_December, 1896._
The problem of preparation for war in modern times is both extensive
and complicated. As in the construction of the individual ship, where
the attempt to reconcile conflicting requirements has resulted,
according to a common expression, in a compromise, the most dubious of
all military solutions,--giving something to all, and all to none,--so
preparation for war involves many conditions, often contradictory one
to another, at times almost irreconcilable. To satisfy all of these
passes the ingenuity of the national Treasury, powerless to give the
whole of what is demanded by the representatives of the different
elements, which, in duly ordered proportion, constitute a complete
scheme of national military policy, whether for offence or defence.
Unable to satisfy all, and too often equally unable to say, frankly,
"This one is chief; to it you others must yield, except so far as you
contribute to its greatest efficiency," either the pendulum of the
government's will swings from one extreme to the other, or, in the
attempt to be fair all round, all alike receive less than they ask,
and for their theoretical completeness require. In other words, the
contents of the national purse are distributed, instead of being
concentrated upon a leading conception, adopted after due
deliberation, and maintained with conviction.
The creation of material for war, under modern conditions, requires a
length of time which does not permit the postponement of it to the
hour of impending hostilities. To put into the water a first-class
battle-ship, fully armored, within a year after the laying of her
keel, as has been done latterly in England, is justly considered an
extraordinary exhibition of the nation's resources for naval
shipbuilding; and there yet remained to be done the placing of her
battery, and many other matters of principal detail essential to her
readiness for sea. This time certainly would not be less for
ourselves, doing our utmost.
War is simply a political movement, though violent and exceptional in
its character. However sudden the occasion from which it arises, it
results from antecedent conditions, the general tendency of which
should be manifest long before to the statesmen of a nation, and to at
least the reflective portion of the people. In such anticipation, such
forethought, as in the affairs of common life, lies the best hope of
the best solution,--peace by ordinary diplomatic action; peace by
timely agreement, while men's heads are cool, and the crisis of fever
has not been reached by the inflammatory utterances of an unscrupulous
press, to which agitated public apprehension means increase of
circulation. But while the maintenance of peace by sagacious prevision
is the laurel of the statesman, which, in failing to achieve except by
force, he takes from his own brow and gives to the warrior, it is none
the less a necessary part of his official competence to recognize that
in public disputes, as in private, there is not uncommonly on both
sides an element of right, real or really believed, which prevents
either party from yielding, and that it is better for men to fight
than, for the sake of peace, to refuse to support their convictions of
justice. How deplorable the war between the North and South! but more
deplorable by far had it been that either had flinched from the
maintenance of what it believed to be fundamental right. On questions
of merely material interest men may yield; on matters of principle
they may be honestly in the wrong; but a conviction of right, even
though mistaken, if yielded without contention, entails a
deterioration of character, except in the presence of force
demonstrably irresistible--and sometimes even then. Death before
dishonor is a phrase which at times has been abused infamously, but it
none the less contains a vital truth.
To provide a force adequate to maintain the nation's cause, and to
insure its readiness for immediate action in case of necessity, are
the responsibility of the government of a state, in its legislative
and executive functions. Such a force is a necessary outcome of the
political conditions which affect, or, as can be foreseen, probably
may affect, the international relations of the country. Its existence
at all and its size are, or should be, the reflection of the national
consciousness that in this, that, or the other direction lie clear
national interests--for which each generation is responsible to
futurity--or national duties, equally clear from the mere fact that
the matter lies at the door, like Lazarus at the rich man's gate. The
question of when or how action shall be taken which may result in
hostilities, is indeed a momentous one, having regard to the dire
evils of war; but it is the question of a moment, of the last moment
to which can be postponed a final determination of such tremendous
consequence. To this determination preparation for war has only this
relation: that it should be adequate to the utmost demand that then
can be made upon it, and, if possible, so imposing that it will
prevent war ensuing, upon the firm presentation of demands which the
nation believes to be just. Such a conception, so stated, implies no
more than defence,--defence of the nation's rights or of the nation's
duties, although such defence may take the shape of aggressive action,
the only safe course in war.
Logically, therefore, a nation which proposes to provide itself with a
naval or military organization adequate to its needs, must begin by
considering, not what is the largest army or navy in the world, with
the view of rivalling it, but what there is in the political status of
the world, including not only the material interests but the temper of
nations, which involves a reasonable, even though remote, prospect of
difficulties which may prove insoluble except by war. The matter,
primarily, is political in character. It is not until this political
determination has been reached that the data for even stating the
military problem are in hand; for here, as always, the military arm
waits upon and is subservient to the political interests and civil
power of the state.
