Spanish War, with a thirty caliber cartridge, instead of fifty, but
greater in length, necessitating carrying the cartridges in clips
of five each. The loop belt was unsuited to cartridges in clips. It
was necessary to replace the loops with pockets, carrying one or
more clips. A bottom was woven in the pocket to keep the clips from
falling through, and a flap was provided to button over the top to
hold them in. Orndorff and I invented this belt. The belt usually has
nine pockets, containing four clips of five cartridges each, which
enables it to carry one hundred and eighty cartridges. When filled,
these belts average about ten pounds in weight. It was found necessary
to have attached straps, so the weight is partially carried by the
shoulders.
[Illustration: BRITISH INFANTRYMAN WITH MILLS-BURROWES WEB
EQUIPMENT.]
[Illustration: FRENCH INFANTRYMAN WITH MILLS WEB EQUIPMENT.]
For the marching equipment, we devised full kits of webbing so that
no leather appeared in the whole outfit. Knapsack, haversack, and
canteen are almost entirely of tightly woven waterproof webbing.
After the Boer War the British Government changed its single-loading
rifle to a clip rifle and the double loop belts and bandoleers which
Lindsey had manufactured became obsolete. The development of the
pocket belt, however, enabled the foreign business to continue with a
new product.
I gradually increased Orndorff's interest to thirty per cent of the
profits of the business. Our long partnership was never marred by any
friction or trouble. He had the harder part, as he had to submit to my
dictation, I having the controlling interest. He was one of the most
genial men with whom I ever associated.
After twenty-seven years' hard work, his health failed, and in July,
1901, he asked me to buy out his interest. I gave him a sum with which
he was more than satisfied. Added to what he had accumulated, he had
a competence greater than he needed during the rest of his life. He
and his wife moved to Redlands, California, where Nannie and I visited
them a year later. He was contented and happy, but he never grew
strong again, and died in August, 1905. (Cut, 330.)
Twelve years ago, when I was offered enough for my factory and its
good will to enable me to retire with a similar competence, I had the
good sense to accept. I have not had one dollar's interest in it since
September 11, 1905.
In twenty-seven years we never had a strike, never a serious
discontent with any number of our employees, and we retain to this day
the loyal good will of those who bought us out. The factory is still
known as the Mills Woven Cartridge Belt Company, and my portrait is
in the office with a legend telling of the foundation of the factory.
Every article they make, now hundreds in number, is labelled and
catalogued with my name.
Mr. Frank R. Batchelder, the present manager and sole controller,
engaged in service with us in a subordinate capacity twenty years ago.
He has made a fortune, which he has faithfully and honestly earned. He
is very able and competent and as long as he lives will maintain the
name of the factory in all its worth and integrity.
[Illustration: MR. AND MRS. THOMAS C. ORNDORFF.
(Text, 329.)]
It has been my good fortune during most of my efforts to associate
myself with young men, like Orndorff and Batchelder, of happy,
sociable temperaments, able and industrious. I shall always remember
them for the earnest, faithful and assiduous manner in which they
forwarded my interests and at the same time afforded me a happy
association with them socially.
Many connected with these factories at home and abroad are making more
out of them than ever I made, but I have no envy. I received more
than I expected or deserved, and am perfectly content. I enjoy the
reputation more than the money.
To the day of her death, Nannie felt the same gratitude. In fact, it
was she who first suggested that I had made enough, and that it was
time to stop.
THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE
On Saturday, May 27, 1916, Nannie and I attended by invitation, the
national meeting in Washington of the League to Enforce Peace. Made
an honorary vice-president and member of the executive committee, I
attended its monthly meetings in New York. Officials of the society
asked me to aid it by public speeches or written articles, and the
editor of the New York _Evening Mail_ requested my views on the League
for publication. I referred a copy of my letter to the _Mail_, to
the President, Mr. Taft, and Dr. Lowell, chairman of the executive
committee. It was approved by them for publication over my name as
a member of the League, although of course not as an expression
of the League itself; President Taft suggested that I send a copy
to Secretary Short for publication by the League as a part of its
literature, which I did.
