to do either a good deal of outdoor work or a good deal of what might
be called natural outdoor play do not need this athletic development.
In the Civil War the soldiers who came from the prairie and the
backwoods and the rugged farms where stumps still dotted the clearings,
and who had learned to ride in their infancy, to shoot as soon as they
could handle a rifle, and to camp out whenever they got the chance,
were better fitted for military work than any set of mere school or
college athletes could possibly be. Moreover, to mis-estimate athletics
is equally bad whether their importance is magnified or minimized. The
Greeks were famous athletes, and as long as their athletic training
had a normal place in their lives, it was a good thing. But it was a
very bad thing when they kept up their athletic games while letting
the stern qualities of soldiership and statesmanship sink into disuse.
Some of the younger readers of this book will certainly sometime read
the famous letters of the younger Pliny, a Roman who wrote, with what
seems to us a curiously modern touch, in the first century of the
present era. His correspondence with the Emperor Trajan is particularly
interesting; and not the least noteworthy thing in it is the tone of
contempt with which he speaks of the Greek athletic sports, treating
them as the diversions of an unwarlike people which it was safe to
encourage in order to keep the Greeks from turning into anything
formidable. So at one time the Persian kings had to forbid polo,
because soldiers neglected their proper duties for the fascinations
of the game. We can not expect the best work from soldiers who have
carried to an unhealthy extreme the sports and pastimes which would be
healthy if indulged in with moderation, and have neglected to learn
as they should the business of their profession. A soldier needs to
know how to shoot and take cover and shift for himself—not to box or
play foot-ball. There is, of course, always the risk of thus mistaking
means for ends. Fox-hunting is a first-class sport; but one of the
most absurd things in real life is to note the bated breath with which
certain excellent fox-hunters, otherwise of quite healthy minds, speak
of this admirable but not over-important pastime. They tend to make
it almost as much of a fetich as, in the last century, the French and
German nobles made the chase of the stag, when they carried hunting
and game-preserving to a point which was ruinous to the national
life. Fox-hunting is very good as a pastime, but it is about as poor
a business as can be followed by any man of intelligence. Certain
writers about it are fond of quoting the anecdote of a fox-hunter who,
in the days of the English civil war, was discovered pursuing his
favorite sport just before a great battle between the Cavaliers and
the Puritans, and right between their lines as they came together.
These writers apparently consider it a merit in this man that when his
country was in a death-grapple, instead of taking arms and hurrying to
the defence of the cause he believed right, he should placidly have
gone about his usual sports. Of course, in reality the chief serious
use of fox-hunting is to encourage manliness and vigor, and to keep
men hardy, so that at need they can show themselves fit to take part
in work or strife for their native land. When a man so far confuses
ends and means as to think that fox-hunting, or polo, or foot-ball,
or whatever else the sport may be, is to be itself taken as the end,
instead of as the mere means of preparation to do work that counts when
the time arises, when the occasion calls—why, that man had better
abandon sport altogether.
No boy can afford to neglect his work, and with a boy work, as a rule,
means study. Of course there are occasionally brilliant successes in
life where the man has been worthless as a student when a boy. To
take these exceptions as examples would be as unsafe as it would be
to advocate blindness because some blind men have won undying honor
by triumphing over their physical infirmity and accomplishing great
results in the world. I am no advocate of senseless and excessive
cramming in studies, but a boy should work, and should work hard,
at his lessons—in the first place, for the sake of what he will
learn, and in the next place, for the sake of the effect upon his own
character of resolutely settling down to learn it. Shiftlessness,
slackness, indifference in studying, are almost certain to mean
inability to get on in other walks of life. Of course, as a boy grows
older it is a good thing if he can shape his studies in the direction
toward which he has a natural bent; but whether he can do this or
not, he must put his whole heart into them. I do not believe in
mischief-doing in school hours, or in the kind of animal spirits that
results in making bad scholars; and I believe that those boys who take
part in rough, hard play outside of school will not find any need for
horse-play in school. While they study they should study just as hard
as they play foot-ball in a match game. It is wise to obey the homely
old adage, “Work while you work; play while you play.”
