West Point in our next war; the only way to create and to maintain an army

Front matter

N^'^ Point

in

Jur Next War

Preface To The Second Edition

HUNDREDS of millions of dollars— I had almost written thousands of millions of dollars — could have been saved in the prosecution of the war with Germany had the Government of the United States adopted the recommendations of this book, and have given the country an expansible military organization for war in the period between the date of its pubUcation, in December, 19 15, and our declaration of war against Germany, on the 6th of April, 191 7, a period of one year and foiu" months in which nothing, absolutely nothing, was done to put the country in a condition of defense, and, through defense, in a condition to meet war whenever war should come.

A year and four months of the most valuable time for preparation was lost to the nation by the failure of the President and the Government of the United States to heed the warnings brought to their ears by every wind from the battlefields of the European War, a war which held within itself the constant threat of war for the United States, either immediately or within six or eight years after its termination.

This period of temporary peace, which should have been a period of preparation for the United

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States, if availed of, would have put us at least six months or a year ahead of the time, when unprepared, we might hope to get our troops in the field, whenever war should break out. It should not be forgotten that while we were organizing our war army after war had broken out, that we were doing so under the protection of the guns of France, of Great Britain, and of Italy, otherwise we should not have had so peaceful a period of organization as we had, and never again shall we be so fortunate when sad war shall come to us and to our dear country.

When this book was pubUshed I doubt if there were five hundred people in the United States who favored raising an army by conscription. England was still wedded to the volunteer system of raising armies. I wrote the book because, although a volimteer soldier of the United States in the War of the Rebellion, I believed that the day of the volunteer soldier had passed, and that the only way to create and to maintain a modern army was by conscription: I consequently adopted that principle of organization as the controlling principle of this book.

I wrote the book in the summer and autumn of 1915, a year and a half before we entered the war, and published it at my own expense, entirely from a sense of duty to my country. I saw clearly the danger our country ran in drifting, unprepared for war, and I reahzed the sacrifices, the loss of inestimably valuable time, the possibility of defeat which she might incur, should we enter war

Vll unprepared, and I wished to awaken her from the fool's paradise in which she was so complacently living.

I distributed, with my compliments, upward of five hundred copies of the book, sending copies to those whom I thought, because of their official position, would be interested in the discussion of the subject of the defense of the country, especially since the National Security League, of which organization, by the way, I am a life member, was holding congresses of the order in advocacy of universal miHtary service, which I believed to be an utterly chimerical plan of organization, if the object was the creation of soldiers, and it seemed to me that soldiers, and not masses of men with arms in their hands, was and should be the only object of the nation. I attended two of the congresses of the order as a delegate from two universities with which I had affiliations, and opposed openly the plan of the organization, advocating conscription as the only practical method of mobiHzing and creating soldiers, and out of such soldiers an army capable of maintaining the honor of the nation in war. Of course, my proposition was voted down in a congress organized to advocate a fad of the moment, but I was encouraged to observe that the affirmative vote on my proposition in the second congress of the order was much larger in volume than in the first congress, which proved to me that a part of the congress was at least groping toward the light.

I sent copies of my book to the President of the

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United States, to the Secretaries of State, of War, and of the Navy; to the Chief of Staff and the Assistant Chief of Staff of the Army, and to a number of Bureau Chiefs of the War Department; to the Admiral of the Navy ; to every Senator of the United States, and to the leading members of the House of Representatives, including every member of the Military Committee; to a number of officers of the Army and the Navy; to the libraries of the War and Navy Departments, of the Mihtary Academy at West Point, of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, of the War Colleges of the Army and the Navy; to the five leading clubs of Washington, the Army and Navy, the Metropolitan, the Cosmos, the University and the Press Club, and generally to a certain number of gentlemen in different parts of the country, who might be supposed to be interested in the subject of national defense. My publishers meanwhile reporting the sale of between three and four hundred copies of the book, and that the first edition was practically exhausted.

I do not claim that my book, as widely as it was thus distributed, was the cause of the awakening of the Government and of the country to the wisdom of raising the army of several millions of men which the war demanded, by conscription. But I fancy that I have the right to think that it was one of the moving causes to such wisdom of action.