After making changes suggested by Dr. Lowell, the article which
follows was published by the _Mail_:
November 28, 1916.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENING MAIL:
SIR: Your favor has just reached me.
You ask my opinion "as to what should be done at once or in
the near future, and what steps should be taken by the League
to Enforce Peace to help the national government create an
atmosphere wherein the voice of the American people may be heard
and heeded."
To the first I answer--Nothing. There are at present, counting
Greece, seventeen of the most powerful and civilized nations of
the world engaged in the most causeless, vengeful and barbarous
of all wars known to history.
There are perhaps actively engaged twenty-five or thirty
millions of the most destructive soldiers that ever trod the
earth, representing perhaps five hundred millions of the earth's
best civilization, whose judgment has "fled to brutish beasts,"
and nothing this nation or its people can do will change its
course or affect its termination one iota.
In fact, we have no remedies for our wrongs, more than a
bystander in a street fight, and must bide our time, meanwhile
playing the Good Samaritan under difficulties as best we can,
leaving the various roads to the various Jerichos devastated and
unpoliced.
The art and science of war has so enhanced the means of defense
and taken the pomp and circumstance from war that all the
world in arms can not again conquer and abjectly subjugate an
enlightened, homogeneous and loyal people of fifty millions.
This war can be settled only by exhaustion of many years and a
truce of perhaps a year to compose many compromises.
We have an example in our own civil war, where England, France
and Austria sought to intervene, to their own mortification and
regret, and where we (but one nation then as contrasted now with
seventeen) were as vengeful as the present combatants; but we
were all patriots, and when there came a Lincoln, a Grant and a
Lee we learned to know each other better, as in due time these
hundreds of millions of the very best, most civilized and most
patriotic people of the world will learn to know each other
better when they have developed (as they will develop) their
Lincolns, Grants and Lees, "with charity for all and malice
toward none."
They have "taken many captives home" (perhaps near four millions
each in fair proportion), but they can not as of old by slavery
"their general coffers fill"; on the contrary, their care and
keep will be a great expense and burden. Meanwhile the captives
will be learning the language of their foes and earnestly
preaching their country's cause and their own patriotism--none
entirely without reason.
Our people and nation have much mixed up the preparedness
frenzy--appropriating hundreds of millions for the best
arms and munitions--paying little heed to the "man behind"
them, who also should be the best. They, however, insult his
intelligence by offering him $15 a month, while he knows that
the nation employs as many policemen as it does soldiers, and
pays (the lower grades) from $75 to $100 per month, and as many
letter-carriers at similar rates. The soldier is as well worthy
of his hire. Statistics show the soldier's pay to be about 14
per cent of the cost of our great wars.
Preparedness will be complete when the private's pay is $50 on
entrance and graded upward. This would be less expensive than
to "make his trade the trade of all" by universal conscription.
Desertions, recruiting stations, guard-houses and courts martial
will virtually disappear. The very best and most intelligent
single men in the country will qualify and each captain will
have a long waiting list of men who will need little training
or discipline. We shall have a democratic army from which
intelligent and efficient officers can be raised.
There is no such tangible thing as "international law." All
real laws are "rules of action" entered into and agreed upon by
communities of individual rational and soul-possessing human
beings, where each individual surrenders some of his natural
rights that greater good may come to the greater number, and
where there is a latent police force (subject to call) with a
moral environment of its soul-possessing members sufficient to
make the call and enforce its mandates.
Without these two elements of the individual human conscience
there is no community on earth so civilized and righteously
inclined as to be able to conduct in peace and order a
prayer-meeting, a bank, a fair or a public game, but with
these two elements well developed, what is known as a
"gentleman's agreement" could be carried out by the righteous
soul-consciousness of public sentiment.
