purpose of illustrating and enforcing these great social,
physical, and moral truths, I have chosen the Army of our country, or
the character and training of the American soldier. In this I do not
depart from Biblical practise. How many hearts have been cheered and
strengthened by the thrilling pictures painted by St. Paul of the
soldiers of his times! How many have in thought beheld his armed hosts
and heard his stirring exhortation: "Fight the good fight of faith!"
We owe our existence as a nation to the men in arms who for eight years
met the force of Great Britain with counter force, and thus cleared the
field for the statesmanship that can make the proverbial two blades of
grass grow. The man with the gun opened the way for the man with the
hoe. We who are here, and the race we represent, owe our deliverance
from chattel slavery to the men in arms who conquered the slaveholders'
Rebellion. It is a sad thought, but nevertheless one too true thus far
in human history, that liberty, man's greatest earthly boon, can be
reached only through a pathway of blood. The Army made good our
declaration of independence; and upon the Army and Navy Lincoln relied
for the efficacy of his plan of emancipation. Abstract right is fair to
look upon, and has furnished the theme for charming essays by such
beautiful writers as Ruskin and Emerson; but right, backed up by
battalions, is the right that prevails. When the men of blood and iron
come, there is no longer time for the song or the essay. It is, "Get in
line or be shot." The days of rhetoricals are over. The eloquence of the
soldier silences all. Even the laws are dumb when the sword is
unsheathed.
Is this horrible doctrine? It is only God overthrowing Pharaoh by means
more humane than His fearful plagues, and less destructive than the
billows of that relentless sea over which redeemed Israel so exultingly
sang. No, brethren; the sword of the Lord and of Gideon has not ceased
to be a useful instrument. It is the proper thing for evil doers.
The army is the national sword, and the "powers that be" bear it "not in
vain." It is a fearful engine of destruction, pure and simple. Von
Moltke says: "The immediate aim of the soldier's life is destruction,
and nothing but destruction; and whatever constructions wars result in
are remote and non-military."
An Austrian officer says: "Live and let live is no device for an army.
Contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above
all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands of every
one. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too
barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human
reasonableness. If the soldier is to be good for anything as a soldier,
he must be exactly the opposite of a reasoning and thinking man. The
measure of goodness in him is his possible use in war. War, and even
peace, require of the soldier absolutely peculiar standards of
morality. The recruit brings with him common moral notions of which he
must seek immediately to get rid. For him, victory--success--must be
everything. The most barbaric tendencies in man come to life again in
war, and for war's uses they are incommensurably good."
Perhaps the greatest of American psychologists, Professor William James,
adds to these remarks: "Consequently the soldier can not train himself
to be too feelingless to all those usual sympathies and respects,
whether for persons or for things that make for conservation. Yet," he
says, "the fact remains that war is a school of strenuous life and
heroism and, being in the line of aboriginal instinct, is the only
school that as yet is universally available."
Emerson says: "War educates the senses, calls into action the will,
perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close
collision in critical moments that man measures man."
It is not my purpose, however, to glorify war. War to me is horrible
beyond description or conception, and it is for war that armies are
trained; yet the training of an army, like the training of even a
pugilist, is a work of great moral value.
Notwithstanding the fact that the Army gave us our independence, when
the Revolution had succeeded, and the Constitution had been framed, and
the country launched on her career, there was a tendency to forget
Joseph. So strong was the feeling against a standing army that it was
with difficulty that even a nucleus was maintained. The first
legislation on this subject gave us but one battalion of artillery and
one regiment of infantry, the whole consisting of 46 officers and 840
men. In 1814, because of the war with England, the army ran up to
60,000; but the next year fell to 12,000, and continued even below that
number up to 1838, when it again went up to about 12,000. In 1846,
during the Mexican War, it reached about 18,000. When the Civil War
broke out it was about 12,000. There were in the Army, at the time of
the beginning of the Civil War, over 1,000 officers. Two hundred and
eighty-six of these left the service of the United States, and
subsequently served in the Confederate Army. Of these 286, 187 had been
educated at West Point. But so far as I am able to say now, not a single
enlisted man followed the example of these officers.
Beside the staff departments, the Army now consists of 15 regiments of
cavalry, 30 batteries of field artillery, 126 companies of coast
artillery, and 30 regiments of infantry. These different classes are
known as the three arms of the service: Cavalry, artillery, and
infantry. Our whole Army to-day numbers 67,259 men. We are the greatest
nation, with the smallest army. Our Army, however, is capable of rapid
expansion; and, with our National Guard, we need not fear any emergency.
