MODERN METHODS AND MACHINERY OF WAR
"In the course of time, no one knows when or how soon, the
family of nations may get to playing at cards, and beyond the
sea, perhaps, will be found a 'full hand' against our three
'aces'--the Navy, Coast Fortifications, and the Militia."
_Lieut. Gen. Adna R. Chaffee, U.S.A._
"Whenever a nation's attitude toward war is evasive, its
conduct indecisive, and its preparation an indifferent,
orderless assembling of forces, it prepares for defeat."
_Homer Lea._
In the _Sunday American_ of the seventeenth of January of this year, Mr.
Andrew Carnegie gave expression to some opinions that challenge the
attention of all thinking people of our country who, in this trying time
of war, are becoming aroused and are asking themselves the question: Are
we adequately prepared against the dread eventuality of war, and if not
adequately prepared, why not?
There is no person, of howsoever humble a station, whose opinion has not
some weight. Horace Greeley--or was it Henry Ward Beecher?--once said
that his views upon a very important subject underwent a material change
from conversation with a blacksmith while having his horse shod.
The opinion of Andrew Carnegie, the greatest steel and iron smith the
world has ever known, is certain to have great weight with a very large
number of persons, whatever the subject may be upon which he expresses
himself.
The world owes Andrew Carnegie a debt of deep gratitude for many most
munificent and beneficent actions, and our gratitude to him has begotten
love for him, and our gratitude and our love beget our sympathetic
attention whenever he speaks. Consequently, when Mr. Carnegie speaks
upon the subject of our national defense, he is bound to exercise a
tremendous power for good or evil, and this power for good or evil is
directly proportionate to the extent that his opinions are right or
wrong.
At this time, the question of our national defense is one of so serious
concern that anything a well and favorably known man says may have a
determining effect upon the minds of many persons, and thereby be
fruitful of national good or national harm.
If Mr. Carnegie is right in his belief that our best defense is in
military defenselessness, then he is doing the country a great service
through the wide publicity given to his opinions. If, on the other hand,
he is in the wrong, he is doing this country a very great injury, and
his words not only help defeat Congressional appropriations for
building more guns, but also help to spike the few guns we have.
Let us first consider some of the more remarkable and also the more
radical of his statements. He says, to quote:
* * * * *
"_Not one of the great nations has the slightest desire to be other than
friendly with the United States. We are a friend to all; an enemy of
none. They could gain nothing by a war with us, nor would we by a war
with them. We have no territorial ambitions, and only desire to be left
alone._
"_As for this foolish talk of an invasion, that is an impossible
contingency. Imagine any country being able to successfully bring enough
troops to accomplish anything worth while from a military standpoint
from a point three thousand miles off and attack a hundred millions of
people!_
"_I have always said that if at any time any country was foolish enough
to attempt invasion the best possible plan would be to make their
landing as easy as possible, point out to them the best possible roads,
and allow them to go as far as they desired to go inland. Then warn them
to look out, and turn a million of our 16,000,000 of militia loose upon
them. Getting in would be easy, but how to get out would result in
surrender._
"_There is no other country in the world so well equipped to repel
invasion or make it so hot for an enemy should he land as to make him
exceedingly sorry he ever tried it._"
* * * * *
The foregoing statements of Mr. Carnegie contain in a nutshell the whole
pith and gist of the present anti-armament peace advocacy, backed by the
ten-million-dollar Carnegie foundation, representing an income of half a
million dollars a year.
Now, if it happens to be a fact that these views of Mr. Carnegie and his
coterie of peace advocates are wrong, and if we need to take immediate
and radical measures for our national defense, then whenever the
Carnegie advocacy prevents a battery of guns being built, the resultant
injury to the country is as great as though a battery of our guns were
to be destroyed, or as though a battery of guns were made for a possible
enemy.
Truly, as Mr. Carnegie states, we are friendly to other nations, and we
do not want any of their territory, but I do not agree with him that we
have nothing which they might want, for we are both very rich and very
defenseless, and the history of nations has shown that always the rich
and the defenseless sooner or later become the prey of the poor and the
powerful.
One after another of the surrounding nations will likely be drawn into
the war before it is over. After the present belligerents have settled
their scores with the sword, there will be other scores to be settled
between the victors and the neutral nations. Differences between the
warring and the neutral powers--differences which, in time of peace,
might produce very strained relations or precipitate war--may now be
lightly passed over as mere discourtesies. But, after the war, some of
the acts of the neutrals that at present seem quite insignificant may be
magnified to advantage as _casus belli_.
It is my opinion that, whichever side wins, the United States will
likely have to fight the winner within a short time after the war is
over, for neither the Germans nor the Allies, in the heat of passion
that now dominates them, will be in a mood to forgive some of the things
that we may feel compelled to do in the maintenance of our neutrality.
In short, the things that we may be led to do to avoid being embroiled
in the present war may serve to embroil us with the victors, unless the
war should end in a draw.
Mr. Carnegie thinks it would be quite a difficult undertaking for a
foreign nation to land troops enough on our shores successfully to
contend with our people. Our expert army and navy officers, who have
been educated at government expense, and who are supposed to know about
such matters, tell us that it would be impossible for us to mobilize and
bring to the front more than 30,000 of our standing Army during the
first month; and that it would be impossible to mobilize and get our
militia into shape to resist an army of 100,000 of the well-trained and
well-armed troops of one of the Great Powers, inside of a year and a
half.
Also, our naval and military experts tell us that it would require not
only months, but years, to get our Navy into such efficient fighting
trim as to be able to resist the navy of any one of the leading Great
Powers of the world. They tell us that we are so short of ammunition
that we might easily exhaust the present supply in the first four weeks
of the war, and possibly in the first few days of the war.
We are in the habit of speaking of our Navy as ranking somewhere second
or third from the top. As a matter of fact, we rank much lower than
that, because of the shortage of our ammunition supply. Just as a
steam-engine cannot be run without fuel, regardless of its size and
power, so a navy cannot be run without gunpowder.