The great war is now over. The great bulk of the vast army which was created has been

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demobilized. The country is now facing the creation of a peace army; and Congress seems to be almost as much at sea as to a military policy, and as uncertain as to the best method of creating an army, as in the period of peace before the outbreak of the late war.

We now face the probable establishment of universal service as the principle of military organization, the experience of the creation and maintenance of our war army apparently being forgotten, and Congress is showing a disposition, common to fallible human nature, of forsaking experience for theory, regardless of the fact that there are few directions in which the path of theory is fuller of thorns than that of military organization.

The War Department has submitted its plan of military organization in which it asks for a regular army of upward of five hundred thousand men, supplementing this demand with clauses providing for universal military service, with three months' training for the men so called to the colors, as its main reliance in war for a war army fit to meet an enemy in the field.

By mutual agreement between the House and Senate Military Committees, or their respective Chairmen, bills providing for universal military training, with six months service with the colors, have been presented to the two Houses of Congress.

I respectfully protest against both of these plans on the broad ground that neither of them will give the country soldiers ready to take the field against a well-organized and disciplined enemy's

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army the moment war breaks out. Soldiers, in the fullest acceptation of the term, are what we need, and the only kind of soldiers that we should have.

I have insisted in my book, and I insist even more strongly here and now, that what the United States needs is an army thoroughly disciplined and trained, ready to meet any enemy, no matter who he may be, or whence he may come, on a plane of appreciable superiority, allowing for the influence of patriotism added to efficient training, to give our army the superiority in actual battle. We should not wish to place before a veteran European or Japanese army in battle an army undertrained and inferior in morale to our enemy, and such will siu-ely be the case if either the military plan of the General Staff or the plan of the House and Senate Military Committees' bill is enacted into law.

We are told that our soldiers of six months' training met and sustained successfully the shock of the best troops of the German army in battle. But remember that we declared war upon Germany on the 6th of April, 19 17, and that our first serious encounter with the German army in the open took place toward the end of July and in August, 191 8, or fully one year and five months after we entered into the war. If in that year and five months our General Staff was only able to give our troops six months' training before putting them into battle, there was gross blundering on the part of the General Staff. But I do not beUeve the statement in its baldness. Our best infantry,

XI the United States Marines, hold the honor of our first decisive victory over the enemy, and I do not think, with their glorious record in all of our wars, that the Marines should be classed as six months' troops, and unless my memory misleads me, our regular troops supported the gallant Marines at Chateau Theirry; and they surely can not be spoken of as six months' troops.

Remember that in the war with Germany we had all the time necessary to create, in a most leisurely manner, an army of soldiers, because we organized our army behind the protecting fire of the French, the English, and the Italian guns, precisely as Great Britain organized her volunteer army behind the French guns which rang out victory in the battle of the Marne.

Do not let us be fooled by this experience. It will never come again, unless we are to do our fighting round the world, under the auspices of the League of Nations, and I have very little doubt that we shall have fighting enough under the League to satisfy all the lovers of peace in the country, who are now saying that the heart of the world will break unless we ratify the German treaty of peace, with its attachment of the covenant of the League of Nations, as it stands written at Versailles.

As for the Plan of the General Staff, aside from its provisions in respect to the regular army, which I do not now discuss, it is unwise in its proposition of three months' training for the men of the Reserve Army. The Chief of Staff of the xii Preface

Army, if he be a soldier, and it is fair to assume that he is a soldier, must know that the advice which he has given the Congress to rely upon a Reserve Army which has had but three months' training, is utterly unsound and misleading advice and that such advice is opposed to every principle of military organization and training.

A soldier can not he made in three months, nor can a dependable army he created out oj soldiers who have had hut three months' training. Perhaps the Chief of Staff is thinking of completing the training of his three months' men after war breaks out. But it is to oppose such reliance upon the training of our soldiers ajter war breaks out that I wrote this book, and am now writing this preface to its second edition. I want my country to start fair in the next war in which we engage, or to be so fully prepared for war that that condition of preparedness will prove its worth by saving us from war.