This Army, though so small, is in one sense a trained athlete, ready to
defend the nation's honor and flag. In another sense, it is a vast
practical school, in which the military profession is taught. The
students are not only the 60,000 who are now serving, but the many
thousands also, who come and go. Men enlist for three years, and
although many re-enlist, the Army is constantly receiving recruits, and
constantly discharging trained soldiers. These discharged soldiers are
often found among our best citizens.
The entire corps of over 3,800 officers may be regarded as professors or
instructors, whose duty it is to bring the Army up to a state of
perfection. To this corps of 3,800 commissioned officers must be added,
also, the large number of intelligent non-commissioned officers, who are
assistant instructors of the very highest utility. The work of the Army
consists of study and practice, instruction and drill. It is an
incessant school. There are officers' school, non-commissioned officers'
school, school of the soldier, school of the company, school of the
battalion, post school,--besides drills and lectures without number. The
actual scientific information imparted to the enlisted men is
considerable. To specify only in small part: It includes all methods of
signaling, up to telegraphy; all methods of preserving and preparing
food; all methods of first treatment of wounds; how to estimate
distance, to map a country, to care for property and stock, and the most
thorough knowledge of weapons and warfare. To become a second lieutenant
in the Army, a man must either go through West Point, or have the
equivalent of a college education, especially in mathematics, history,
and law; and have, besides, an accurate knowledge of what is purely
military. And when he is made a second lieutenant and enters upon his
career as an officer, his studies begin afresh. He must study to prepare
himself for subsequent promotions. Failure in this means dismission.
The army officer to-day must be exceedingly thorough and accurate in his
knowledge.
General Corbin says: "Never before in the history of the Army have there
been so many acceptable candidates for promotion as there are at this
time. Never before has the Army been in a higher state of efficiency and
in more perfect accord than it is to-day. Until within a short time, an
officer graduated at the Military Academy at West Point was looked upon
as a man with 'a finished education'; but to-day, and for the last four
years, we accept that education merely as the foundation upon which a
more advanced education is to be built. This theory is in general
practice, and has been so accepted. The service schools at Fort Monroe,
Fort Totten, Fort Riley, Fort Leavenworth, and the War College at
Washington are, in most respects, high-class post-graduate schools. In
addition of this, every post is a school of application, educating
officers and men for the duties now required of them."
What, then, is this training of the army for which the officer must
possess this most accurate, thorough, and scientific education? He is
required to have this education that he may train the soldier up to the
highest point of efficiency. The officer must know, and must be able to
impress the soldier with the fact that he _does_ know. The officer must
have the full _science_ of everything pertaining to the soldier's work,
in order that he may teach the soldier the _art_ of it. The nature of
the training to which the soldier is subjected may be best understood by
considering its end. This, as in all training, is more important than
the method. The primary object of the training is to unify the army and
make it the efficient instrument for executing the nation's will. By
discipline, individual efforts are brought under control of the chief. A
company is well disciplined when, in its movement, its collective soul,
so to speak, is identified with that of its commander. The officer must
have possession of his men, so that when the command is given, an
electric current will seem to pass through the company, and the movement
will, as it were, execute itself. In a well-drilled and well-disciplined
company, the orders do not seem to pass through the intellects of the
men. Without reflection, but simply by concentrated attention, the work
is done. The wills of the men are not only temporarily dislodged, but in
their place is substituted the dominant will of the commander. This is
the psychological end sought; and this condition secures instantaneous
obedience to orders. It is this which brings about those marvels of
execution which occur among disciplined men. Men perform acts in which
neither their personal reason nor even their personal will has any part.
A second end of the training is to habituate the men so firmly in the
performance of certain movements that no emotion can interfere with
their action. Upon the battle-field there is nothing left of the
exercises of the times of peace, but that which has become a habit, or
in a word, an instinct. The soldier must be so trained that he will go
on with his work as long as he has the ability to do so. One has said:
"It must be the aim of the new discipline to make the private soldier
capable of keeping steadfastly in mind for the whole of the day, or
even for several days, and striving with all his might to carry out,
what he has been told by a superior who is no longer present, and who,
for all he may know, is dead."
A third end sought in military training is to render the soldier strong
and agile, so that he can move with rapidity, sustain long marches, and
handle his weapon with dexterity.