A boy needs both physical and moral courage. Neither can take the
place of the other. When boys become men they will find out that there
are some soldiers very brave in the field who have proved timid and
worthless as politicians, and some politicians who show an entire
readiness to take chances and assume responsibilities in civil affairs,
but who lack the fighting edge when opposed to physical danger. In
each case, with the soldiers and politicians alike, there is but half
a virtue. The possession of the courage of the soldier does not excuse
the lack of courage in the statesman and even less does the possession
of the courage of the statesman excuse shrinking on the field of
battle. Now, this is all just as true of boys. A coward who will take a
blow without returning it is a contemptible creature; but, after all,
he is hardly as contemptible as the boy who dares not stand up for what
he deems right against the sneers of his companions who are themselves
wrong. Ridicule is one of the favorite weapons of wickedness, and it is
sometimes incomprehensible how good and brave boys will be influenced
for evil by the jeers of associates who have no one quality that calls
for respect, but who affect to laugh at the very traits which ought to
be peculiarly the cause for pride.
There is no need to be a prig. There is no need for a boy to preach
about his own good conduct and virtue. If he does he will make himself
offensive and ridiculous. But there is urgent need that he should
practice decency; that he should be clean and straight, honest and
truthful, gentle and tender, as well as brave. If he can once get to a
proper understanding of things, he will have a far more hearty contempt
for the boy who has begun a course of feeble dissipation, or who is
untruthful, or mean, or dishonest, or cruel, than this boy and his
fellows can possibly, in return, feel for him. The very fact that the
boy should be manly and able to hold his own, that he should be ashamed
to submit to bullying without instant retaliation, should, in return,
make him abhor any form of bullying, cruelty, or brutality.
There are two delightful books, Thomas Hughes’s “Tom Brown at Rugby,”
and Aldrich’s “Story of a Bad Boy,” which I hope every boy still
reads; and I think American boys will always feel more in sympathy
with Aldrich’s story, because there is in it none of the fagging, and
the bullying which goes with fagging, the account of which, and the
acceptance of which, always puzzle an American admirer of Tom Brown.
There is the same contrast between two stories of Kipling’s. One,
called “Captains Courageous,” describes in the liveliest way just what
a boy should be and do. The hero is painted in the beginning as the
spoiled, over-indulged child of wealthy parents, of a type which we do
sometimes unfortunately see, and than which there exist few things more
objectionable on the face of the broad earth. This boy is afterward
thrown on his own resources, amid wholesome surroundings, and is forced
to work hard among boys and men who are real boys and real men doing
real work. The effect is invaluable.
On the other hand, if one wishes to find types of boys to be avoided
with utter dislike, one will find them in another story by Kipling,
called “Stalky & Co.,” a story which ought never to have been written,
for there is hardly a single form of meanness which it does not seem to
extol, or of school mismanagement which it does not seem to applaud.
Bullies do not make brave men; and boys or men of foul life can not
become good citizens, good Americans, until they change; and even
after the change scars will be left on their souls.
The boy can best become a good man by being a good boy—not a
goody-goody boy, but just a plain good boy. I do not mean that he
must love only the negative virtues; I mean he must love the positive
virtues also. “Good,” in the largest sense, should include whatever is
fine, straightforward, clean, brave, and manly. The best boys I know
—the best men I know—are good at their studies or their business,
fearless and stalwart, hated and feared by all that is wicked and
depraved, incapable of submitting to wrong-doing, and equally incapable
of being aught but tender to the weak and helpless. A healthy-minded
boy should feel hearty contempt for the coward, and even more hearty
indignation for the boy who bullies girls or small boys, or tortures
animals. One prime reason for abhorring cowards is because every good
boy should have it in him to thrash the objectionable boy as the need
arises.