Three months' men may, and have been known to fight well, but it is a toss of a copper whether they may not fiee the field, as the militia fled the field of Bladensburg, leaving the gallant Barney and his handful of sailors and marines to maintain the battle, and to cover the flight of the mihtia. It is no reflection upon the courage of these militiamen that they fled the field. The reason that they ran was that they were not soldiers. With proper training and discipline they would have stood their ground, and possibly have saved our

XIll capital from the degradation of the presence of the hostile British flag.

Congressional legislation, even if directed by the advice of the Chief of Staff of the Army, can not do the impossible. And I say, what every soldier knows to be true, that soldiers can not be made in three months. Every officer of the army, who is himself a soldier, knows this to be true as well as I know it to be true, and consequently a recommendation from the General Staff advising the creation of the Reserve Army on the basis of three months' service with he colors, should be rejected by Congress as utterly improper and bad advice.

I have rarely seen a well thought out, clearly expressed, consistent and well balanced plan of military organization come out of the War Department or from the General Staff. There is, of course, always something to commend in their plans, but they are overloaded with what may be called camouflage; by that something which is thought to render the chief objects of such measures acceptable to Congress. I have always wished that the War Department or the General Staff would give Congress a clear and well-balanced plan of military organization, unclouded by what they may think good poHtics. Then we should have a direct issue made for the action of Congress.

Congress wants sound military advice. It needs clear and honest thinking. It needs the best, and only the best plan of military organization which the best thought of the army can give it, free from xiv Preface

surplusage, and free from all absurdities of an overloaded military system.

Congress is as honest and as patriotic as the army, and is earnest in its effort to give the country the best army organization possible. But it needs professional or rather technical guidance. This it has a right to look to the officers of the regular army to give it.

The bad form of some of the legislation advised and presented by the General Staff, or by the War Department, in its present miUtary bill, which is clogged with various classes of officers and enlisted men, is manifested by the provision of a couple of miUtary bands, or of one large band with various classes of musicians, and a number of trumpeters for the equipment of the Department of the Adjutant General, which, I think I may say that I know, as an Adjutant General of an Army Corps in the field in time of war, to be not only unnecessary, but an amusing adjunct to the Adjutant General's Department. But perhaps the esoteric thought of the General Staff may be contemplating a return to the employment of the Adjutant General as a herald of medieval times, and as those officers were found in the armies, let us say, of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and to add to his present duties, that of appearing in person before a beleaguered fortress to formally demand the surrender of the fortress and its garrison to the puissant arms of the United States. The Adjutant General is to be supphed with trumpeters, who could sound a fanfare on their bugles

XV before the portcullis of the hostile fortress before he should demand the surrender of the garrison, but I fear his summons would fail of the effect of its medieval antetype, because of his lacking in picturesqueness, and it will be necessary to add to the circumstance of our khaki-clad Adjutant General before he can rival the heralds of medieval times. Tabards must be allowed to him and his followers to conceal the very simple effect of the khaki, and pursuivants must be accorded to him to form his suite, so as to impress the minds of the defenders of the fortress, and to convince them of the might of the United States. There should be found a use in this form of ceremony for the military band of the Adjutant General, but I confess great difficulty in finding a place for it in this effort at the reestablishment of medievalism in our military system, except that should it be discovered that there were some small boys within the walls of the fortress, the band might strike up such a sterling martial air as "There is a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," and to trust to their delight to put the commandant in a surrendering frame of mind.

I think I can perceive in the miUtary bill presented by the Chairmen of the House and Senate Military Committees, the influence, even if unconscious influence, of this book upon its composition.

There is a manifest effort made in this House and Senate bill to create a Reserve Army which shall, through its organization and training, supxvi Preface •

plement the Active Army, represented by what is called the Regulr Army of the United States. And there is a suggestion of the thought of this book that this Reserve Army shall be a part of the Regular Army, which shall consist of the Active Army and the Reserve Army, and there is an effort made to give this Reserve Army a firm and consistent military organization, through six months' intensive training, with a recognition of the necessity of requiring two or three weeks of training with the colors in each year, after this six months' period of intensive training, to freshen up and keep the men of the reserves in actual touch with the army. This very important yearly return to the colors of the reservists is entirely wanting in the universal miUtary service provisions of the War Department's or General Staff's military bill, which is an utterly inexplicable omission, assuming honesty in the preparation of the bill submitted to the Congress by the War Department and the General Staff.