When the present war broke out, France, Germany, and England each had
ten times as much smokeless powder on hand as we had. We have between
forty and fifty million pounds of smokeless powder at the present time,
whereas we should have 500,000,000 pounds.
The only difficulty in landing as large an army as an enemy might desire
upon our shore, would be in overcoming our fleet. Once our fleet were
smashed, an enemy could land a hundred thousand men, either on our
Atlantic or on our Pacific seaboard, long before we could mobilize the
troops we have. In fact, a quarter of a million men could be landed
before we could get the troops we have into fighting shape.
Let us examine for one moment Mr. Carnegie's proposition to welcome an
army of invaders, showing them the best roads to the interior, and then
turning lose on them a million improvised citizen soldiers. Like Pompey,
Mr. Carnegie seems to believe that he can raise an army at will by
stamping his foot upon the ground.
Not only should we have to raise the million men, but also we should
have to provide small arms, Maxim guns, rapid-fire field-cannon, and
siege howitzers for them. At least four years' instruction and
experience in the use of these weapons would be required; furthermore,
the men would have to be imbued with the courage that veterans have,
which can be acquired only after much experience on the firing-line;
they would have to be officered by men of military education and
training, and lastly, they would need large corps of trained and
experienced engineers, and also a trained commissariat.
None of these things can be created in a day, or a month, or made
efficient in a year, so that the army of invaders, after it had received
the Carnegie welcome and had taken possession of the country, would have
quietly to wait for us to get ready to swoop down on them, as Mr.
Carnegie suggests.
When the present war is over, should one of the belligerent nations,
with its veteran fighting blood up, attack us, how are we prepared to
meet that attack?
Our army and navy men tell us that our position is pathetically
defenseless. They tell us that, should our Navy be destroyed or evaded,
and an army of only a hundred thousand men, equipped with all of the
arms and paraphernalia of modern warfare, be landed on our coast, the
invading army could go anywhere it might see fit, live off the country,
capture our big cities, and hold us up for ransom in spite of all that
we could do.
What could we do? How could we flee? Where could we flee? We simply
could not flee. Most of us have doubtless thought that if war should be
declared, we would seek safety in the interior. But immediately war is
declared, all the railroads and all automobiles will be commandeered for
military purposes. All banks will close. All securities will be rendered
worthless, and we, reduced to penniless hoboes, will be compelled to
stay right here and face the music.
Let us assume merely that an invading army of a hundred thousand men
should be landed near New York. Should this army send out detachments to
capture the places where our arms and munitions of war are made, they
would not have far to go.
A RICH PRIZE FOR A HOSTILE ARMY
They would find the smokeless powder works of the United States Army and
the Picatinny Arsenal, where all the smokeless powder and high
explosives of the United States Army are stored, near Dover, New Jersey,
about thirty-five miles from New York; also they would find there the
big naval depot for ammunition and explosives.
At Bridgeport, Connecticut, they would find the Union Metallic Cartridge
Works, and the American and British Manufacturing Company's Works for
the manufacture of rapid-fire cannon, and at New Haven they would find
the Winchester Repeating Arms and Cartridge Company's Works and the
Marlin Firearms Works. At Springfield, Massachusetts, they would find
the Smith and Wesson Revolver Works and also the United States Arsenal,
where our rifles are made. At Hartford, Connecticut, they would find the
Colt Patent Firearms, and the Pratt and Whitney Works; at Ilion, New
York, the Remington Small Arms Works, and at Utica, New York, the Savage
Arms Works.
They would find one of our most important big-gun factories at Troy, New
York, and another at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where also much of our
armor-plate is made. The big Cramp Shipbuilding Works would be found at
Philadelphia. They would find at Groton, Connecticut, the factory where
all the interior parts of the Holland submarine boats are made, and at
Fore River, Massachusetts, the big shipyard where the Holland submarine
and other war vessels are constructed.
[Illustration: The Heart of America]
They would find the Lake Submarine Torpedo Boat Works at Bridgeport, the
United States Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, and one of
our biggest navy yards, together with the E. W. Bliss Torpedo Works, in
Brooklyn. The New York Arsenal they would find unprotected on Governor's
Island. They would find the great duPont Smokeless Powder Works at
Carney's Point, Parlin and Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, and at various
points in New Jersey the largest and most important high-explosives
works in the world.
Take a map of the United States, and a pair of compasses, and with one
point placed on the Hudson River, at Peekskill, New York, draw a circle
having a radius of a hundred-and-sixty miles. There will be included
within that circle all of the above-mentioned ammunition and armament
works, which constitute nearly all the smokeless powder works, cartridge
works, torpedo-boat works, small-arms works, and big-gun and armor-plate
works in the United States. Also, this circle will include not only New
York and nearby cities, but also Boston, Albany, Syracuse, Philadelphia,
and the most important coal fields of Pennsylvania.
The conquest of this area would not be a work of months, or of years,
but only of a few days, and the thing would be done before we had time
to mobilize the available fighting forces we have, much less to enlist
and train and arm a citizen soldiery.
This vital area is the solar plexus of Uncle Sam, and an army of a
hundred thousand trained men, landed on our Atlantic seaboard, would be
able to capture this entire area and subdue the populace as easily as
the police force of New York can subdue a rioting mob.
While we were arming and training our million men to make the Carnegie
swoop, the army of invaders would be very busy.
They would commandeer all our above-mentioned factories, and proceed to
operate them with skilled American labor, which they would also
commandeer and force to work, just as the Germans have forced the
Belgians to work for them, and Mr. Carnegie's army of citizen soldiers
would find themselves without means either of arming themselves or of
supplying themselves with ammunition or of getting the skilled labor
necessary to do the work.
But this is not all that the invaders would be doing while we were
getting our million men together. They would have means of knowing what
we were doing, and they would send out a detachment and defeat our whole
enterprise. They would probably levy on New York City for a billion
dollars, and levy upon all the cities in the captured area for every
dollar that could be squeezed from the inhabitants under threats of
destruction.
