America's duty as shown by our military history

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Cost of Unpreparedness 9

II The Struggle for Peace . . 30

Foreword

Panic patriotism appears from time to time when the clouds of possible trouble loom more heavily than usual. There is much discussion, some feverish activity, but little accomplishment.

Adequate national preparedness on sound lines will be secured only when there is a general appreciation of its vital importance for defense and of the further fact that it can not be improvised or done in a hurry. It includes both moral and material organization.

Military preparedness, which includes preparation on land and sea, should go hand and hand with a nation's policy. Our policy is not one of aggression, but one which looks only to a secure defense. Consequently, the arrangements for our military establishment should be limited to the needs of a secure and certain

Foreword

national defense against any force which may be brought against us.

A brief review of our past military policy, its shortcomings and cost, may aid ill establishing an appreciation of our needs.

Fort Sheridan, Illinois.

November Seventeenth.

Nineteen Twenty.

The World War has come and gone, so far as our participation is concerned. We were unprepared in every department. We paid the price in blood and treasure.

There is nothing in existing conditions which in any way justifies failure to provide a sound system of national defense. America must ever be ready to throw the weight of her influence for justice and the maintenance of righteous peace. This influence will be most effective in preventing war if we are

Foreword

reasonably ready to make our protest promptly effective.

A resolute spirit, fair dealing, respect for the rights of others, earnest desire and effort for the peace of righteousness must go hand in hand with the mofal and physical organization of our resources both in men and material, if our voice is to have the weight for peace which it should have.

We have disregarded the lessons of our other wars. Let us give heed to those of the World War.

Leonard Wood.

chapter i The Cost of Unpreparedness "Our culture must, therefore, not omit the arming of the man."

— Emerson.

Wars and rumors of wars world-wide in extent have aroused to an unusual degree the interest of the American people in their own military problems, especially the question of national defense, including, as it must, the organization of national resources.

There is a failure on the part of our people to appreciate the defects of our military organization in the past, and a tendency growing out of this state of misinformation as to what has been really done, to continue to place too much dependence upon a military policy found gravely defective, even to the extent of endangering success and in most instances making it unecessarily costly.

There is still a general lack of appreciation of the fact that military operations, in order to be effective, must be conducted by highly trained, well organized and equipped forces, and that such training, organization and equipment require much time and must be accompanied by an organization of industrial resources, all in complete readiness in advance of the day of trouble.

There is a general tendency to consider that our geographical position renders us secure from invasion and that our numbers, resources and wealth would be a secure defense if we should be attacked. These very dangerous misconceptions are largely due to a failure on the part of our educational institutions, public and private, to teach properly our military history, and especially to their failure to pl-esent that side of it which relates to the methods employed in the conduct of our military establishment in the past. With few exceptions, the teaching of the military history of our country has not been such as to give the people a correct idea of our military achievments or of the conditions under which military operations have been conducted. As a rule, students leave school, and even college, not only with superficial knowledge, but often with entirely incorrect ideas concerning our achievments in war. They know little or nothing of the system under which we have raised and maintained our armies, still less of the unecessary cost in life and treasure which has characterized the conduct of our wars, or the reasons therefor. Only too often the real facts of our failures are overlooked and the account of our successes exaggerated. The schools teach the dates of battles and the names of commanding generals, but nothing of the organization which determined the efficiency of military operations in our various wars.

The natural result has been an unwarranted degree of confidence, a confidence which has grown into a belief that we always have been easily successful in war; that, in the language of the Fourth of July orator, we can defeat a world in arms. The effect of this lack of sound information is not limited by any means to those in private life, but too often characterizes the remarks of those in places of trust and responsibility who should know better. The result of this general failure to teach correctly our military history, and of the resulting misinformation concerning it, is seen in the general lack of interest in our military situation, ignorance of the most elementary facts concerning our military establishment, its organization, strength, equipment and needs.

There is a lack of information also as to the nation's resources in men and material, both mechanical and chemical. Americans are unaware that this country is depending upon sea control for many of these, and are uninformed as to the time required to make arms and ammunition. Intelligent public interest in adequate preparedness has been so long dormant, and ignorance of the need of it is so general, that our people do not appreciate how many links in our industrial and chemical chain are wanting, how many breaks are tied together with string, how helpless the nation would be in certain lines of endeavor without these missing necessities.