As much more valuable as I regard the miUtary bill of the House and Senate than the military bill of the War Department, I do not regard it as answering the need of the country for a satisfactory army; and therefore I hold that the plan of organization set forth in this book is much better than this plan of the House and Senate Committees. Nor do I think that the army will need the number of young men which this bill is susceptible of yielding under universal military service.

I believe that an organization aggregating 200,-

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XVll ooo or 250,000 men in the active army is ample to form the backbone of our army, and that a reserve army of 800,000 or 750,000 men, both the active and the reserve armies to constitute the Regular Army of the United States, is sufficient to maintain the honor and the safety of the country. But because I am thinking of an army wholly consisting of soldiers, ready at a moment's notice to be mobilized for war and to be sent anywhere, and at any time, by order of the President, I advise that the Active Army should consist of men conscripted for five years to serve their whole term of enlistment with the colors, and that the men of the Reserve Army should also be conscripted for five years' service, the first year to be spent with the colors, in intensive training, and the other four years of their term of service to be disposable according to their pleasure, except that each Reservist must expect to serve, and is to be called for three weeks' service with the colors, in each of the four years, after the first year of his reserve service in the army.

There need be no longer a shock produced to the nerves of the nation by the use of the word conscription. The people know what conscription is, and how fairly it acts, taking the yoimg man for service in the army with absolute impartiality, whether he be rich or poor, cultured or uncultured, with the fairness, the implacability of fate. My plan is not so sweeping in its seizure of the youth of the nation as the two plans for universal military service which I am criticising.

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It calls a certain percentage of the youth of the country to the army for a year of service, at the period of their life when it is most to their advantage to learn the great lesson which the army teaches, obedience, a lesson which the youth of our country is now more than ever in need of learning. We hear a great deal about the excellence of the physical training which the army gives to the youth of the country serving in its ranks, which is entirely true, but the moral influence of its teaching of obedience, and its correlative, the power of commanding men, is of much more importance to the youth of our country today than all the physical culture which they may get from the army.

I shall not discuss the method of filling the ranks of the active army by conscription, because I have already and fully discussed this branch of the subject in this book. I may refer to such discussion as expressing my views today, matured and intensified if such a thing could be possible, as I favor supplying our active army with recruits by — and only by — and through conscription.

I am opposed to the plan of recruitment by individual appeal and personal enUstment, for the active army as well as for the reserve army. Both the active, and reserve armies constituting in themselves the Regular Army of the United States, should be filled by conscription, the only difference being that the active army should have the first claim upon the proceeds of conscription in any one year, and after the ranks of the active army

XIX have been filled, then the claim of the Reserve Army for recruits should take the balance of the draft or conscription for the year. This plan of filling the active and the reserve army by conscription insures that the ranks in both classes of the army, the active and the reserve armies, shall always be full so that the country may always know how many troops it can depend upon, and their character and worth. Under the plan of voluntary enlistment for the regular army, the army never knows exactly what its strength is, and rarely has its ranks full. It results in maintaining an unnecessarily large number of officers for the men in the ranks and thus spending a very considerable sum of the pubhc money to little or no purpose.

It is a marvel to me, who wrote, in 1915, in favor of conscription to a doubting and almost hostile country, now to find not only that the War Department is asking for the services of the whole of the youth of the country between certain ages, but that so reconciled is the Congress of the United States to this plan of raising armies, that bills have been presented to the Senate and the House by the Chairmen of the Military Committees providing for a similar call upon the youth of the country to constitute the Reserve Army.

I sincerely trust that Congress will hold to the policy of conscription although it has masqueraded under the phrasing of "selective draft," because under that meaningless term it produced with ease and certainty an army of four milhon of men for

XX the war. It is the only philosophical, efficient, and prompt method of creating armies.

I hold him in such high respect that it is with sincere regret that I find myself in opposition to the Honorable Mr. Kahn, Chairman of the Military Commiteee of the House of Representatives, on the subject of universal service, but holding that his views upon this subject are not only wrong in theory, but that in a vast country like ours, destined to be unproductive of the results which he is aiming to accomplish, the production of soldiers, and of dependable armies, I find myself compelled to differ with him as pointedly as I can.