It is not the most probable of dangers, but the most formidable, that
must be selected as measuring the degree of military precaution to be
embodied in the military preparations thenceforth to be maintained.
The lesser is contained in the greater; if equal to the most that can
be apprehended reasonably, the country can view with quiet eye the
existence of more imminent, but less dangerous complications. Nor
should it be denied that in estimating danger there should be a
certain sobriety of imagination, equally removed from undue confidence
and from exaggerated fears. Napoleon's caution to his marshals not to
make a picture to themselves--not to give too loose rein to fancy as
to what the enemy might do, regardless of the limitations to which
military movements are subject--applies to antecedent calculations,
like those which we are considering now, as really as to the
operations of the campaign. When British writers, realizing the
absolute dependence of their own country upon the sea, insist that the
British navy must exceed the two most formidable of its possible
opponents, they advance an argument which is worthy at least of
serious debate; but when the two is raised to three, they assume
conditions which are barely possible, but lie too far without the
limits of probability to affect practical action.
In like manner, the United States, in estimating her need of military
preparation of whatever kind, is justified in considering, not merely
the utmost force which might be brought against her by a possible
enemy, under the political circumstances most favorable to the latter,
but the limitations imposed upon an opponent's action by well-known
conditions of a permanent nature. Our only rivals in potential
military strength are the great powers of Europe. These, however,
while they have interests in the western hemisphere,--to which a
certain solidarity is imparted by their instinctive and avowed
opposition to a policy to which the United States, by an inward
compulsion apparently irresistible, becomes more and more
committed,--have elsewhere yet wider and more onerous demands upon
their attention. Since 1884 Great Britain, France, and Germany have
each acquired colonial possessions, varying in extent from one million
to two and a half million square miles,--chiefly in Africa. This
means, as is generally understood, not merely the acquisition of so
much new territory, but the perpetuation of national rivalries and
suspicions, maintaining in full vigor, in this age, the traditions of
past animosities. It means uncertainties about boundaries--that most
fruitful source of disputes when running through unexplored
wildernesses--jealousy of influence over native occupants of the soil,
fear of encroachment, unperceived till too late, and so a constant, if
silent, strife to insure national preponderance in these newly opened
regions. The colonial expansion of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries is being resumed under our eyes, bringing with it the same
train of ambitions and feelings that were exhibited then, though these
are qualified by the more orderly methods of modern days and by a
well-defined mutual apprehension,--the result of a universal
preparedness for war, the distinctive feature of our own time which
most guarantees peace.
All this reacts evidently upon Europe, the common mother-country of
these various foreign enterprises, in whose seas and lands must be
fought out any struggle springing from these remote causes, and upon
whose inhabitants chiefly must fall both the expense and the bloodshed
thence arising. To these distant burdens of disquietude--in the
assuming of which, though to an extent self-imposed, the present
writer recognizes the prevision of civilization, instinctive rather
than conscious, against the perils of the future--is to be added the
proximate and unavoidable anxiety dependent upon the conditions of
Turkey and its provinces, the logical outcome of centuries of Turkish
misrule. Deplorable as have been, and to some extent still are,
political conditions on the American continents, the New World, in the
matter of political distribution of territory and fixity of tenure, is
permanence itself, as compared with the stormy prospect confronting
the Old in its questions which will not down.
In these controversies, which range themselves under the broad heads
of colonial expansion and the Eastern question, all the larger powers
of Europe, the powers that maintain considerable armies or navies, or
both, are directly and deeply interested--except Spain. The latter
manifests no solicitude concerning the settlement of affairs in the
east of Europe, nor is she engaged in increasing her still
considerable colonial dominion. This preoccupation of the great
powers, being not factitious, but necessary,--a thing that cannot be
dismissed by an effort of the national will, because its existence
depends upon the nature of things,--is a legitimate element in the
military calculations of the United States. It cannot enter into her
diplomatic considerations, for it is her pride not to seek, from the
embarrassments of other states, advantages or concessions which she
cannot base upon the substantial justice of her demands. But, while
this is true, the United States has had in the past abundant
experience of disputes, in which, though she believed herself right,
even to the point of having a just _casus belli_, the other party has
not seemed to share the same conviction. These difficulties, chiefly,
though not solely, territorial in character, have been the natural
bequest of the colonial condition through which this hemisphere passed
on its way to its present political status. Her own view of right,
even when conceded in the end, has not approved itself at first to the
other party to the dispute. Fortunately these differences have been
mainly with Great Britain, the great and beneficent colonizer, a state
between which and ourselves a sympathy, deeper than both parties have
been ready always to admit, has continued to exist, because founded
upon common fundamental ideas of law and justice. Of this the happy
termination of the Venezuelan question is the most recent but not the
only instance.
