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+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
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+    <title>
+      Soldiers Unmasked | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77647 ***</div>
+
+
+
+<h1>
+SOLDIERS UNMASKED
+</h1>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="ph1">
+SOLDIERS UNMASKED
+</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>By</i></p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: x-large"><span class="smcap">William Addleman Ganoe</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Colonel, U. S. Army</span></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="colophon" style="max-width: 2em; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/colophon.png" alt="" data-role="presentation">
+</figure>
+
+
+<p class="center">Author of “The History of the<br>
+United States Army,” etc.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center p6">1939</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center ep4"><span class="smcap">First Edition, Copyright, 1935, by</span><br>
+WILLIAM ADDLEMAN GANOE</p>
+
+<hr class="r5">
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Second Edition, Copyright, 1939</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">First Printing January, 1939</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center p6">Published by<br>
+<span class="smcap">The Military Service Publishing Company<br>
+Harrisburg, Pa.</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center p2"><span class="allsmcap">PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">The Telegraph Press<br>
+Harrisburg, Pa.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center ep4" style="font-style: italic;">
+  To<br>
+  George Washington<br>
+  ever revered<br>
+  seldom obeyed
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="TOC"><i>TABLE OF CONTENTS</i></h2>
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+<th class="tdl"></th>
+<th class="tdr">PAGE</th>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#HOW_IT_STARTED"><i>HOW IT STARTED</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">i</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#I"><i>I</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">1</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#II"><i>II</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">10</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#III"><i>III</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">20</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#IV"><i>IV</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">31</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#V"><i>V</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">40</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#VI"><i>VI</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">51</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#VII"><i>VII</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">62</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#VIII"><i>VIII</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">72</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#IX"><i>IX</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">82</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#X"><i>X</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">92</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#XI"><i>XI</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">102</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#XII"><i>XII</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">112</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><a href="#XIII"><i>XIII</i></a></td>
+<td class="tdr">122</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="HOW_IT_STARTED">
+    <i>HOW IT STARTED</i>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>This booklet cropped out from a mixture of
+chance happenings. One day last October, Captain
+R. B. Lovett, Adjutant General’s Department, came
+into my office. I hadn’t seen him since he was a
+student at the Infantry School in Georgia when I
+was an instructor. He said Colonel Harvey W.
+Miller, Adjutant General, 1st Corps Area, thought
+it would be a good thing for the recruiting service
+and the public in general to be informed about the
+soldier. There were so many misunderstandings
+about him. Would I do ten talks over the radio?
+They looked mountainous with all my other work.
+But if you knew Lovett, you’d appreciate how convincing
+he can be. He put in a plea of public service
+and I succumbed. The next thing I heard was that
+the Yankee Network had generously given time to
+the series Saturday nights. I began December eighth.
+I felt the first talk was a beautiful flop. I got no fan
+mail and my friends who phoned me were just
+pleasant. I suspected they were letting me down
+easily. Anyway, I kept plugging along. After the
+third talk, fan mail from strangers in Portland, Newburyport,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</span>Bridgeport and little towns began to come
+in. After the fifth talk, there was a flood of requests
+for copies. Then letters began to pile in from every
+walk of life. The copies asked for couldn’t be furnished.
+There were no means or money to get them
+out and mail them. My friends suggested printing
+the whole series at as little cost as possible. Well,
+this is the result. I hope you’ll get something out
+of it.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  W.A.G.
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="I">
+    <i>I</i><br>WHAT IS A SOLDIER
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>In a certain town in the United States a sign in
+front of a theater boldly announced: “No dogs or
+soldiers admitted.” After some complaint the sign
+was taken down. And after the people of the community
+got to know the soldier, they were sorry
+the sign had been put up.</p>
+
+<p>Prejudice against the military man hasn’t ordinarily
+gone to that length, but many citizens are
+at least disinterested. Not long ago I was called
+upon to speak to a rather cultured group on the
+soldier’s work. A few days later, an acquaintance,
+an intelligent, elderly woman, met me on the street.
+“I liked the way you talked,” she said, “but I’m
+not in sympathy with anything you spoke about.
+I don’t want to hear about the soldier or anything
+military.” I thanked her for her frankness, and
+dropped the matter, knowing it was useless to try
+to give her the facts which are presented here, and
+which she probably wouldn’t have believed anyway.</p>
+
+<p>Here are some of the questions which have been
+asked me by educated people: “What do you fellows
+in the army do when there’s no war? Do you
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span>just go out and drill the boys and then loaf around?
+What’s the need of an army in a depression? Where’s
+the army now? How big is it? What’s the use of an
+army when we have an air corps?”</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not such questions sound foolish,
+they do show ignorance of what the soldier and
+the War Department are really doing. But the
+citizen is not to blame for this lack of knowledge.
+A combination of circumstances has deprived
+him of knowing what has happened and what is
+happening with the military man. Certainly no true
+American wishes to be unfair. First of all our school
+and college histories, our literature, our entertainment
+have a habit of either misrepresenting or omitting
+the actual deeds and purpose of the soldier.
+Second, anyone associated with weapons usually has
+a bad name nowadays. Third, the soldier, away off
+in our island possessions or in an army post, has too
+little intimacy with the general run of people.