Not only this, but they might take the notion, and probably would take
the notion, to annex the conquered territory, just as Germany has
annexed Belgium, and, as we should then automatically become citizens of
the enemy's country, we should be conscripted and forced to fight our
own people, just as the Belgians, according to report, have been forced
into the ranks of the Germans.
Such a military measure is not new; it is as old as war itself.
Frederick the Great frequently forced his prisoners to fight in his own
ranks, and Napoleon Bonaparte sometimes gave them the option of joining
his legions or of faring much worse. Attila took with him the entire
male population of the countries through which he passed as additions to
his military host. Those who resisted were immediately killed, and those
he did not need were killed, whether they resisted or not. As to what
may be done in war, there is no arbiter but necessity.
To receive an invading army is not so pleasant a thing as Mr. Carnegie
assumes. As guests they are just about as lovable and make just about as
good pets in the family as rattlesnakes, cobras, scorpions, and
tarantulas.
A few Americans who were caught in the war zone when the present war
broke out got some useful knowledge of war's inconveniences and
harassments. What the people for whom there was no escape suffered in
Belgium and Northern France, is beyond our powers of conception. No one
who has not had personal experience can form the least idea of the
barbarous atrocities perpetrated by an invading army on the defenseless
population.
Invaders always live off the invaded country. It is considered more
important that they should live well than that any one else should live
at all. If, after the invaders' wants are supplied, there is enough left
for the people to live on, well and good; if not, then the people must
starve. The invaders must have food and clothing and the bare
necessaries of life; also, they must have luxuries. They must have
cigars and cigarettes, wine, women, and song. If our country should be
invaded, we should not only have to furnish food, clothing, cigars,
cigarettes, and wine for the armies of the enemy, but also our wives and
our daughters and our sweethearts would be commandeered to supply the
women and song.
Occasionally, an American citizen, with more manhood than discretion,
would resent a nameless indignity, and kill some military blackguard,
who would immediately be avenged by the burning of the town and the
corralling and shooting of the people with machine-guns. This is not an
overdrawn picture--the thing has actually been done in the present war.
It is very likely that some of us who look upon this page will be forced
to see wife or daughter or sweetheart namelessly maltreated to gratify
the brutal lust of an invader, and lose our own life for a blow on the
scoundrel's jaw or a stab in his ribs, unless--aye, there's the
rub--unless this whole country awakens to its danger and rises up as one
man and demands prompt and adequate defensive measures for national
protection. As this saving thing is not likely to happen, the entire
country east of the Alleghanies will probably be Belgiumized with fire
and the sword, depredated, degraded, and desolated by an invading army
within a very short time after the European War is over.
This is an age of mechanics--an age wherein man-made mechanism more and
more replaces hand work. Everywhere in our industries of peace, we have
seen labor-saving machinery replace the labor of human hands. Today all
the men in the world could not do by hand all of the world's ploughing,
sowing, reaping, and carrying of the world's food to market; all the
women in the world could not, today, do the world's sewing without the
sewing-machine; and all the men in the world and all the women in the
world combined could not, today, do a tenth of the world's writing
without the typewriter and type-setting and printing machinery.
One of the giant dredges that have been ladling out of the Panama Canal
the vast landslides, can do the pick and shovel and wheelbarrow work of
a thousand men. Everywhere, in everything we do, and in everything done
for us, we find human hands now mainly engaged in guiding the work of
labor-saving machinery.
The people of the United States of America have been able to develop
their enormous resources and to keep abreast of the world's industrial
progress mainly by the invention of labor-saving machinery under the
protection of our patent law.
In our competition with other nations for the markets of the world, no
one thinks of referring to the prowess of our unskilled citizen soldiers
of industry unsupported by machinery, but all reliance is placed upon
our multiform labor-saving machinery, and our skilled labor behind that
machinery.
With these pregnant facts before us, it is very strange that it should
not be perfectly plain to every one that what is true of labor-saving
machinery in peace is likewise true in war. It is very strange indeed
that there should be intelligent men and women among us unable to see
and to understand that labor-saving machinery and labor skilled in its
use are as applicable and as indispensable to successful warfare as to
peaceful industry. Furthermore, labor-saving machinery in war is
life-saving machinery. The quick-firing gun is the greatest life-saving
instrument ever invented. These persons do not seem to appreciate that
war is an industry. As a matter of stern fact, war is, and has always
been, the biggest and the most vital industry of mankind, and in no
other industry is labor-saving machinery so important and so vital, and
in no other industry does so much depend upon the skill of the labor
operating the machinery.
We are the slaves of belief, and we love our chains. Although our faith
may be false, we hate the hand that tries to free us. The people of this
country have a great false faith in the fighting qualities of their
citizen soldiery, improvised in time of war. They point proudly to the
War of the Revolution and the War of the Rebellion to prove how our
volunteer soldiers can fight. They overlook the fact that fighting was
then mostly done by hand; that now it is mostly done by machinery, and
that it is just as foolish and absurd to think of taking untrained men
off the farm to operate the guns and machinery of war as it would be to
try to operate the factories with them where the guns and machinery are
made. It takes as long today to convert a farmer into a skilled soldier
as it does to convert him into a skilled mechanic.
Battles are no longer decided merely by the patriotism and personal
bravery of the rank and file, nor even by their numbers, but by the
efficiency and sufficiency of machinery and materials of destruction and
the science and scientific experience of the commanding officers. There
is no time to build steam-fire-engines or to train fire brigades after a
conflagration has broken out.
A citizen soldiery without years of training in the discipline and
weapons and mechanism of modern warfare is only a mob, as easily
scattered by a few real soldiers as chaff by a whirlwind.
George Washington held the following opinion about the value of militia
in warfare:
* * * * *
"_Regular troops alone are equal to the exigencies of modern war, as
well for defense as offense, and when a substitute is attempted it must
prove illusory and ruinous. No militia will ever acquire the habits
necessary to resist a regular force ... the firmness requisite for the
real business of fighting is only to be attained by a constant course of
discipline and service. I have never yet been witness to a single
instance that can justify a different opinion, and it is most earnestly
to be wished that the liberties of America may no longer be trusted,
in any material degree, to so precarious a dependence."--Washington._
* * * * *
If Washington held it a mistake to rely on untrained, undisciplined men
in time of war, who can differ with him today, when not only bravery and
discipline are required, but also a knowledge of the complicated
enginery of warfare?