They are cheerfully confident that an untrained American is as effective in war as a highly trained and equally well educated foreigner of equal physical strength and intelligence. There is a lack of appreciation of the fact that willingness does not mean fitness or ability. This condition of mind is imdoubtedly ascribable to the fact that we have been actively engaged in matters in no way relating to our military establislmient, an immense work has been accomplished in developing our resources. We are entitled to credit for what we have done, and we can justly take much pride in it. We now need pitiless publicity as to the defects in our military system, organization and resources, which have characterized them and endangered our safety in all our past wars.

Tlie general lack of information and interest in military matters is the result of various causes; but first and foremost is the want of sound teaching of our national history, especially its military side, and an unwarranted sense of security because of our assumed inaccesibility. It is also due in a measure to our rapid expansion, accompanied by the development of our vast resources. We have unconsciously come to look upon the size, wealth and population of our country as sufficient protection, forgetting that without the organization of our resources and the training of our men these will be of little value against lesser forces well organized and prepared, and ignoring also the further fact that valuable territory, great wealth, and commercial aggressiveness, accompanied by weak arrangements for defense, are always an incentive to attack.

For many years after the Civil War we had a large, well-trained, though unorganized, reserve of officers and men who had seen service. This fact gave us for many years a sense of security which was well justified. Gradually this reserve of well-trained men has passed away.

The Spanish War gave little training, as did the Philippine insurrection. Campaigns of this kind are of limited value as a preparation for war with an organized prepared power. Our reserves today are reserves in name only and consist of those trained but unlisted and unloeated men who have served in our army and have gone back into the mass of the people, forgotten and unheeded, valuable material lost. Their number is only a fraction in comparison with the well-trained alien reservists living in this country but owing military obligation to their home countries. The balance of our reserve consists of the wholly untrained and unprepared men of our population, of little military value until trained.

The general failure to impress upon our people the defects, weakness and unreliability of our militia and volunteer systems in the past, has resulted in an unwarranted degree of dependency upon them as reliable instruments of defense, a dependence which is not warranted by a careful study of the real facts of our military history; a dependence, which, if continued, will cost us dearly in case of war with an organized military power of the first class.

The spirit of the officers and men who served under these systems, and are now serving under one of them, is good, but neither of the systems will stand the test of war with an organized and trained force. They will crumple up at the first heavy impact of such a force. The reason will not be the physical or moral deficiency of the men, but the fact that they will be untrained. If all great nations were trusting to military props of the type of these, the condition as to possible defense would not be so serious, but even in this case the waste of life in camp and field from ignorance of the proper care of men and lack of training for leading them in action, should condemn these systems on the ground of plain humanity/

The danger of depending on these systems or upon either one of them should be made clear to our people in order that their support may be had in establishing a sound policy, one which will give the largest measure of insurance against war, one which will, if war be forced upon us, enable us to conduct it with the minimum loss of life. We have no right to employ the services of loyal and willing men under a system which insures the maximum loss of life and the minimum of success, a system which has been condemned by military experts the world over, including our

^Every American should read Emory Upton's Military Policy of the United States, and follow it up with Huidekoper's work, which brings the statement of our military policy, or lack of it, up to date.

own. A continuance of these systems, or either one of them, invites attack and greatly increases the probabihty of defeat. The real facts of our military history make these conclusions so absolutely clear that he who runs may read.

'' In time of peace prepare for war! " This was the advice of George Washington. It was drawn from the experience of all time. The advice was sound and conservative when given. It is of even more importance to-day, for the reason that organization, preparation, rapidity of transportation, have all tremendously increased the rapidity of the onset of modern war.

There is nothing particularly new in the condition of the world to-day, so far as our own situation is concerned, as the following extracts from the messages of the early presidents indicate.

As one reads them he cannot fail to be impressed with the fact that with the change of a word here and there they are as applicable to conditions to-day as when written.

On December 3, 1799, President John Adams, in his third annual address, spoke as follows:

" At a period like the present, when momentous changes are occuring and every hour is preparing new and great events in the political world, when a spirit of war is prevalent in almost every nation with whose affairs the interests of the United States have any connection, unsafe and precarious would be our situation were we to neglect the means of maintaining our just rights. The result of the mission to France is uncei-tain; but however it may terminate a steady perseverance in a system of national defense commensurate with our resources and the situation of our country is an obvious dictate of wisdom; for, remotely as we are placed from the belligerent nations, and desirous as we are, by doing justice to all, to avoid offense to anj% nothing short of the power of repelling aggressions will secure to our country a rational prospect of escaping the calamities of war or national degradation."