So-called international law has no such elements. Its rules
are generally established by powerful nations in great wars
who, in dire disaster, for self-preservation disregard and
violate previously accepted rules to suit their success and also
proclaim new rules not hitherto known or accepted, enforcing
them to serve the same ends as far as they have the power, thus
establishing precedents, leaving the wronged of the world no
remedy against such might-made laws save the might-made remedy
of war, and so so-called international law is created, the
individual rational soul-possessing human being having no voice
in its creation, repeal or enforcement.
These "precedents" are without the two essential elements,
"latent police force" and "soulful moral environment," to
compel observance. Hence there is no such tangible thing as
"international law."
Perhaps the League to Enforce Peace would be in a better
position at the close of this war to present its scheme had we
adhered to the contribution of General Jackson to so-called
international law. In 1818, when General Jackson with a punitive
expedition after Creek Indians captured Pensacola, then under
Spanish sovereignty, he arrested two British subjects, Ambrister
and Arbuthnot (one a British army officer), and tried and
executed them for selling arms to the Creek Indians.
This was accepted by England, then the ruling power of the
world, and her predecessor, Spain, and approved by the United
States.
In this present war it is obvious to all, combatants as well
as neutrals, that we are luxuriously feasting on the blood and
tears of all the combatants, and to some extent the neutrals.
For a long time custom has approved this. Now envy and jealousy
on the part of some and a conviction on the part of many that
it is unrighteous, is bringing to bear upon us a widespread
prejudice which will continue to increase in a progressive ratio
until the war ends.
This may impair our efficiency as an advocate of a league to
enforce peace.
Now, as to "what steps should be taken by the League to
Enforce Peace." I know that it realizes the magnitude of its
undertaking; but owing to the great international communication,
general intelligence, and common interest of the people of
the world, with the opportune conditions we shall have at the
termination of the war--perhaps no greater an undertaking than
that devolving upon Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and their
associates of the convention of the thirteen former free and
independent colonies, then thirteen free and independent states.
Their problem was then much as ours is today. That is to say,
to form a community of individual states after the methods and
manners of the communities of individual men above described,
wherein each individual state was to surrender some of its minor
natural rights for the greater good of the greater number.
There was then, as there are now, great misgivings and doubts
even among ourselves. The rest of the world held, through the
despotism of custom, the false doctrine that war was the natural
state of man. Academic lawyers and diplomats held, as they do
now, that there were "state's rights" and "non-justiciable
interstate cases" more potent than the rights of human beings.
So that outside America the scheme was ridiculed as visionary
and impracticable.
Our people and the colonies (then states) had become so
abhorrent of the devastation, blood and tears of a seven years'
war that they decided, through the wise men of this convention,
that the states would surrender to the general good the few
rights "without remedies" they might have and, so to speak,
charge them to "profit and loss."
This wise convention surprised the world with a constitution
of "league of states" so perfect in all its detail of
"legislation," "adjudication" and "execution" (reducing the
loss of rights without remedy to the minimum) that for 128 years
(with one regrettable exception) the nation had played the Good
Samaritan for the natural afflictions of pestilence, flood and
famine to all its people of the thirteen states (gradually
increased to forty-eight), meanwhile preventing the unnatural
afflictions of war and keeping open and well policed all the
roads to all the Jerichos within them. In the case of the
exception, the force provided proved sufficient and effective to
restore order and contentment.
To a rational mind giving the matter reasonable study it is hard
to conceive a conclusion other than that similar results may be
accomplished with a similar league of the nations of the world.
ANSON MILLS.
While there were some forty-six members of the executive committee, it
was difficult to get a legal quorum of fifteen and there were never
more than twenty members present, almost all from New York City or New
England. It was in fact a close North Atlantic seaboard corporation.
Believing we could not organize national sentiment in favor of the
League's program with so sectional a representation, I moved that the
next meeting be held at Kansas City, or some other central location,
to obtain a better representation of the sentiments of the whole
people. I was refused a vote, but the motion was referred to the
committee on management, which smothered it.