It is obvious to any one that ten men armed with the modern magazine
shoulder-rifle, with a range of more than two miles, would easily be
able to defeat a thousand men--a hundred times their number--armed with
slings and bows and arrows, short-swords and spears, as was the army of
Hannibal. Hannibal's famous Balearic slingers were able to hurl a slug
of lead through a man. But ten riflemen would have time to kill a
thousand of them before they could get within sling range. A thousand of
the famous English bowmen who fought at Agincourt could all be destroyed
by our ten riflemen before they could get within bowshot.
The same thing holds equally true with old short-range and obsolete
firearms, as compared with the longer range and more accurate guns of
the latest pattern. Ten good marksmen, armed with the latest rifles,
could kill a thousand equally skilled marksmen armed with the old
muzzle-loaders of the Civil War, before they could get within range.
These ten men would each be able to fire with ease a carefully aimed
shot every two and a half seconds; the ten men could fire 250 aimed
shots a minute. A thousand men, armed with the old muzzle-loaders, would
surely have to advance at least a mile and a half after coming within
range of the modern rifles before they could get the ten riflemen within
range of their muzzle-loaders. Charging forward on the run, it would
take them at least ten minutes to cover the mile and a half. In that
time the ten riflemen would be able to fire 2,500 carefully-aimed shots.
Such is the difference in the potentiality of troops dependent upon
suitable arms.
With the modern automatic magazine-rifle a single soldier would be able
to defeat a hundred men armed with the old smooth-bore single-shot
muzzle-loaders of the Civil War; in fact, he would be able to kill or
wound every one of them in an open frontal attack over level ground with
his long-range rapid-fire rifle before they could get near enough even
to reach him with their short-range muskets. One man operating an
automatic machine-gun would be more than a match for a thousand men,
armed with the old Civil War musket in an open-view frontal attack, over
a distance covered by the range of the machine gun. In fact, with this
weapon, firing 600 shots a minute, he could play the gun on their
advancing line with the freedom of a hose pipe, and put them _hors de_
_combat_ in a few minutes--certainly, before they could get near enough
to reach him with their short-range guns.
Half a dozen automatic machine-guns supported by a battery of half a
dozen modern rapid-fire field-guns throwing shrapnel shell at the rate
of from thirty to forty a minute, planted on Cemetery Hill, would have
been able to defeat Pickett's charge at Gettysburg more quickly than did
the entire Army of the Potomac.
It is obvious, therefore, that a nation's war potentiality depends very
largely upon its preparedness to fight by machinery, and that a mere
citizen soldiery, without the machinery of modern warfare, is as
impotent in the face of modern war engines as a swarm of ants in the
face of an anteater. It is obvious that, whereas fighting machinery is
very expensive, modern warfare is a very costly business, and a business
requiring an enormous investment; and also that, whereas a thing is
worth most in war which can, for the least cost, produce the best
results, machinery becomes much more valuable than life. A single
field-piece may be worth more than a hundred men, and at times even more
than a thousand men.
In modern warfare, the cost in treasure and machinery is of far greater
concern than the loss in blood. Therefore, the efficiency and great cost
of all kinds of modern fighting equipment have served to give the great
nations pause, and to make them consider well the awful risk before
precipitating war. The progress in fighting machinery of every sort has
been so rapid, and the number of wars so few, that until now there has
been no adequate opportunity to test fighting machinery in actual
warfare.
In direct proportion as warfare becomes more scientific, complicated,
and expensive does it require longer time to prepare for war, both in
the making of the enginery and in the making of the soldiers.
Time signifies only the measure of change. Consequently, time is merely
a relative term, indicative of the sequence in a series of happenings or
eventuations. If the universe were annihilated, there would be no such
thing as time because nothing would happen.
Were we to be attacked by any foreign Power, we should be able to rely,
not upon what we might be able to produce three or four years afterward,
but upon what we should be able to put into action at once. Modern
methods and machinery of war cause events to move many times as fast as
in former wars. Three months is a long time after war is declared. A six
months' war today is relatively as long as a six years' war used to be.
The following extract from Bernhardi's "How Germany Makes War" is
evidence of that expert's opinion of the factor of time:
* * * * *
"_If Germany is involved in war, she need not recoil before the
numerical superiority of her enemies. But so far as human nature is able
to tell, she can only rely on being successful if she is resolutely
determined to break the superiority of her enemies by a victory over one
or the other of them before their total strength can come into action,
and if she prepares for war to that effect, and acts at the decisive
moment in that spirit which made Frederick the Great seize the sword
against a world in arms._"
* * * * *
Napoleon once said, "The fate of nations often hangs on five minutes,"
and, "God fights on the side of the heaviest artillery." Also, he said,
in effect, that the art of winning battles depends upon the
concentration on the chief point of attack of a force superior to the
enemy at that point.
If we pass our finger down the pages of history, we shall find the above
expression of Napoleon thoroughly substantiated and vindicated. Most
great battles have been won by the concentration of a superior force
upon an inferior force at some vulnerable point, and often quite
irrespective of the sizes of the opposing armies taken as a whole.
Everything depends upon the quickness in concentration of concerted
action. The herculean physique of Goliath did not count for much after
little David hit him with the pebble. He needs be a big man indeed not
to be whipped when even a small antagonist has succeeded in thrusting a
dagger close to the heart. Armies, like individuals, have vital parts,
the penetration of which means defeat.
Alexander the Great frequently met and annihilated armies many times
larger than his own. He was often weaker than the enemy as a whole, but
at the point of attack he was always vastly the stronger. This enabled
him to crush the enemy in detail. Hannibal, Caesar, Charles Martel,
Marlborough, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Grant, Lee,
Stonewall Jackson, Sheridan--all great captains--appreciated and applied
this winning principle: Be able to strike the enemy upon one given point
with greater force than he shall be able to oppose, and strike first;
then follow up the advantage and crush the enemy in detail by
concentrated force always superior at the point of attack, however
inferior to the general force to which it is opposed and through which
it penetrates.