A few years later, December 3, 1805, in his fifth annual message. President Thomas Jefferson said:

" In reviewing these injuries from some of the belligerent powers, the moderation, the firmness and the wisdom of the Legislature will all be called into action. We ought still to hope that time and a more correct estimate of interest, as ^vell as of character, will produce the justice we are bound to expect. But should any nation deceive itself by false calculations, and disappoint that expectation, we must join in the unprofitable contest of trying which party can do the other the most harm. Some of these injuries may perhaps admit a peaceable remedy. Where that is competent it is always the most desirable. But some of them are of a nature to be met wdth force only, and all of them may lead to it. I can not, therefore, but recommend such preparations as circumstances call for."

Two years later, on October 27, 1807, in his seventh annual message, Jefferson made the following statements:

" Circumstances, fellow citizens, w^hich seriously threatened the peace of our country have made it a duty to convene you at an earlier period than usual.

The love of peace so much cherished in the bosoms of our citizens, which has so long guided the proceedings of their public councils and induced forbearance under so many wrongs, may not insure our continuance in the quiet pursuits of industry. The many injuries and depredations committed on our commerce and navigation upon the high seas for years past, the successive innovations on those principles and usage of nations as the rule of their rights and peace, and all the circumstances w^hich induced the extraordinary mission to London are already known to you.

" Under the acts of March 11 and April 23, respecting arms, the difficulty of procuring them from abroad during the present situation and dispositions of Europe, induced us to direct our whole efforts to the means of internal supply.

The public factories have therefore been enlarged, additional machineries erected, and, in proportion as artificers can be found or formed, their effect, already more than doubled, may be increased so as to keep pace with the yearly increase of the militia. The annual sums appropriated by the latter act have been directed to the encouragement of private factories of arms, and contracts have been entered into w^ith individual undertakers to nearly the amount of the first year's appropriation."

On February 18, 1815, President James Madison, in a special message, said:

" Experience has taught us that neither the pacific dispositions of the American people nor the pacific character of their political institutions can altogether exempt them from that strife which appears beyond the ordinary lot of nations to be incident to the actual period of the world, and the same faithful monitor demonstrates that a certain degree of preparation for war is not only indispensable to avert disasters in the onset, but affords also the best security for the continuance of peace."

And on December 5, 1815, in his seventh annual message, Madison wrote as follows:

'* Notwithstanding the security for future repose which the United States ought to find in their love of peace and their constant respect for the rights of other nations, the character of the times particularly inculcates the lesson that, whether to prevent or repel danger, we ought not to be unprepared for it. This consideration will sufficiently recommend to Congress a liberal provision for the immediate extension and gradual completion of the works of defense, both fixed and floating, on our maritime frontier, and an edequate provision for guarding our inland frontier against dangers to -which certain portions of it may continue to be exposed."

The foregoing are quoted at some length for the purpose of pointing out that there is nothing new in the advice which is being given us for preparation. The general conditions under which nations live always render adequate preparation necessary, and our country is no exception to the rule. We stand today after a period of a hundred years as we shall probably stand a hundred years hence, in a position that renders adequate measures of defense absolutely necessary, if we consider our institutions and our rights worth defending, and are to defend them successfully against powerful adversaries.

Our presidents throughout the entire period of our national life have constantly warned our people with reference to preparedness, not only as a measure necessary for the successful conduct of war, but more often as a means of preventing war. It is time that we finally take heed.

International relations are in a little less precarious condition in these days, speaking of the world at large, because the telegraph, the wireless, and rapid transmission of dispatches to all portions of the world, make full and prompt explanation of misunderstandings possible. On the other hand, rapid transport and complete organization make preparation even more necessary, as less time is given to prepare after war is decided upon.

Earnest efforts have been made for arbitration and the maintenance of world peace, but, as present conditions indicate, success is still remote, and every nation, while striving for peace, must make adequate preparation to defend its life.

chapter ii The Struggle for Peace

"But in demonstrating by our conduct that we do not fear war in the necessary protection of our rights and honor, we should give no room to infer that we abandon the desire of peace. An efficient preparation for war can alone secure peace." — John Adams, Second Annual Message.