It is sometimes said that Great Britain is the most unpopular state in
Europe. If this be so,--and many of her own people seem to accept the
fact of her political isolation, though with more or less of
regret,--is there nothing significant to us in that our attitude
towards her in the Venezuelan matter has not commanded the sympathy of
Europe, but rather the reverse? Our claim to enter, as of right, into
a dispute not originally our own, and concerning us only as one of the
American group of nations, has been rejected in no doubtful tones by
organs of public opinion which have no fondness for Great Britain.
Whether any foreign government has taken the same attitude is not
known,--probably there has been no official protest against the
apparent admission of a principle which binds nobody but the parties
to it. Do we ourselves realize that, happy as the issue of our
intervention has been, it may entail upon us greater responsibilities,
more serious action, than we have assumed before? that it amounts in
fact--if one may use a military metaphor--to occupying an advanced
position, the logical result very likely of other steps in the past,
but which nevertheless implies necessarily such organization of
strength as will enable us to hold it?
Without making a picture to ourselves, without conjuring up
extravagant contingencies, it is not difficult to detect the existence
of conditions, in which are latent elements of future disputes,
identical in principle with those through which we have passed
heretofore. Can we expect that, if unprovided with adequate military
preparation, we shall receive from other states, not imbued with our
traditional habits of political thought, and therefore less patient of
our point of view, the recognition of its essential reasonableness
which has been conceded by the government of Great Britain? The latter
has found capacity for sympathy with our attitude,--not only by long
and close contact and interlacing of interests between the two
peoples, nor yet only in a fundamental similarity of character and
institutions. Besides these, useful as they are to mutual
understanding, that government has an extensive and varied experience,
extending over centuries, of the vital importance of distant regions
to its own interests, to the interests of its people and its commerce,
or to its political prestige. It can understand and allow for a
determination not to acquiesce in the beginning or continuance of a
state of things, the tendency of which is to induce future
embarrassments,--to complicate or to endanger essential welfare. A
nation situated as Great Britain is in India and Egypt scarcely can
fail to appreciate our own sensitiveness regarding the Central
American isthmus, and the Pacific, on which we have such extensive
territory; nor is it a long step from concern about the Mediterranean,
and anxious watchfulness over the progressive occupation of its
southern shores, to an understanding of our reluctance to see the
ambitions and conflicts of another hemisphere approach, even remotely
and indirectly, the comparatively peaceful neighborhoods surrounding
the Caribbean Sea, bearing a threat of disturbance to the political
distribution of power or of territorial occupation now existing.
Whatever our interests may demand in the future may be a matter of
doubt, but it is hard to see how there can be any doubt in the mind of
a British statesman that it is our clear interest now, when all is
quiet, to see removed possibilities of trouble which might break out
at a less propitious season.
Such facility for reaching an understanding, due to experience of
difficulties, is supported strongly by a hearty desire for peace,
traditional with a commercial people who have not to reproach
themselves with any lack of resolution or tenacity in assuming and
bearing the burden of war when forced upon them. "Militarism" is not a
preponderant spirit in either Great Britain or the United States;
their commercial tendencies and their isolation concur to exempt them
from its predominance. Pugnacious, and even warlike, when aroused, the
idea of war in the abstract is abhorrent to them, because it
interferes with their leading occupations, and its demands are alien
to their habits of thought. To say that either lacks sensitiveness to
the point of honor would be to wrong them; but the point must be made
clear to them, and it will not be found in the refusal of reasonable
demands, because they involve the abandonment of positions hastily or
ignorantly assumed, nor in the mere attitude of adhering to a position
lest there may be an appearance of receding under compulsion. Napoleon
I. phrased the extreme position of militarism in the words, "If the
British ministry should intimate that there was anything the First
Consul had not done, _because he was prevented from doing it_, that
instant he would do it."