Of course the effect that a thoroughly manly, thoroughly straight and
upright boy can have upon the companions of his own age, and upon those
who are younger, is incalculable. If he is not thoroughly manly, then
they will not respect him, and his good qualities will count for but
little; while, of course, if he is mean, cruel, or wicked, then his
physical strength and force of mind merely make him so much the more
objectionable a member of society. He can not do good work if he is not
strong and does not try with his whole heart and soul to count in any
contest; and his strength will be a curse to himself and to every one
else if he does not have thorough command over himself and over his
own evil passions, and if he does not use his strength on the side of
decency, justice, and fair dealing.
In short, in life, as in a foot-ball game, the principle to follow is:
Hit the line hard; don’t foul and don’t shirk, but hit the line hard!
MILITARY PREPAREDNESS AND UNPREPAREDNESS
PUBLISHED IN THE “CENTURY,” NOVEMBER, 1899
At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, M. Pierre Loti, member of
the French Academy and cultivated exponent of the hopes and beliefs of
the average citizen of Continental Europe in regard to the contest, was
at Madrid. Dewey’s victory caused him grief; but he consoled himself,
after watching a parade of the Spanish troops, by remarking: “They are
indeed still the solid and splendid Spanish troops, heroic in every
epoch—it needs only to look at them to divine the woe that awaits the
American shopkeepers when brought face to face with such soldiers.”
The excellent M. Loti had already explained Manila by vague references
to American bombs loaded with petroleum, and to a devilish mechanical
ingenuity wholly unaccompanied by either humanity or courage, and he
still allowed himself to dwell on the hope that there were reserved for
America _des surprises sanglantes_.
M. Loti’s views on military matters need not detain us, for his
attitude toward the war was merely the attitude of Continental Europe
generally, in striking contrast to that of England. But it is a curious
fact that his view reflects not unfairly two different opinions, which
two different classes of our people would have expressed before the
event—opinions singularly falsified by the fact. Our pessimists feared
that we had lost courage and fighting capacity; some of our optimists
asserted that we needed neither, in view of our marvelous wealth and
extraordinary inventiveness and mechanical skill. The national trait of
“smartness,” used in the Yankee sense of the word, has very good and
very bad sides. Among the latter is its tendency to create the belief
that we need not prepare for war, because somehow we shall be able
to win by some novel patent device, some new trick or new invention
developed on the spur of the moment by the ingenuity of our people. In
this way it is hoped to provide a substitute for preparedness—that
is, for years of patient and faithful attention to detail in advance.
It is even sometimes said that these mechanical devices will be of so
terrible a character as to nullify the courage which has always in the
past been the prime factor in winning battles.
Now, as all sound military judges knew in advance must inevitably be
the case, the experience of the Spanish War completely falsified every
prediction of this kind. We did not win through any special ingenuity.
Not a device of any kind was improvised during or immediately before
the war which was of any practical service. The “bombs enveloped
in petroleum” had no existence save in the brains of the Spaniards
and their more credulous sympathizers. Our navy won because of its
preparedness and because of the splendid seamanship and gunnery which
had been handed down as traditional in the service, and had been
perfected by the most careful work. The army, at the only point where
it was seriously opposed, did its work by sheer dogged courage and
hard fighting, in spite of an unpreparedness which almost brought
disaster upon it, and would without doubt actually have done so had not
the defects and shortcomings of the Spanish administration been even
greater than our own.
We won the war in a very short time, and without having to expend
more than the merest fraction of our strength. The navy was shown to
be in good shape; and Secretary Root, to whom the wisdom of President
McKinley has intrusted the War Department, has already shown himself as
good a man as ever held the portfolio—a man whose administration is
certain to be of inestimable service to the army and to the country. In
consequence, too many of our people show signs of thinking that, after
all, everything was all right, and is all right now; that we need not
bother ourselves to learn any lessons that are not agreeable to us, and
that if in the future we get into a war with a more formidable power
than Spain, we shall pull through somehow. Such a view is unjust to the
nation, and particularly unjust to the splendid men of the army and of
the navy, who would be sacrificed to it, should we ever engage in a
serious war without having learned the lessons that the year 1898 ought
to have taught.