Broadly speaking, the machinery of modern warfare adds a thousand-fold
to the potentiality of the soldier in battle above his potentiality at
the time of the Civil War.
Ten thousand men, armed with modern guns and all the paraphernalia of
modern warfare, would on the battle-line be more than a match for a
million men armed with the old smooth-bore guns of the Civil War. As a
matter of fact they could kill all that surrounded them as fast as they
approached from every quarter, and they could advance through the
opposing lines with absolute freedom without the loss of a single man
from the fire of the enemy.
Let us see for one moment what ten thousand men would be able to do upon
such a host in open frontal attack: Let us assume that the ten thousand
were armed with a thousand automatic guns, and, say, a hundred
rapid-fire field-guns, in addition to the usual magazine shoulder-rifle.
As soon as the enemy came in sight, the ten thousand would open on them
with their hundred field-guns, pouring into their ranks a perfect storm
of shrapnel. The old, smooth-bore field-guns of the enemy would be
completely disabled before they could be brought within cannon-shot of
the ten thousand. As soon as the enemy came within rifle range, the ten
thousand would open on them with their thousand automatic machine-guns
and magazine-rifles. As an automatic machine-gun fires at the rate of
600 shots a minute, a thousand would fire at the rate of 600,000 shots a
minute. The magazine shoulder-rifles would fire aimed shots at the rate
of twenty-five a minute, and the quick-firing field-guns would each fire
shrapnel at the rate of forty a minute. Making every allowance for
stoppages and for variables, dispersion of fire and bad marksmanship,
there would be enough effectual hits with the shrapnel, the automatic
machine-gun fire, and the magazine-rifle fire, to kill or wound every
man of the enemy before that enemy could get near enough to reach the
ten thousand with their old smooth-bore muskets.
Every automatic gun and every quick-firing field-gun and every magazine
shoulder-rifle puts in the hands of our soldiers the means of avoiding a
corresponding sacrifice of their lives. Not only this, but every
automatic gun that we make and furnish our troops enables one man to do
the work of a hundred men; it enables a hundred men to remain at home
engaged in peaceful pursuits while only one man has to go to the battle
front and fight.
Then let us realize the fact that every automatic gun saves a hundred
lives from jeopardy. Every magazine-rifle saves ten lives, and every
quick-firing field-cannon saves easily a hundred lives.
This should make a strong appeal to the professional pacifists who
pretend that they want to save life. Surely, if war cannot be prevented,
and all history, and the present moment as well, prove that it cannot,
then we should make it as merciful as possible, and fight it in a way
that will cause as little sacrifice of life as possible.
In estimating the cost of war in human lives, we cannot count values
that may be placed upon them by sentiments of humanity, but only such
values as, when destroyed, make the losing nation economically so much
the poorer.
According to I. S. Bloch, a new-born child of the farming class has a
value of twenty-five dollars. At five years of age, he has a value of
two hundred and fifty dollars; at ten years of age, he is worth about
five hundred dollars; at fifteen, he is worth almost a thousand dollars;
and at twenty, he is worth a little more than a thousand dollars. His
maximum value is at twenty, and he begins to depreciate in value as he
grows older, because of his shortened days of service.
Therefore, the average economic value of soldiers may, according to Mr.
Bloch, be put at a thousand dollars.
According to David Starr Jordan, it costs about fifteen thousand dollars
for each soldier killed in battle, so that, according to these two
eminent peace advocates and peace propagandists, when the Germans slay,
say, a thousand of the Allies, the loss to the Allies is the value of
the thousand men, namely, a million dollars, and as it costs the Germans
fifteen times as much to kill them as they are worth, the loss to the
Germans is fifteen million dollars; so that the actual German loss is
fifteen times as great as that of the Allies. But as the Allies are
killing a good many Germans, they are generously sharing with the
Germans a fair proportion of the cost of the war.
These figures are not far out of the way. The fact is that, in modern
warfare, the actual loss of life for the numbers engaged is
correspondingly less than it used to be, while the cost is
correspondingly greater. In modern warfare, the loss of money is far
greater than the loss of life. It is more the dollar than blood, that is
now shed.
In ancient times, when men fought hand to hand in compact form, with
short-sword, spear, and battle-axe, they used often to slay half the
numbers engaged--easily ten times as many for the numbers engaged as are
now slain. There are more than ten million Allies now under arms against
more than seven million Germans and Austrians. These numbers have not as
yet all been brought face to face with one another on the line of
battle, owing to modern methods of warfare; but under old-time methods
with old-time arms, they would have been at once brought into collision
in two enormous armies. In ancient times, less mobilization could be
effected in a year than can now be effected in a month, but when the
collision came, the issue of the war was decided on one great field.
If these great European armies were armed with short-swords, spears, and
battle-axes, as armies used to be, instead of with modern war weapons
and enginery, they would, during the time they have been engaged, very
likely have slain a third of their number--certainly ten times as many
in proportion to the numbers engaged as have actually been killed in the
present war. Even a tenth of their numbers would be a million and a
half.
Never in all history have such vast numbers of men been drawn up in line
of battle. Never have they been so scientifically armed, and,
consequently, never have they, for the numbers engaged, killed so few.
Modern machine-guns and quick-firing guns, with bullets and shrapnel and
canister, are so deadly that troops in mass form cannot live for a
minute in front of them, but as opposing armies with modern war
machinery line up at the present greater tactical distances, and throw
out their men in long-extended battle-lines, and spread them over
correspondingly wide areas, the fight becomes one largely of gun against
gun, engine against engine, with the result that not nearly so many
lives are lost as there would be if the fighting were done by hand, and
hand to hand, in close order. The German siege guns smashed the forts of
Liege and Namur from a distance of nine miles.