Now the United States, speaking by various organs, has said, in
language scarcely to be misunderstood, that she is resolved to resort
to force, if necessary, to prevent the territorial or political
extension of European power beyond its present geographical limits in
the American continents. In the question of a disputed boundary she
has held that this resolve--dependent upon what she conceives her
reasonable policy--required her to insist that the matter should be
submitted to arbitration. If Great Britain should see in this
political stand the expression of a reasonable national policy, she is
able, by the training and habit of her leaders, to accept it as such,
without greatly troubling over the effect upon men's opinions that may
be produced by the additional announcement that the policy is worth
fighting for, and will be fought for if necessary. It would be a
matter of course for her to fight for her just interests, if need be,
and why should not another state say the same? The point--of honor, if
you like--is not whether a nation will fight, but whether its claim is
just. Such an attitude, however, is not the spirit of "militarism,"
nor accordant with it; and in nations saturated with the military
spirit, the intimation that a policy will be supported by force raises
that sort of point of honor behind which the reasonableness of the
policy is lost to sight. It can no longer be viewed dispassionately;
it is prejudged by the threat, however mildly that be expressed. And
this is but a logical development of their institutions. The soldier,
or the state much of whose policy depends upon organized force, cannot
but resent the implication that he or it is unable or unwilling to
meet force with force. The life of soldiers and of armies is their
spirit, and that spirit receives a serious wound when it seems--even
superficially--to recoil before a threat; while with the weakening of
the military body falls an element of political strength which has no
analogue in Great Britain or the United States, the chief military
power of which must lie ever in navies, never an aggressive factor
such as armies have been.
Now, the United States has made an announcement that she will support
by force a policy which may bring her into collision with states of
military antecedents, indisposed by their interests to acquiesce in
our position, and still less willing to accept it under appearance of
threat. What preparation is necessary in case such a one is as
determined to fight against our demands as we to fight for them?
Preparation for war, rightly understood, falls under two
heads,--preparation and preparedness. The one is a question mainly of
material, and is constant in its action. The second involves an idea
of completeness. When, at a particular moment, preparations are
completed, one is prepared--not otherwise. There may have been made a
great deal of very necessary preparation for war without being
prepared. Every constituent of preparation may be behindhand, or some
elements may be perfectly ready, while others are not. In neither case
can a state be said to be prepared.
In the matter of preparation for war, one clear idea should be
absorbed first by every one who, recognizing that war is still a
possibility, desires to see his country ready. This idea is that,
however defensive in origin or in political character a war may be,
the assumption of a simple defensive in war is ruin. War, once
declared, must be waged offensively, aggressively. The enemy must not
be fended off, but smitten down. You may then spare him every
exaction, relinquish every gain; but till down he must be struck
incessantly and remorselessly.
Preparation, like most other things, is a question both of kind and of
degree, of quality and of quantity. As regards degree, the general
lines upon which it is determined have been indicated broadly in the
preceding part of this article. The measure of degree is the estimated
force which the strongest _probable_ enemy can bring against you,
allowance being made for clear drawbacks upon his total force, imposed
by his own embarrassments and responsibilities in other parts of the
world. The calculation is partly military, partly political, the
latter, however, being the dominant factor in the premises.
In kind, preparation is twofold,--defensive and offensive. The former
exists chiefly for the sake of the latter, in order that offence, the
determining factor in war, may put forth its full power, unhampered by
concern for the protection of the national interests or for its own
resources. In naval war, coast defence is the defensive factor, the
navy the offensive. Coast defence, when adequate, assures the naval
commander-in-chief that his base of operations--the dock-yards and
coal depots--is secure. It also relieves him and his government, by
the protection afforded to the chief commercial centres, from the
necessity of considering them, and so leaves the offensive arm
perfectly free.
Coast defence implies coast attack. To what attacks are coasts liable?
Two, principally,--blockade and bombardment. The latter, being the
more difficult, includes the former, as the greater does the lesser. A
fleet that can bombard can still more easily blockade. Against
bombardment the necessary precaution is gun-fire, of such power and
range that a fleet cannot lie within bombarding distance. This
condition is obtained, where surroundings permit, by advancing the
line of guns so far from the city involved that bombarding distance
can be reached only by coming under their fire. But it has been
demonstrated, and is accepted, that, owing to their rapidity of
movement,--like a flock of birds on the wing,--a fleet of ships can,
without disabling loss, pass by guns before which they could not lie.