If we wish to get an explanation of the efficiency of our navy in 1898,
and of the astonishing ease with which its victories were won, we
must go a long way back of that year, and study not only its history,
but the history of the Spanish navy for many decades. Of course any
such study must begin with a prompt admission of the splendid natural
quality of our officers and men. On the bridge, in the gun-turrets, in
the engine-room, and behind the quick-firers, every one alike, from the
highest to the lowest, was eager for the war, and was in heart, mind,
and body, of the very type which makes the best kind of fighting man.
Many of the officers of our ships have mentioned to me that during the
war punishments almost ceased, because the men who got into scrapes in
times of peace were so aroused and excited by the chance of battle that
their behavior was perfect. We read now and then of foreign services
where men hate their officers, have no community of interest with them,
and no desire to fight for the flag. Most emphatically such is not the
case in our service. The discipline is just but not severe, unless
severity is imperatively called for. As a whole, the officers have the
welfare of the men very much at heart, and take care of their bodies
with the same forethought that they show in training them for battle.
The physique of the men is excellent, and to it are joined eagerness to
learn, and readiness to take risks and to stand danger unmoved.
Nevertheless, all this, though indispensable as a base, would mean
nothing whatever for the efficiency of the navy without years of
careful preparation and training. A warship is such a complicated
machine, and such highly specialized training is self-evidently
needed to command it, that our naval commanders, unlike our military
commanders, are freed from having to combat the exasperating belief
that the average civilian could at short notice do their work. Of
course, in reality a special order of ability and special training are
needed to enable a man to command troops successfully; but the need is
not so obvious as on shipboard. No civilian could be five minutes on a
battleship without realizing his unfitness to command it; but there are
any number of civilians who firmly believe they can command regiments,
when they have not a single trait, natural or acquired, that really
fits them for the task. A blunder in the one case meets with instant,
open, and terrible punishment; in the other, it is at the moment only
a source of laughter or exasperation to the few, ominous though it may
be for the future. A colonel who issued the wrong order would cause
confusion. A ship-captain by such an order might wreck his ship. It
follows that the navy is comparatively free in time of war from the
presence in the higher ranks of men utterly unfit to perform their
duties. The nation realizes that it can not improvise naval officers
even out of first-rate skippers of merchantmen and passenger-steamers.
Such men could be used to a certain extent as under-officers to meet a
sudden and great emergency; but at best they would met it imperfectly,
and this the public at large understands.
There is, however, some failure to understand that much the same
condition prevails among ordinary seamen. The public speakers and
newspaper writers who may be loudest in clamoring for war are often
precisely the men who clamor against preparations for war. Whether
from sheer ignorance or from demagogy, they frequently assert that, as
this is the day of mechanics, even on the sea, and as we have a large
mechanical population, we could at once fit out any number of vessels
with men who would from the first do their duty thoroughly and well.
As a matter of fact, though the sea-mechanic has replaced the
sailorman, yet it is almost as necessary as ever that a man should have
the sea habit in order to be of use aboard ship; and it is infinitely
more necessary than in former times that a man-of-war’s-man should have
especial training with his guns before he can use them aright. In the
old days cannon were very simple; sighting was done roughly; and the
ordinary merchant seaman speedily grew fit to do his share of work on
a frigate. Nowadays men must be carefully trained for a considerable
space of time before they can be of any assistance whatever in handling
and getting good results from the formidable engines of destruction on
battleship, cruiser, and torpedo-boat. Crews can not be improvised.
To get the very best work out of them, they should all be composed of
trained and seasoned men; and in any event they should not be sent
against a formidable adversary unless each crew has for a nucleus a
large body of such men filling all the important positions. From time
immemorial it has proved impossible to improvise so much as a makeshift
navy for use against a formidable naval opponent. Any such effort must
meet with disaster.