As nations are bound to fight, it is far more merciful that they should
be armed to the teeth, but it is vastly more expensive. Can we not
afford, however, to spend dollars instead of men to kill our enemies?
Therefore, even according to the facts and figures of those two eminent
peace-men, I. S. Bloch and Dr. David Starr Jordan, the money loss today
is a concern fifteen times more serious to the economic welfare of a
nation than is the loss in lives.
It is a very strange paradox indeed that the professional
peace-propagandists, who claim to be actuated mainly by considerations
of humanity, should advocate disarmament and the inevitable reversion to
the old and more deadly arms and methods of warfare, on account of the
greater expensiveness of warfare conducted with modern scientific arms
and methods.
By doing away with our present highly scientific and very expensive war
enginery and fighting methods, the nations would be able, in a war like
the present, to kill one another at very much less cost. They would then
be able to kill ten times as many in a given time, while the cost would
be only a small fraction of the present cost.
It is a matter of solemn certainty that the quick-firing gun is the most
beneficent implement of mercy that has ever been invented, and every
peace advocate in the world and every lover of his kind should
appreciate this fact and use his influence in favor of armaments which
serve to make war expensive, and tend both to prevent war, and to save
life when war comes.
Let us for a moment suppose that the great European Powers had disarmed
fifteen years ago when the Czar of Russia broached the subject to them.
What would have been the result? This war would have come just the
same, and probably much sooner; and it would have been ten-fold more
bloody, even had the nations flung themselves upon one another armed
with scythes, carving-knives, wood-axes, and common tools of trade, or
even had they fought, as the simple cave men did, with clubs and stones.
Love of home and country--patriotism--on the one hand, and race hatred
on the other, are far more potent in the human heart than any lately
created sentiments of international brotherhood and humanity. Before
this war came, it was a common preachment of the peace-men and a common
belief of the multitude, that many socialists, members of brotherhoods
of labor and other opponents of war, would refuse to fight, and if
drafted would shoot down their officers from the rear. But nothing of
this kind has happened. When this war broke out, socialist, labor
unionist, and preacher of international brotherhood joined with their
militant fellow-countrymen in singing the "Marseillaise," "Wacht am
Rhein," "Britannia Rules the Waves," and rushed to arms and to war, and
are now fighting like demons, shoulder to shoulder with the imperialist
and the war lord.
In order that we may be made as right-seeking as possible, God has
ordained the trials of strife and hardship which force us to get busy,
and thereby develop our usefulness. Human duty may be expressed in the
following terms: The best preparation for the attainment of success in
life is the acquisition of a thorough realization of the fact that no
one deserves more from the world than he earns out of it, and that the
bigness or littleness of any one is exactly proportionate to his use to
the world, and that, consequently, actual self-service is impossible
except indirectly through world-service.
Whatever may be done in the service of an individual to help him attain
success and find comfort, or to lessen his discomfort, may not be best
for the general good, because individual welfare must, in the end of
things, be subservient to the general welfare.
It sometimes becomes perfectly right and proper that individual life
should be sacrificed for national life, but never national life for
individual life. The nation has, however, its obligations to the
individual, and obligations as exacting as those of the individual to
the nation. If a nation does not exercise due and reasonable diligence
to safeguard its people against war and does not provide itself with the
necessary trained men and machinery to forefend war, then the obligation
of the individual to the nation in the event of war is just so much
lessened. The leading of an untrained and ill-armed, improvised citizen
soldiery against an army of trained veterans, with all of the equipment
of modern warfare, results in useless, senseless slaughter.
If a nation does not prepare itself to demand and enforce respectful
treatment of its citizens in foreign countries, then its citizens should
have no patriotism, for they are like men and women without a country.
But when a nation is armed with guns, and armed with the purpose to
defend its citizens, wherever they may be, to the last man and last
pinch of gunpowder, and is so adequately prepared with labor-saving,
life-saving machinery that in the event of war the minimum of human
sacrifice shall be made, then it is the duty of every man to place
himself unreservedly at the service of his country.
If the people of this country could be roused to a realization of what
invasion means, there would be no longer heard any senseless prating
about an unarmed peace, but the whole people would rise in their might
and demand adequate armaments and an adequate army and navy, and the
senseless peace fanatics would be burned in effigy.
We have for half a century listened with confidence to the assurance
that we are so splendidly isolated by broad seas that we need not fear
invasion.
Our inadequate Navy is today the only bulwark against invasion, for
modern means of transportation over seas have reduced the ocean to a
ferry.
Both England and Germany have navies superior to our own, and would be
able to destroy our Navy, and land on our unfortified shores a hundred
thousand men in less than two weeks--half the time that would be
required for us to mobilize our little Army of thirty thousand men.
Japan is not so far away as she used to be. She has been rapidly
narrowing the Pacific, and she could land a quarter of a million men on
the Pacific coast in less than a month, much quicker than we could get
our thirty thousand regulars there to receive them.
We are no longer splendidly isolated from other nations. We are isolated
only from ourselves, and we are truly splendidly isolated in that
particular.
The other nations are isolated only by such time and difficulty as they
would have to encounter in order to bring veteran troops to our shores,
with all the necessary equipment of war, and, as we have seen, this is
an isolation of less than a month, while we are isolated by
unpreparedness by at least fifty months, for it would take more than
four years, if we should start now, to raise, equip, and train an army
that would compare in numbers, equipment, and training with the army
that any one of the Great Powers could place upon our shores in a month.
In a recent interview, Secretary of War Garrison said:
* * * * *
"_If tomorrow any first-class military power should attack the United
States in force and should succeed in getting her warships and
soldier-laden transports past our fleet, landed out of range of our
coast defenses, once fairly ashore she could pulverize our small regular
army and punish us to a humiliating degree, if not actually make us sue
for peace, before we could raise and train a volunteer army adequate to
cope with the invaders. In other words, at present our navy is our only
considerable bulwark against invasion. Even such part of our militia as
we could depend on and the available regular army would make an
extremely small force, our army being in size only a local police force,
well trained and highly efficient indeed, but in numbers little more
than twice the size of the police force of New York City--that is, not
large enough for our great country even as a mere police force._"
* * * * *
Let us, for argument's sake, assume for a moment that we were to be
invaded with an army of only a hundred thousand men, trained, equipped,
and supplied with the supreme adequacy with which the troops of the
other Great Powers are trained, equipped, and supplied.