Hence arises the necessity of arresting or delaying their progress by
blocking channels, which in modern practice is done by lines of
torpedoes. The mere moral effect of the latter is a deterrent to a
dash past,--by which, if successful, a fleet reaches the rear of the
defences, and appears immediately before the city, which then lies at
its mercy.
Coast defence, then, implies gun-power and torpedo lines placed as
described. Be it said in passing that only places of decisive
importance, commercially or militarily, need such defences. Modern
fleets cannot afford to waste ammunition in bombarding unimportant
towns,--at least when so far from their own base as they would be on
our coast. It is not so much a question of money as of frittering
their fighting strength. It would not pay.
Even coast defence, however, although essentially passive, should have
an element of offensive force, local in character, distinct from the
offensive navy, of which nevertheless it forms a part. To take the
offensive against a floating force it must itself be afloat--naval.
This offensive element of coast defence is to be found in the
torpedo-boat, in its various developments. It must be kept distinct in
idea from the sea-going fleet, although it is, of course, possible
that the two may act in concert. The war very well may take such a
turn that the sea-going navy will find its best preparation for
initiating an offensive movement to be by concentrating in a principal
seaport. Failing such a contingency, however, and in and for coast
defence in its narrower sense, there should be a local flotilla of
small torpedo-vessels, which by their activity should make life a
burden to an outside enemy. A distinguished British admiral, now dead,
has said that he believed half the captains of a blockading fleet
would break down--"go crazy" were the words repeated to me--under the
strain of modern conditions. The expression, of course, was intended
simply to convey a sense of the immensity of suspense to be endured.
In such a flotilla, owing to the smallness of its components, and to
the simplicity of their organization and functions, is to be found the
best sphere for naval volunteers; the duties could be learned with
comparative ease, and the whole system is susceptible of rapid
development. Be it remembered, however, that it is essentially
defensive, only incidentally offensive, in character.
Such are the main elements of coast defence--guns, lines of torpedoes,
torpedo-boats. Of these none can be extemporized, with the possible
exception of the last, and that would be only a makeshift. To go into
details would exceed the limits of an article,--require a brief
treatise. Suffice it to say, without the first two, coast cities are
open to bombardment; without the last, they can be blockaded freely,
unless relieved by the sea-going navy. Bombardment and blockade are
recognized modes of warfare, subject only to reasonable
notification,--a concession rather to humanity and equity than to
strict law. Bombardment and blockade directed against great national
centres, in the close and complicated network of national and
commercial interests as they exist in modern times, strike not only
the point affected, but every corner of the land.
The offensive in naval war, as has been said, is the function of the
sea-going navy--of the battle-ships, and of the cruisers of various
sizes and purposes, including sea-going torpedo-vessels capable of
accompanying a fleet, without impeding its movements by their loss of
speed or unseaworthiness. Seaworthiness, and reasonable speed under
all weather conditions, are qualities necessary to every constituent
of a fleet; but, over and above these, the backbone and real power of
any navy are the vessels which, by due proportion of defensive and
offensive powers, are capable of taking and giving hard knocks. All
others are but subservient to these, and exist only for them.
What is that strength to be? Ships answering to this description are
the _kind_ which make naval strength; what is to be its _degree_? What
their number? The answer--a broad formula--is that it must be great
enough to take the sea, and to fight, with reasonable chances of
success, the largest force likely to be brought against it, as shown
by calculations which have been indicated previously. Being, as we
claim, and as our past history justifies us in claiming, a nation
indisposed to aggression, unwilling to extend our possessions or our
interests by war, the measure of strength we set ourselves depends,
necessarily, not upon our projects of aggrandizement, but upon the
disposition of others to thwart what we consider our reasonable
policy, which they may not so consider. When they resist, what force
can they bring against us? That force must be naval; we have no
exposed point upon which land operations, decisive in character, can
be directed. This is the kind of the hostile force to be apprehended.
What may its size be? There is the measure of our needed strength. The
calculation may be intricate, the conclusion only approximate and
probable, but it is the nearest reply we can reach. So many ships of
such and such sizes, so many guns, so much ammunition--in short, so
much naval material. In the material provisions that have been
summarized under the two chief heads of defence and offence--in coast
defence under its three principal requirements, guns, lines of
stationary torpedoes, and torpedo-boats, and in a navy able to keep
the sea in the presence of a probable enemy--consist what may be
called most accurately preparations for war. In so far as the United
States is short in them, she is at the mercy of an enemy whose naval
strength is greater than that of her own available navy. If her navy
cannot keep the enemy off the coast, blockade at least is possible.