There is nothing new in the movement for peace. It is centuries old. Men have dreamed of it since they had things of value to hold. Women have prayed for it through the ages. Good people have looked forward to the day of peace and tranquility since the beginning of written history, and doubtless long before. Just as they have desired to avoid great misfortunes, plagues, earthquakes, fire, or famine, so they have struggled to escape war, except in those instances where war was the lesser of two evils. Yet war is with us today, was with us yesterday, and so through all the years since history records man's action or tradition tells of his deeds.

Today, initiated as a rule with more formality, conducted with greater regard for the lives of the noncombatants, and characterized by a larger measure of observance of the dictates of humanity in the treatment of prisoners and the helpless, war is still with us. Peace leagues struggle to prevent it; great alliances attempt to abate it through preponderant forces — through war itself, if need be.

Arbitration serves to lessen it a little through disposing of many minor questions which, if allowed to grow, might bring about disputes resulting in war. ^^ one of the means of possible avoidance of a resort to force, we welcome arbitraton with open arms and strive to give it the largest measure of success, although realizing that in many cases it will not avail to prevent that final resort to force which can only be avoided when all great powers think alike. That time will come only when absolutely unselfish justice marks international relations; when trade is equitably shared among competing peoples; when ^the rich help freely the poor ; when competition, greed, selfishness, race interests and prejudices and religious intolerance pass away; when men and nations have no fixed convictions which differ from those of others; when they neither dream dreams nor see visions. Until then, strive as we may, the cry will be '' Peace! JPeace!" and yet there will be no permanent peace. Nevertheless, we must strive unceasingly to reduce war to the minimum, and to build up arbitration, but in so doing we must not lose sight of fhe fact that our efforts will not alwiys be successful.

An infinite wisdom has established the conditions under which we live and put in being the great law which runs through the universe; the law of the survival of the most fit. We may struggle against it, but it rules in its general application. The most fit in a military way, which includes good bodies based on good food, careful sanitation, well thought-out training, clear intelligence resting on good schools and early training, good armament, equipment and organization, all springing from intelligence and education applied to self -protect ion and expansion of inter-^ ests and trade, will win in war just as they wun in commerce.

They may not be the most fit in abstract morality as relates to business relations between individuals or nations, or with regard to generosity or sense of justice. The characteristics of selfishness, self-interest and the spirit of acquisitiveness are often accompanied by a development of the means to get what is coveted and to hold it securelv. Human nature in the mass is still human nature; under a little more restraint, perhaps, but still the old complex proposition of the ages, characterized and controlled only too often by expediency and self-interest. I

Nations are but collections of individuals; we need courts for the individual man, and courts are of no avail without the police. In the vast group of individuals constituting a community, city or nation, the resort to force by small groups representing perhaps a thousandth, or less, of the population, is a nuisance and is not permitted by the great aggregation of the individuals among whom they live, as it interferes with the interest and activities, often safety, of too many other people. The individuals in the community of nations are few in number, and it is much less easy to bring preponderant force to the control or restraint of the more powerful.

Yet as men struggle within the communitj^ and too often resort to force unless restrained, so do nations stnjggle and resort to force in the world community, only here counter force in the form of international police has never been resorted to. Can it be effectively done while there still exist strong groups characterized by century-old prejudices of race and interest This is one of the great questions of the hour. While considering it we should not neglect preparation for defense or fail to recognize conditions as they are.

The maintenance of peace and the prevention of war have been attempted through alliances to compel or regulate the action of other groups or other combinations of nations, by efforts so to group nations as to maintain the balance of power between people whose territorial expansion and increase of population and interests might otherwise jeopardize peace. These efforts have usually resulted in war sooner or later, although in many instances serving to maintain peace for long periods. The policy of no combination satisfies the greed, ambition or policy of all its members, and eventually the dominating interest of one or more members of such a combination, or the injection of new interests or conditions, serves after a time to bring about the loosening of the bonds of the alliance and the formation of new combinations, too often with a resort to force as the final argument.

Thus far we see little prospect of change. We may hold down for a time the explosive pressure or give it a safe vent, but from time to time human effort will fail and the explosion will occur. In other words, the controlling nations are too few in number and their vital interests are so coincident or interwoven with those of the controlled nations that constant changes and rearrangements result in this grouping, and these changes inevitably bring about an appeal to force. It is difficult to see how this condition can be changed so long as national lines exist and racial groups continue, or certain trade areas remain under the control of these groups.