It is understood that Mr. Kahn visited Switzerland this past summer to study, in that country, the effect of universal military training upon the people and upon the Swiss army, failing to realize that the Swiss government had no alternative but the adoption of universal service, at the risk of allowing their country to remain undefended and at the mercy of its neighbors.

Switzerland had to face the problem of providing as suitable an army as possible at the smallest cost. She has not our thousands of milUons of dollars to squander. She has not a sufficient revenue to allow her to differentiate her population, and to create an army of sufficient strength to defend her frontiers in the only way that such an army could be created, by conscription. Switzerland is a small, a mountainous, and a poor country. A large part of her national income is

XXI derived from tourist travel, and like all small, mountainous, and poor countries she has been compelled to convert her whole population into an army. Therefore every Swiss is compelled to serve his country in the ranks of her army, which, as a measure of further economy, is commanded by a Colonel. The amazement of our Generals, and Lieutenant Generals, and Major Generals whom it is proposed to create in bulk by the Military Bill of the War Department now before Congress, can be imagined should it be suggested to put our army under the command of a Colonel, except in time of war, when a few gentlemen under the inspiration of the Swiss system would doubtless be selected for the command of the army with the ranks of Brigadier and Major General. Our continental country, with its hundred millions and more of population, is entirely unsuited to the system found to be the only system of military defense permissible for Switzerland. In that country every citizen old enough, and not too old, is liable to service in the army when war demands that its citizenry shall be called to the colors. Doubtless in the small country of Switzerland patriotism reconciles her people to such a levy en masse, because it is the only possible way that her independence may be maintained. But our recent levy of 4,000,000 of men for our war army only claimed 4 per cent of our population. The contrast is startling. In place of the Swiss army which proposes to call to the colors in time of war all of her citizens of miUtary age.

xxu we should probably not call to the colors over 4 per cent or 5 per cent of our citizens, and so far as the peace army which I recommend is concerned, including both the active and the reserve armies amounting to one million men, the demand on our citizenry would not be over i per cent of our population.

It is wise in Switzerland to prepare for war as she has done, surrounded by possible enemies, any one of whom, if free to act out her part, would delight in seizing Switzerland, and annexing her mountains and her brave mountaineers. Switzerland has created her army in the only way possible to her. Her army looks to be a good army. It is surely a patriotic army, but just how good an army it actually is no one knows, because, as now constituted, it has not been tested, and consequently no one can know whether it is a dependable army or not until it is tested in war.

Why then should we adopt the Swiss system of military organization, of actually unknown value, disregarding our own experience during the war with conscription, which produced a satisfactory army? Nor is it wise to accept too readily the claimed experiences of the recent war as demonstrating beyond question the actual sufficiency of six months' training, because it should be remembered that our army fought side by side with the veteran armies of France and Great Britain, and under the superior command of a French soldier, Foch, receiving the stimulus of such an association, which, acting upon the emotions of our

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army, encouraged them to emulate and to surpass in advancing upon the enemy, the heroism of the French and British armies. Thank God, our soldiers were not subjected to the trial and the test of efficiency, which defeat would have given. Their morale in advance was fine. It is a thankless, but a very necessary inquiry, whether it is believed by our own general officers in the field, that the morale produced by six months' training of our troops, let us say, would have insured their being as steady and as excellent in defeat as in victory. Let it be noted that I am referring to the six months' term of service proposed for the reserve army by the Senate and House bill, not that I am assuming that six months' training was the limit of training of our army in France.

During the great war in the United States fifty odd years ago, many regiments were rushed to the field the moment they were organized entities, and they were required to learn everything which converts a man into a soldier, after they were in the presence of the enemy. These raw troops were pushed into battle, before they could have pretended to be soldiers, and in many cases they acted well and nobly, but in this calm moment of discussion as to the best method of creating an efficient army, do not let us be misled in our judgment by the gallantry of these patriotic regiments which had volunteered in the sacred cause of liberty and for the maintenance of the integrity of the union. These men were not soldiers when they first went into battle directly from the farms, the counting