The enemy would line up in a battle-front three times as long as our
little thirty thousand could be stretched with equal powers of
concentration, or if our thirty thousand were to be stretched out a
hundred miles we should be at least three times as weak as the enemy at
any point of attack, even were our thirty thousand to be as well
equipped and as well supplied as the troops of the enemy. But we should
be without the requisite field artillery, and the artillery that we
should have would be without the requisite training. We should be
without the needed cavalry, and our cavalry would be without proper
organization and experience. We should be without ammunition trains, and
very short of ammunition. Our troops, hustled together, and rushed to
the front for the first time to face a real enemy, would be unprepared
to behave like an army, and, what is very important, they would have no
hope of success.
Despair would be in the heart of every man. Both officers and men would
know that there were no ready resources, no reserves and reserve
supplies behind them, and no adequate arrangements for providing any.
Every man of the thirty thousand would know that he was being sacrificed
in atonement for national blundering, just as at Balaklava the noble Six
Hundred were by a blunder sacrificed in the charge of the Light Brigade.
PREPONDERANCE OF GUN-FIRE
It is strange how little the law of battles is understood by most
persons. Most persons imagine that in a fight between our Navy and
another navy, or between our Army and the army of an enemy, although
the enemy might have the advantage in the number of ships and in the
size and range of guns, the advantage would be immaterial and one which
might be balanced by the superiority of our personnel, and that,
although we might be somewhat short of the required field batteries and
ammunition, the superior fighting qualities of our men would render them
more than a match for the enemy, even in the face of superior gun-fire.
It does not appear to have been fully recognized even by the advocates
of better equipment for the American Army, how vitally important is
length of range in field artillery.
In the Boer War, the British field batteries found themselves at great
disadvantage in face of the longer French guns of the Boer batteries.
In the present European war, the great long-range German howitzers,
pummeling forts into heaps of scrap, and their plunging fire blowing
great craters along the battle-front, spread terror in the ranks of the
Allies, similar to the terror that the Romans felt when the fierce
Gothic giants slid down the Alps into the vineyards of Italy. But the
long-range French field-artillery soon restored confidence, for it was
found that the French field batteries could outrange the German
batteries.
We need field-guns of longer range. We need field-guns that shall not
only equal in range those now in use in Europe, but also we need guns of
even longer range. We should have field-guns of a range sufficient to
command sky-line from opposing sky-line. Here is an opportunity for the
vaunted American genius to assert itself.
It is necessary that the facts as they actually are should be recognized
and appreciated.
Victory in a naval battle today depends absolutely upon the weight of
the broadsides and the speed of the vessels, which enables them to
manoeuvre and choose positions of advantage with respect to the enemy;
while victory or defeat in a land fight depends upon the weight of
gun-fire, which can be directed against the positions of an enemy.
The actual number of infantry engaged is of secondary importance. It is
artillery that is of supreme importance. Should we be involved, our
field artillery must pave the way with the dead bodies of the enemy
before our infantry can advance. Also, the batteries of the enemy must
be silenced by our own batteries before they, with their gun-fire, shall
be able to silence ours. Other things being equal, therefore, it is the
number of field batteries that, more than anything else, turns the tide
of battle for defeat or victory. If the enemy's guns have a longer range
than ours, then they will be able to silence our batteries while far
beyond the range of our guns. They will be able to destroy our
artillery, while we should not be able even to injure theirs.
[Illustration: Relative Numerical Strength of Field Artillery]
Let us picture a land fight:
Our aerial scouts inform us that the enemy is approaching, and that they
have already mounted their long-range field artillery on a convenient
ridge; also that they have placed their big howitzers on an adjoining
lowland under the concealment of a wood, and that this formation is
repeated in similar units from ridge to ridge and hill to hill over a
front a hundred miles in length.
The enemy has also dug long lines of trenches far in advance of their
artillery. The enemy's position is well beyond the range of our
artillery. We are unable to reach the enemy's position with our guns,
while the enemy, being provided with guns of much longer range, is able
to storm our position along our entire front, and to throw shrapnel
shell into the trenches filled with our men, which stretch along the
lowland in front of our positions. We try to dig additional trenches to
advance our front, but the men sent to do the work are very quickly
killed by the shrapnel fire of the enemy.
We see with our field-glasses that the enemy has sent out detachments to
advance the line of their trenches. We fire at them, and find that our
shrapnel falls far short. The enemy, seeing this, advances and digs
trenches close up to the limit of the range of our guns.
All at once, the enemy opens fire with shrapnel upon our entire line of
trenches, and with shrapnel and howitzers upon all our fortified
positions. We return the fire, but without any effect; the range of our
guns being too short to reach the enemy. Many of our guns are quickly
silenced. The perfect hurricane of shrapnel thrown upon our trenches has
killed large numbers of our men and confounded the remainder.
The infantry of the enemy now advances pell-mell over the intervening
space, still under cover of artillery fire. Field batteries of the enemy
also advance rapidly and take up new positions.
Finding our positions untenable, our army retreats precipitately, taking
with it a few remaining guns, and our men re-form their batteries on
commanding positions to cover our retreat, but they are soon dislodged
by the long-range guns of the enemy. Finally, our army takes up its
stand far in the rear, forming a new battle-front, which has been
previously fortified.
The enemy advances, repeats the previous tactics, forming a long
battle-front on commanding positions just beyond the range of our guns,
and again proceeds to dislodge us, and drive us back by their long-range
gun-fire.
Our loss in men and guns has been enormous. The enemy, on the contrary,
has lost no guns, and but few men.