* * * * *
Every consideration in feeding, clothing, sheltering, both men and
animals, has but one object,--efficiency. All questions of moral duty,
all ideas of the spiritual or immortal interests, are completely
submerged beneath the ever-present thought of material force. Power must
be had by men, horses, machinery; power, aggressive power, is the
all-pervading and all-controlling thought of the army.
* * * * *
An army is properly an incarnation of the fiend of destruction. Every
part of its legitimate work is to destroy. If it constructs bridges and
builds roads, erects forts and digs trenches, these are all that it may
destroy, or prevent some other incarnation from destroying _it_. Armies
lay waste and destroy. Cornfields, orchards, lawns, life, and treasure
are all prey for the voracious destroyer.
The motive employed in bringing the soldier to the high state of
excellence here described is always that of duty. The word "duty" is
very prominent and very full of meaning in the army. Military duty is
made a moral obligation founded upon patriotism. This sentiment of duty
is the moral force in the army that gives dignity to its obedience. The
army develops, strengthens, and educates this _sense of duty_, until it
becomes supreme. It is this _sense of duty_ which produces endurance to
undergo privations, and leads men to be patient under the greatest
sacrifices. The physical force which we see in the army depends upon the
moral or spiritual which we do not see.
The whole life of the army, its very soul, the breath which animates its
every part, is _preparation for war_. To be _ready for war_ is the
supreme end toward which all its efforts tend. The mechanical parts of
the work are so numerous and various that I can barely outline them
here. There are those exercises which conduce to health and vigor, known
as the setting-up drill. These exercises correct the form of the body
and transform the recruit into a soldier. The constant drills all have
their effect upon the bearing and gait of the men. The extensive system
of calisthenics gives to the body suppleness. All this work is done
under direction, so that obedience and discipline are taught at the same
time with physical culture. Apart from these exercises are _voluntary
athletics_, which are greatly encouraged. It is believed that athletic
exercises, by bettering the bodies of the men, better also their minds;
that, for the welfare of the army, these exercises rank next to training
in shooting. I know you will take pride in the fact that the black
soldiers, both of infantry and cavalry, occupy a place in the very front
rank in all these manly exercises. They are equal to America's best on
the drillground, on the athletic grounds, and on the field of bloody
strife.
The practise of cleanliness is enjoined all the time, along with these
exercises. The soldier is taught how to make his bed and to put all his
effects in order, and is then compelled to do it; and thus there is
established within him a love of order. Punctuality, cleanliness, and
order are the soldier's three graces. The hygiene of his body, care of
his arms and equipments, respect for his uniform, are driven into his
inmost soul. Our regiment lived in the midst of cholera, without
suffering from the disease. Hence the army is a great object-lesson of
what care and training can make of men.
But the army in our Republic is of far greater value in a moral sense
than in a physical sense. In these days when authority is departing from
the home, the church, and the school, it is well that it can find refuge
somewhere in the country. The working of the army rests entirely upon
authority. One single will pervades every part of it, although this will
is participated in by thousands. Every subordinate is independent within
limits; but one general will controls all. Respect for authority is
enforced, and thus taught, not in theory alone, but by practice. The
corporal is not the same as a private. The man who holds a commission
from the President represents the high authority of the Republic; and
the true soldier yields him both obedience and respect. Everywhere the
soldier is taught obedience to law. After all that I have said, it is
scarcely necessary to emphasize the fact that the soldier's obedience
becomes voluntary, and that he takes pride in his profession. Hence the
army is a body of men, not moving according to their own wills, not a
deliberative assembly, but a purely executive body, the incarnation of
law and of force. It is silent, but powerful. It does not talk, but
acts; army spells action.
The men who are trained in our Army are not likely to become members of
the lawless element. They have learned too well the lessons of order and
the necessity of subordination. The attitude of the Army upon the vexed
race question is better than that of any other secular institution of
our country. When the Fifth Army Corps returned from Cuba and went into
camp at Montauk Point, broken down as it was by a short but severe
campaign, it gave to the country a fine exhibition of the moral effects
of military training. There was seen the broadest comradeship. The four
black regiments were there, and cordially welcomed by their companions
in arms. In the maneuvers at Fort Riley, no infantry regiment on the
ground was more popular than the 25th; and in contests the men of the
25th proved their mettle by carrying off nearly every medal and trophy
in sight.