Most fortunately, the United States had grown to realize this some
time before the Spanish War broke out. After the gigantic Civil War
the reaction from the strain of the contest was such that our navy
was permitted to go to pieces. Fifteen years after the close of the
contest in which Farragut took rank as one of the great admirals of
all time, the splendid navy of which he was the chief ornament had
become an object of derision, to every third-rate power in Europe and
South America. The elderly monitors and wooden steamers, with their
old-fashioned smooth-bore guns, would have been as incompetent to face
the modern ships of the period as the _Congress_ and the _Cumberland_
were to face the _Merrimac_. Our men were as brave as ever, but in war
their courage would have been of no more avail than the splendid valor
of the men who sank with their guns firing and flags flying when the
great Confederate ironclad came out to Hampton Roads.
At last the nation awoke from its lethargy. In 1883, under the
Administration of President Arthur, when Secretary Chandler was in
the Navy Department, the work was begun. The first step taken was the
refusal to repair the more antiquated wooden ships, and the building
of new steel ships to replace them. One of the ships thus laid down
was the _Boston_, which was in Dewey’s fleet. It is therefore merely
the literal truth to say that the preparations which made Dewey’s
victory possible began just fifteen years before the famous day when
he steamed into Manila Bay. Every Senator and Congressman who voted an
appropriation which enabled Secretary Chandler to begin the upbuilding
of the new navy, the President who advised the course, the Secretary
who had the direct management of it, the shipbuilder in whose yard the
ship was constructed, the skilled experts who planned her hull, engine,
and guns, and the skilled workmen who worked out these plans, all alike
are entitled to their share in the credit of the great Manila victory.
The majority of the men can never be known by name, but the fact that
they did well their part in the deed is of vastly more importance than
the obtaining of any reward for it, whether by way of recognition
or otherwise; and this fact will always remain. Nevertheless, it is
important for our own future that, so far as possible, we should
recognize the men who did well. This is peculiarly important in the
case of Congress, whose action has been the indispensable prerequisite
for every effort to build up the navy, as Congress provided the means
for each step.
As there was always a division in Congress, while in the popular mind
the whole body is apt to be held accountable for any deed, good or
ill, done by the majority, it is much to be wished, in the interest
of justice, that some special historian of the navy would take out
from the records the votes, and here and there the speeches, for
and against the successive measures by which the navy was built up.
Every man who by vote and voice from time to time took part in adding
to our fleet, in buying the armor, in preparing the gun-factories,
in increasing the personnel and enabling it to practice, deserves
well of the whole nation, and a record of his action should be kept,
that his children may feel proud of him. No less clearly should we
understand that throughout these fifteen years the men who, whether
from honest but misguided motives, from short-sightedness, from lack
of patriotism, or from demagogy, opposed the building up of the navy,
have deserved ill of the nation, exactly as did those men who recently
prevented the purchase of armor for the battleships, or, under the
lead of Senator Gorman, prevented the establishment of our army on the
footing necessary for our national needs. If disaster comes through
lack of preparedness, the fault necessarily lies far less with the
men under whom the disaster actually occurs than with those to whose
wrong-headedness or short-sighted indifference in time past the lack of
preparedness is due.
The mistakes, the blunders, and the shortcomings in the army management
during the summer of 1898 should be credited mainly, not to any one in
office in 1898, but to the public servants of the people, and therefore
to the people themselves, who permitted the army to rust since the
Civil War with a wholly faulty administration, and with no chance
whatever to perfect itself by practice, as the navy was perfected. In
like manner, any trouble that may come upon the army, and therefore
upon the nation, in the next few years, will be due to the failure to
provide for a thoroughly reorganized regular army of adequate size in
1898; and for this failure the members in the Senate and the House who
took the lead against increasing the regular army, and reorganizing
it, will be primarily responsible. On them will rest the blame of any
check to the national arms, and the honor that will undoubtedly be won
for the flag by our army will have been won in spite of their sinister
opposition.
In May, 1898, when our battleships were lying off Havana and the
Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers were crossing the ocean, our best
commanders felt justifiable anxiety because we had no destroyers to
guard our fleet against the Spanish destroyers. Thanks to the blunders
and lack of initiative of the Spaniards, they made no good use whatever
of their formidable boats, sending them against our ships in daylight,
when it was hopeless to expect anything from them.