It will be seen that the enemy can very easily proceed in this manner
into the interior, and conquer the whole country without suffering very
much discomfiture, unless we have guns of as long or longer range than
the enemy has, and as many of them, also as many skilled troops to
operate them.
Most persons imagine that infantry, armed with the modern long-range
magazine-rifles, can go into battle, and shoot large numbers of an
enemy, and that, if the infantry is numerous and daring enough and brave
enough, they will be able to whip the enemy without the support of field
artillery. This is a grave error. An army of a million men, consisting
entirely of infantry, armed with modern shoulder-arms, would be
completely over-matched and easily defeated by an army of 25,000 men
amply equipped with modern field artillery. The infantry would be wholly
unable to get within musket-range, because they would all be destroyed
by the shrapnel of the enemy before they could get near enough to fire a
single effective shot.
A hundred thousand English, Germans, or Japanese, equipped with the
longest and best modern field artillery, with plenty of ammunition and
supply trains, air-scouts and engineer corps, could, in our present
defenseless condition, march through this country as Xenophon's ten
thousand marched through ancient Persia. They could cut their way
through all opposition that we could offer. We have neither the
infantry, nor the artillery, nor the cavalry, to oppose them, and the
artillery we have is of so much shorter range that at no time could we
get near enough to the enemy to reach him with our guns.
If war comes between us and any of the Great Powers, the splendid young
men of the country--husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, lovers--will have
to go to the front and meet the invaders.
If they go forward equipped with the necessary arms, ammunition, and
enginery of war, and are well trained and well officered, then they will
be able not only to hold their own against the invaders, with
comparatively little loss of life, but also to repel and drive out the
enemy and save our land from spoliation and our homes from despoliation.
If, on the other hand, they are to be sent forward without the necessary
arms, ammunition, and enginery, and without training, and incompetently
or incompletely officered, as the pacifist propagandists and other
sentimentalists are advising and planning that they be sent, then they
will go just like lambs to the slaughter.
The zone of fire in front of the enemy's trenches will be heaped high,
acres wide and miles long, with their dead bodies; and writhing,
groaning, shrieking, agonized forms of the wounded will crawl over and
under the dead toward the hope of safety and mercy.
Into such a hell are the hyper-sentimental peace sophists planning to
send those you most love, those to whom you most cling, and on whom you
most depend; and you are aiding and abetting the crime if you believe
the words of these false reasoners.
Every word you aim against necessary preparedness for war may, in the
final reckoning, aim a gun at the heart of him whom you love more than
all the world; and you might be able to say a word that would protect
him with a gun.
That human attribute which, more than any other, distinguishes man from
the brute, is imagination. Also, it is the attribute which, more than
any other, differentiates the normal man from the criminal. If, in
imagination, a would-be murderer could foresee the distorted face and
the despairing agony of his dying victim, and could foresee the
tear-streaming eyes of those mourning for him, he would, unless brazened
against every feeling of pity, stay his hand. If those who, through
their ignorance, false belief, or hypocrisy and desire for publicity,
are planning to sacrifice the unimaginable thousands of our best young
men in the bloody shambles of war, as an offering to false faith,
vanity, or hypocrisy, could only foresee in imagination the long lines
of manhood swept and annihilated by the withering fire of an enemy,
without guns to return that fire, then possibly they might submerge
personal limelight-lust for considerations of mercy.
If you believe them, and speak as they are speaking, and advise as they
are advising, against adequate national defense, you should at once
change your belief, and use your voice and every resource at your
command in future to forefend this country and avert the great useless
sacrifice.
Come, young lady reader, let us, in imagination, stand together on the
firing-line: Those regiments lining up are from New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, Massachusetts. They are forming for a charge. It is the
only way. Those shells, bursting among them with such deadly effect, are
shrapnel from the quick-firing guns of the enemy placed just over the
crest of yonder distant ridge; and those huge plunging projectiles,
which throw up great inverted cones of earth, with fragments of men, are
from the enemy's big howitzers, located under cover of the wood that
fringes the horizon.
If we only had the necessary quick-firing field-guns and shrapnel
ammunition, and the necessary field howitzers, we might dislodge or
silence those deadly batteries of the enemy. At any rate, we should be
able to engage them efficiently and cover the charge of our troops. We
should also be able to storm that line of trenches, to the discomfiture
of the enemy hidden there in vast numbers, and thus to prepare for the
onset of our men. But we have neither the guns nor the ammunition.
See--the order is given. Onward they go. Watch them, the brave fellows!
Why does the front line lie down so suddenly, with a few left standing?
My friend, they are not lying down; they are dead. But they are not all
killed, a large number of them are wounded. They are torn in every
inconceivable, horrible manner of mutilation. And look!--the other lines
go down, too; some lying still, others writhing on the ground. One of
those poor devils, with hands clenched in the grass and gnawing the
earth, is your brother!
See--a huge howitzer shell explodes right among them. The young man whom
you were to marry on his return from the war was standing on the verge
of the crater when the explosion came, and he is now lying there, with
both eyes blown out by the awful blast and hanging on his cheeks. There
are visions of you in the blasted eyes, and there are thoughts of you in
the dazed brain, and his dying breath is a whisper of your name.
Will you continue to think thoughts and speak words which may drive him
to that awful death?
The picture is horrible. That of the blasted eyes is revolting. True,
and for this reason it may not come within the artistic, as outlined in
the philosophy of Longinus; but it is not my purpose here to be
artistic. My very purpose is to visualize the horrible, because the only
way for the people of this country to prevent this on-coming horror is
to make the necessary military preparations for national defense.
But, young lady, this is not the end of the dreadful picture: Let us
look into your home. The awful news comes--our men are beaten with
enormous slaughter; father, brother, sweetheart--all your home's
defenders--are dead. The invaders who have murdered them are in the
street outside. There comes a summons at the door. A certain number of
the enemy have been billeted to your house, and you must play the genial
hostess. Though they get drunk, and ill-treat you beyond the power of
words to tell, there remains no remedy. Your dear ones, who were your
natural defenders, have been sacrificed on the altar of false faith in
defenselessness as a deterrent of war.