If, in addition, there are no harbor torpedo-boats, blockade is easy.
If, further, guns and torpedo lines are deficient, bombardment comes
within the range of possibility, and may reach even the point of
entire feasibility. There will be no time for preparation after war
begins.
It is not in the preparation of material that states generally fall
most short of being ready for war at brief notice; for such
preparation is chiefly a question of money and of manufacture,--not so
much of preservation after creation. If money enough is forthcoming, a
moderate degree of foresight can insure that the amount of material
deemed necessary shall be on hand at a given future moment; and a
similar condition can be maintained steadily. Losses by deterioration
or expenditure, or demand for further increase if such appear
desirable, can all be forecast with reasonable calculations, and
requirements thence arising can be made good. This is comparatively
easy, because mere material, once wrought into shape for war, does not
deteriorate from its utility to the nation because not used
immediately. It can be stored and cared for at a relatively small
expense, and with proper oversight will remain just as good and just
as ready for use as at its first production. There are certain
deductions, a certain percentage of impairment to be allowed for, but
the general statement holds.
A very different question is confronted in the problem how to be ready
at equally short notice to use this material,--to provide in
sufficient numbers, upon a sudden call, the living agents, without
whom the material is worthless. Such men in our day must be especially
trained; and not only so, but while training once acquired will not be
forgot wholly--stays by a man for a certain time--it nevertheless
tends constantly to drop off from him. Like all habits, it requires
continued practice. Moreover, it takes quite a long time to form, in a
new recruit, not merely familiarity with the use of a particular
weapon, but also the habit and working of the military organization of
which he is an individual member. It is not enough that he learn just
that one part of the whole machinery which falls to him to handle; he
must be acquainted with the mutual relations of the other parts to his
own and to the whole, at least in great measure. Such knowledge is
essential even to the full and intelligent discharge of his own duty,
not to speak of the fact that in battle every man should be ready to
supply the place of another of his own class and grade who has been
disabled. Unless this be so, the ship will be very far short of her
best efficiency.
Now, to possess such proficiency in the handling of naval material for
war, and in playing an intelligent part in the general functioning of
a ship in action, much time is required. Time is required to obtain
it, further time is needed in order to retain it; and such time, be it
more or less, is time lost for other purposes,--lost both to the
individual and to the community. When you have your thoroughly
efficient man-of-war's man, you cannot store him as you do your guns
and ammunition, or lay him up as you may your ships, without his
deteriorating at a rate to which material presents no parallel. On the
other hand, if he be retained, voluntarily or otherwise, in the naval
service, there ensues the economical loss--the loss of productive
power--which constitutes the great argument against large standing
armies and enforced military service, advanced by those to whom the
productive energies of a country outweigh all other considerations.
It is this difficulty which is felt most by those responsible for the
military readiness of European states, and which therefore has engaged
their most anxious attention. The providing of material of war is an
onerous money question; but it is simple, and has some compensation
for the expense in the resulting employment of labor for its
production. It is quite another matter to have ready the number of men
needed,--to train them, and to keep them so trained as to be available
immediately.
The solution is sought in a tax upon time--Upon the time of the
nation, economically lost to production, and upon the time of the
individual, lost out of his life. Like other taxes, the tendency on
all sides is to reduce this as far as possible,--to compromise between
ideal proficiency for probable contingencies, and the actual demands
of the existing and usual conditions of peace. Although inevitable,
the compromise is unsatisfactory, and yields but partial results in
either direction. The economist still deplores and resists the loss of
producers,--the military authorities insist that the country is short
of its necessary force. To obviate the difficulty as far as possible,
to meet both of the opposing demands, resort is had to the system of
reserves, into which men pass after serving in the active force for a
period, which is reduced to, and often below, the shortest compatible
with instruction in their duties, and with the maintenance of the
active forces at a fixed minimum. This instruction acquired, the
recipient passes into the reserve, leaves the life of the soldier or
seaman for that of the citizen, devoting a comparatively brief time in
every year to brushing up the knowledge formerly acquired. Such a
system, under some form, is found in services both voluntary and
compulsory.