Justice and righteousness are not enough to insure protection, nor is an upright and blameless personal or national life a guarantee against the unscrupulous. A Pilate was found to crucify Christ; and a strong aggressive nation, believing in its own worth and right to expand, has always been prone to crush and coerce a weaker one, regardless of the abstract justice of the weaker nation's cause.

Why all these things are, is a question which this world cannot answer in precise terms, and with such answer we are not now concerned. But we are concerned with the existence of the condition. We can with justice say that pubhc and national morahty is largely tlie reflection of the education of our youth. Given sound moral training in the home, a healthy body and a developed sense of justice and fair play, and you have the youth who will most probably make the sound, just and normal man in public life, the best citizen, and, collectively, when assembled in legislative bodies or engaged in executive or administrative work, the man who will act on the most just, reasonable and tolerant lines. But even among men of this class there will be strong differences of opinion and it is little short of folly to assume the contrary. We may diminsh the frequency of strife and make more humane

AMERICA'S DUTY v

the struggle, but for the present/nothing more.

Blood, race, tradition, trade and a host of other influences, capped by ambition to go on, to lead, to expand, will always produce strife. We cannot escape this conclusion if we take as our guide the evidence of things done and being done, rather than follow the dictates of fancy or desire. The struggle for peace is centuries old, and efforts to end war and establish undisturbed peace have filled the minds of men and taxed the resources of nations. The great combinations of power to prevent war, were, after all, but combinations of forces to restrain the exercise of force, and have more often than not ended in a great struggle for readjustment of the balance of power.

The theories and policies of addled minds and shallow intelligences, products of the applause of the lecture platform, or of minds upset by the flattery incident to sudden wealth, have had their share of attention, and even of sympathy. After all, they indicate only a failure to understand that war generally has its roots running deep below the surface that is swept by the gaze of such observers. The authors of these theories never have studied seriously the causes of war. They assign as causes the little incidents which serve to touch off the mass of explosive which other forces have been accumulating and piling up for a generation or perhaps a century. War, whether it be for evil or good, is among men, and our clear duty is to recognize this fact, instead of denying the evidence of our senses simply because it is disagreeable and brutal, something that we would get rid of. Our duty is to protect ourselves as best we can against war and build our protection on so secure a foundation and maintain its efficiency so systematically that our own institutions, ideals and interests msLj be secure and that we may be able to hand down to our children all the benefits w^e have received from our fathers. God has given us ej'^es to see, ears to hear, and intelligence and memory to glean and carry from the lessons of the past something of wisdom to guide us in meeting the issues of the present. If we fail to make the best use of those faculties which have been given us, w^e must pay the penalty. We must continue to strive for world peace, for the betterment of human conditions; we must do what we can to promote arbitration, love of justice; but we have no right to forget that none of these will serve to protect us against an unjust aggressor. Let us do all these good things, but at the same time take those measures of wise precaution which the experience of time and of all people teaches, that we may be prepared to defend with force those things which justice, honesty and fair dealing are inadequate of themselves to defend? As Cromwell said: "Trust in God — but keep your powder dry." In other words, do right, but do not trust to that alone. The highwayman is not especially concerned with the morals of the man whose purse he covets, nor is the great nation struggling for trade and expansion disposed to give especial consideration to the morals of the people standing in her way. Every nation does, however, give serious and prompt heed to the strength and abihty of another to hold and protect what she has.

After going over the evidence of past results and present conditions, we must realize that arbitration to-day cannot as a rule be depended upon for protection or even as a means of delaying a resort to force, except in such cases as are not of vital importance to either of the disputants. Questions of citizenship, cases arising under the Monroe Doctrine — in which we are particularly interested — are among those which cannot well be turned over to arbitration. Our interests in them are vital.

Preparedness to resist injustice or attack with force tends to amplify the possibilities of successful arbitration, as the cost and danger of the struggle and the uncertainty of the outcome are evident. Preparedness lends weight to just claims and makes the would-be aggressor hesitate. It is the well-guarded house in which the robber sees the danger and realizes the cost. It does not mean that the people of the house are less just because they have had the good sense to recognize conditions and take the wise measure of proteci;ion.