At the meetings I attended never more than fifty minutes were devoted
to the discussion of an intelligent propaganda solely in the interests
of the League, but there was much discussion by a few as to inducing
the President, Congress, or both, to intervene in the European war.
The efforts a few of us made to declare the League an organization
formed to maintain a neutral attitude regarding the European war,
so that when peace should come the society might have greater
opportunity to carry its righteous propaganda successfully to both
victors and vanquished, were uniformly referred to the Committee on
Management and never heard of again.
When the United States declared war the few members of the committee
present declared the League not neutral but belligerent. My view,
expressed in a letter to the Secretary, was that since our Government
had accepted the gage of "Trial by Combat" it was the first duty of
every American to put forth every energy to attain success, postponing
nobler aspirations until flags of truce should be flying from both
friends and foes. To that end I suggested we postpone our next meeting
until victors and vanquished alike be so prostrated with wretchedness,
poverty and shame for their cruelties and barbarities, that they
would lend more willing ears to the propaganda we had so much at
heart. This course not being taken, I notified the Secretary, that
by participating in the war as an organization, the League had in my
opinion so destroyed its capacity for good that my further attendance
at the Executive Committee meetings could serve no useful purpose. My
resignation was accepted.
In my opinion, the League made two serious errors: First, in Article
III of its constitution where it excepted "non-justiciable" cases from
the control of the proposed league. It is unsafe to devise any law
or rule of action which permits of too numerous or too ill-defined
exceptions. If criminal law exempted non-justiciable questions from
the jurisdiction of courts, no criminal, even the most heartless
murderer, could be convicted. The ingenuity of lawyers could always
prove some non-justiciable element entered into the crime. The same
would be true of nations. Those most powerful and best prepared for
war would assume greater latitude in defining what was justiciable
and would show less punctiliousness in endeavoring to establish their
definition than nations smaller and less well prepared. Statesmen
and diplomats working in secret would easily show any question about
to lead to war as "non-justiciable" and not to be presented to the
international court set up by a league composed of many nations too
weak to be respected by the powerful.
The second mistake was to yield, as an organization, to the
allurements of "Trial by Combat," and to endeavor, as a league, to
induce our nation to intervene in the present war. Members might take
this course as individuals, but, when they made it the act of a league
for _peace_ they stultified the league, and in my opinion, destroyed
any great power for usefulness the league might have in the future.
[Illustration: DUELLING PISTOLS BROUGHT FROM ENGLAND BY NANNIE'S
GREAT UNCLE.]
TRIAL BY COMBAT
PERSONAL TRIAL BY COMBAT
I hope to show a close analogy between the personal trial by combat
legalized throughout Europe for many hundreds of years (now legal
nowhere, practically abandoned in all civilized countries), and
international trial by combat, still existing throughout the world.
Describing conditions before the middle ages, George Nielson, in his
"Trial by Combat," says:
"=Nothing was too high for it, nothing too low. It would establish
the virtue of a queen, test the veracity of a witness, or re argue
the decision of a judge; it would hang a traitor, a murderer, or a
thief; it would settle a disputed point of succession, give a widow
her dower, or prove a questioned charter. From such high arguments as
these, it descended with equal ease to discuss debts of every kind and
of whatever amount, and a French monarch earned a title as a reformer
when he disallowed it where the principal sum in plea was under five
sous.="
This legalized method of trial was used prior to any historical
record, but Gundobald, King of Burgundy, in 501, established the law
permanently in his kingdom, where it was continued for over eleven
hundred years. Replying to the remonstrances of one of his bishops,
he said: "=Is it not true that the event both of national wars and
private combats is directed by the judgment of God? And does not
Providence award the victory to the juster cause?="
Of a later period, Nielson says:
"=When the fourteenth century began, the duel had ceased to be in
any real sense a living proper part of law. On the continent and in
the British Isles it was alive a thousand years and more after the
enactment of Gundobald.="
The incident of David and Goliath was quoted by some as a divine
authorization of trial by combat.