It is scarcely necessary to say that such a method would never be
considered satisfactory in any of the occupations of ordinary life. A
man who learns his profession or trade, but never practises it, will
not long be considered fit for employment. No kind of practical
preparation, in the way of systematic instruction, equals the
practical knowledge imbibed in the common course of life. This is just
as true of the military professions--the naval especially--as it is of
civil callings; perhaps even more so, because the former are a more
unnatural, and therefore, when attained, a more highly specialized,
form of human activity. For the very reason that war is in the main an
evil, an unnatural state, but yet at times unavoidable, the demands
upon warriors, when average men, are exceptionally exacting.
Preparedness for naval war therefore consists not so much in the
building of ships and guns as it does in the possession of trained men
in adequate numbers, fit to go on board at once and use the material,
the provision of which is merely one of the essential preparations for
war. The word "fit" includes fairly all that detail of organization
commonly called mobilization, by which the movements of the individual
men are combined and directed. But mobilization, although the subjects
of it are men, is itself a piece of mental machinery. Once devised, it
may be susceptible of improvement, but it will not become inefficient
because filed away in a pigeon-hole, any more than guns and
projectiles become worthless by being stored in their parks or
magazines. Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of
themselves. Provide your fit men,--fit by their familiarity not only
with special instruments, but with a manner of life,--and your
mobilization is reduced to a slip of paper telling each one where he
is to go. He will get there.
That a navy, especially a large navy, can be kept fully manned in
peace--manned up to the requirements of war--must be dismissed as
impracticable. If greatly superior to a probable enemy, it will be
unnecessary; if more nearly equal, then the aim can only be to be
superior in the number of men immediately available, and fit according
to the standard of fitness here generalized. The place of a reserve in
any system of preparation for war must be admitted, because
inevitable. The question, of the proportion and character of the
reserve, relatively to the active force of peace, is the crux of the
matter. This is essentially the question between long-service and
short-service systems. With long service the reserves will be fewer,
and for the first few years of retirement much more efficient, for
they have acquired, not knowledge only, but a habit of life. With
short service, more men are shoved through the mill of the
training-school. Consequently they pass more rapidly into the reserve,
are less efficient when they get there, and lose more rapidly, because
they have acquired less thoroughly; on the other hand, they will be
decidedly more numerous, on paper at least, than the entire trained
force of a long-service system. The pessimists on either side will
expound the dangers--the one, of short numbers; the others, of
inadequate training.
Long service must be logically the desire, and the result, of
voluntary systems of recruiting the strength of a military force.
Where enrolment is a matter of individual choice, there is a better
chance of entrance resulting in the adoption of the life as a calling
to be followed; and this disposition can be encouraged by the offering
of suitable inducements. Where service is compulsory, that fact alone
tends to make it abhorrent, and voluntary persistence, after time has
been served, rare. But, on the other hand, as the necessity for
numbers in war is as real as the necessity of fitness, a body where
long service and small reserves obtain should in peace be more
numerous than one where the reserves are larger. To long service and
small reserves a large standing force is the natural corollary. It may
be added that it is more consonant to the necessities of warfare, and
more consistent with the idea of the word "reserve," as elsewhere used
in war. The reserve in battle is that portion of the force which is
withheld from engagement, awaiting the unforeseen developments of the
fight; but no general would think of carrying on a pitched battle with
the smaller part of his force, keeping the larger part in reserve.
Rapid concentration of effort, anticipating that of the enemy, is the
ideal of tactics and of strategy,--of the battle-field and of the
campaign. It is that, likewise, of the science of mobilization, in its
modern development. The reserve is but the margin of safety, to
compensate for defects in conception or execution, to which all
enterprises are liable; and it may be added that it is as applicable
to the material force--the ships, guns, etc.--as it is to the men.
The United States, like Great Britain, depends wholly upon voluntary
enlistments; and both nations, with unconscious logic, have laid great
stress upon continuous service, and comparatively little upon
reserves. When seamen have served the period which entitles them to
the rewards of continuous service, without further enlistment, they
are, though still in the prime of life, approaching the period when
fitness, in the private seaman or soldier, depends upon ingrained
habit--perfect practical familiarity with the life which has been
their one calling--rather than upon that elastic vigor which is the
privilege of youth. Should they elect to continue in the service,
there still remain some years in which they are an invaluable leaven,
by character and tradition. If they depart, they are for a few years a
reserve for war--if they choose to come forward; but it is manifest
that such a reserve can be but small, when compared with a system
which in three or five years passes men through the active force into
the reserve. The latter, however, is far less valuable, man for man.
Of course, a reserve which has not even three years' service is less
valuable still.
The United States is to all intents an insular power, like Great
Britain. We have but two land frontiers, Canada and Mexico. The latter
is hopelessly inferior to us in all the elements of military strength.
As regards Canada, Great Britain maintains a standing army; but, like
our own, its numbers indicate clearly that aggression will never be
her policy, except in those distant regions whither the great armies
of the world cannot act against her, unless they first wrench from her
the control of the sea. No modern state has long maintained a
supremacy by land and by sea,--one or the other has been held from
time to time by this or that country, but not both. Great Britain
wisely has chosen naval power; and, independent of her reluctance to
break with the United States for other reasons, she certainly would
regret to devote to the invasion of a nation of seventy millions the
small disposable force which she maintains in excess of the constant
requirements of her colonial interests. We are, it may be repeated, an
insular power, dependent therefore upon a navy.
Durable naval power, besides, depends ultimately upon extensive
commercial relations; consequently, and especially in an insular
state, it is rarely aggressive, in the military sense. Its instincts
are naturally for peace, because it has so much at stake outside its
shores. Historically, this has been the case with the conspicuous
example of sea power, Great Britain, since she became such; and it
increasingly tends to be so. It is also our own case, and to a yet
greater degree, because, with an immense compact territory, there has
not been the disposition to external effort which has carried the
British flag all over the globe, seeking to earn by foreign commerce
and distant settlement that abundance of resource which to us has been
the free gift of nature--or of Providence. By her very success,
however, Great Britain, in the vast increase and dispersion of her
external interests, has given hostages to fortune, which for mere
defence impose upon her a great navy. Our career has been different,
our conditions now are not identical, yet our geographical position
and political convictions have created for us also external interests
and external responsibilities, which are likewise our hostages to
fortune. It is not necessary to roam afar in search of adventures;
popular feeling and the deliberate judgment of statesmen alike have
asserted that, from conditions we neither made nor control, interests
beyond the sea exist, have sprung up of themselves, which demand
protection. "Beyond the sea"--that means a navy. Of invasion, in any
real sense of the word, we run no risk, and if we did, it must be by
sea; and there, at sea, must be met primarily, and ought to be met
decisively, any attempt at invasion of our interests, either in
distant lands, or at home by blockade or by bombardment. Yet the force
of men in the navy is smaller, by more than half, than that in the
army.
The necessary complement of those admirable measures which have been
employed now for over a decade in the creation of naval material is
the preparation of an adequate force of trained men to use this
material when completed. Take an entirely fresh man: a battleship can
be built and put in commission before he becomes a trained
man-of-war's man, and a torpedo-boat can be built and ready for
service before, to use the old sea phrase, "the hay seed is out of his
hair." Further, in a voluntary service, you cannot keep your trained
men as you can your completed ship or gun. The inevitable inference is
that the standing force must be large, because you can neither create
it hastily nor maintain it by compulsion. Having fixed the amount of
material,--the numbers and character of the fleet,--from this follows
easily the number of men necessary to man it. This aggregate force can
then be distributed, upon some accepted idea, between the standing
navy and the reserve. Without fixing a proportion between the two, the
present writer is convinced that the reserve should be but a small
percentage of the whole, and that in a small navy, as ours,
relatively, long will be, this is doubly imperative; for the smaller
the navy, the greater the need for constant efficiency to act
promptly, and the smaller the expense of maintenance. In fact, where
quantity--number--is small, quality should be all the more high. The
quality of the whole is a question of _personnel_ even more than of
material; and the quality of the _personnel_ can be maintained only by
high individual fitness in the force, undiluted by dependence upon a
large, only partly efficient, reserve element.
"One foot on sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never,"
will not man the fleet. It can be but an imperfect palliative, and can
be absorbed effectually by the main body only in small proportions. It
is in torpedo-boats for coast defence, and in commerce-destroying for
deep-sea warfare, that the true sphere for naval reserves will be
found; for the duties in both cases are comparatively simple, and the
organization can be the same.
Every danger of a military character to which the United States
is exposed can be met best outside her own territory--at sea.
Preparedness for naval war--preparedness against naval attack and for
naval offence--is preparedness for anything that is likely to occur.