Throughout Europe, England, and even America, it was a personal
privilege of men of honor, until the middle of the nineteenth century,
when, to the great honor of America, be it said, the good sense,
intelligence and courageous action of the American people caused its
abolition.
Some claimed the unlegalized continuance of it to be necessary because
of the non-justiciable questions of honor raised between disputants;
also this method of trial was not available to common people, but only
to what were known as gentlemen and so-called men of honor.
Until the first part of the 19th century judges on the bench, lawyers
in court, and other public functionaries, supposed to belong to that
small class of people "of honor" wore swords, wigs and knee breeches
when officiating, after the manner of barons, squires and knights
errant of the mediæval ages.
As examples of personal trial by combat, I select the four most famous
duels fought in America during the fore part of the last century:
Burr-Hamilton, 1804; Baron-Decatur, 1820; Graves-Cilley, 1838, and
Terry-Broderick, 1859.
Burr, Baron, Graves and Terry were the challengers, and all were
skilled professional duellists, and each killed his antagonist.
At the time of their duel, Burr and Hamilton were among the foremost
men of the country, Burr being Vice-President, and Hamilton perhaps
the most influential politician. Burr was forty-eight and Hamilton
forty-seven, conspicuous and able from boyhood. They served together
on General Washington's staff when mere youths, although Washington
soon found it necessary to relieve Burr. He retained Hamilton, and
later made him one of his cabinet.
Though both were from New York, they headed opposite political
parties. Hamilton's influence defeated Burr's appointment as brigadier
general in 1789, and also his hope of securing a foreign mission.
When Burr and Jefferson were candidates for the Presidency in 1800,
Hamilton threw his influence against Burr and Jefferson was elected.
During these fifteen years of political rivalry Hamilton said
many severe things of Burr. Rendered desperate by his successive
disappointments, Burr forced a quarrel on "a trivial bit of hearsay"
in a letter of a Dr. Cooper. This went the rounds of the press,
stating Hamilton had said he had a "despicable" opinion of Burr. Burr
sent his friend Van Ness with a letter demanding Hamilton admit or
deny having expressed such an opinion. Hamilton declined to submit to
such a vague and sweeping inquiry, while stating his readiness to avow
or disavow any specific statement, closing his letter with the formula
used by those who expected to accept a challenge if tendered. After
further correspondence Burr sent Hamilton a formal challenge, which
was accepted. Hamilton wrote a statement for publication after the
meeting, announcing his religious and moral opposition to duelling.
He stated he had no malice toward Burr, and accepted the challenge
only because of the imperious custom which would destroy his public
usefulness if he declined. He added that he did not wish to kill Burr,
and intended to reserve his first fire in the hope that it would
induce a reconciliation. If it did not, he might perhaps reserve his
second fire. This declaration, of course, was unknown to the public
or to Burr. In a note to his wife and six children he beseeched their
forgiveness, declaring he was forced to accept by public sentiment.
They met at Weehawken, N. J., July 11, 1804. At the signal Burr fired,
Hamilton sprang convulsively upon his toes, reeled--at which moment he
involuntarily discharged his pistol--and then fell forward upon his
face and remained motionless. His ball rustled the branches seven feet
above the head of his antagonist and four feet wide of him. Hearing
it, Burr looked up to see it had severed a twig. Seeing Hamilton
falling, he advanced with a manner and gesture expressive of regret,
but, urged from the field by his friends, without speaking he turned
about and withdrew.
Public indignation in New York became violent. The grand jury found
a true bill against Burr and the Vice-President of the United States
fled the jurisdiction of his State.
During his remaining thirty-two years, he gradually lost the
confidence of his countrymen. With no hope of achieving former
ambitions, he formed the ill-fated expedition in the West known as
Burr's Conspiracy, planning to abandon or dismember his own country
and make a conquest in Mexico. He died in 1836 at the age of eighty,
despised throughout the United States.
_Baron and Decatur_
Baron and Decatur were both advocates of the duello.