+Fourth, the name War Department has a misleading
+sound. It makes us think of a great mail-fisted demon,
+breathing fire and smiting with a red-hot sword.
+Before we get through with the stories and facts
+given later, we’ll see that it could much more faithfully
+be called the Peace Department. Fifth, there’s
+the term “preparation for war,” which is about as
+far from the truth about what the soldier is trying
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>to do, as saying that firemen are preparing to cause
+fires.</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers in this country have never prepared
+to have a war and they are not doing so now. They
+have always prepared <i>against</i> war. There is no place
+in our history where they have been the remotest
+cause of war. And would you believe it, they have
+actually been the outstanding pacifists of American
+History? You know it seems peculiar that the
+trained fighter has done more for peace in this country
+than any other class. But it is so. In normal times
+he has repeatedly saved us from war. In public works
+he has been one of the chief builders of the nation,
+if not the chief one. In disaster he has been the first
+on the spot to restore order, and feed and shelter
+the helpless. In war he has aimed to bring back peace
+and return the people to restful firesides, with the
+least loss of life and treasure. A multitude of facts
+enforce these statements—facts which can be verified
+in the archives in Washington—facts which we have
+ordinarily been denied in our formal education.</p>
+
+<p>You know there’s a short paper about 150 years
+old that we Americans are pretty keen about. In
+that document it says that Congress shall provide
+for the common defense. And hand in hand with
+that provision goes its twin brother—the general
+welfare. Our wise old forefathers, who had plenty
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>of time to reason, analyse, contemplate human nature
+and be soundly practical, in contrast to us who
+must dash through this complex civilization on high,
+used a sound bit of horse sense when they coupled
+those two phrases. For it’s easy to see that you can’t
+have general welfare without common defense any
+more than you can have an undisturbed household
+without locks and policemen. Of course, we need
+a little more than common defense to get general
+welfare in these times, but that’s quite another subject.
+However, that business of common defense
+brings the soldier onto the stage by our Constitution.
+And one of the big tragedies of our country
+is that the stage failed to produce him so many times
+until the play had actually begun. About a million
+tombstones scattered in this country and in France
+can be charged up to his absence when he was
+vitally needed. For it takes time to train a soldier,
+and it’s pretty expensive and bloody to train him
+when bullets begin to fly. Besides it makes the war
+drag on. So you see the loss accumulates. I can make
+this idea clearer by an illustration. Let us suppose
+you are a night watchman and have to pace around
+a spooky industrial plant every night. And suppose
+your employer armed you with a night stick, saying
+that firearms were dangerous, expensive and might
+lead to trouble. You plead with him that all you
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>want is a decent break, that you’d like to have a
+pistol and learn how to use it. He still contends that
+the night stick is good enough. Sometime later a
+bandit scouts around the plant and sees you wandering
+along with your club as your only defense.
+The next night you see him entering a window. You
+chase him. He carefully aims, drops you in your
+tracks, pilfers the cash box and makes a get away.
+Now suppose thousands of watchmen are in the
+same fix. That in principle is what has happened to
+our untrained men in all our wars. They haven’t
+had a chance. And because they haven’t had a
+chance, they have come home from the catastrophe
+with all sorts of ill-feeling against the army, the
+soldier, the officer, when the fault has been not in
+the military service, but in the neglect of proper
+training before the enemy pounces upon us. Just
+how much waste and hardship to individuals would
+result, if the country grocery store at Seven Corners
+had to expand to a thousand chain-stores in thirty
+days? Can you imagine it? And yet such an expansion
+is a drop in the bucket to what the Army and
+the War Department have been compelled to produce
+in a twinkling, when war caught us flat-footed.
+Of course, when we got into the World War we
+were pretty lucky, for we had Allies who held off
+the enemy for nearly a year before we had to go
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>into real action. Just what would have happened
+had we not had such a wall of strength in Europe
+to stave off our enemies is not pretty to think about.
+As it was, many an American went to the front untrained,
+unskilled, an easy prey to disease and explosives.
+From this lack of preventive medicine,
+which is what training in peace time amounts to,
+many men have come out of our wars disgusted,
+and sayings have arisen which have put the army
+in a mean light. There’s the word “soldiering”
+which oddly has come to mean idleness. Yet if you
+were to go into any army post, any army school,
+or any C.M.T.C. camp you’d see the soldier anything
+but idle. Then there’s the term “passing the
+buck” which expresses an army habit to some people.
+Just why it should, after your experiences and mine
+in everyday life, is hard to explain. But the “old
+army game” is the one we hear so often. It may
+mean anything from four-flushing to downright
+crookedness. All these slanders seem to have arisen
+because men have been rudely and unjustly snatched
+from the counter, the plough and the mill to face
+a new desperate life, to live in mixed-up conditions
+under hasty shelter, to find themselves square pegs
+in round holes, and to be under officers as unskilled
+as they, officers not even a quarter baked, whose
+leadership was too often faulty and cruel. How
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>could it be otherwise when we plunge fine young
+men who can’t swim into a raging sea? These men
+come out of the conflict with heavy hatreds, justifiable
+ones oftentimes, hatreds that go deep into
+their souls. And whom would they hate? Naturally
+the professional soldier. He’s the one at hand. But
+curiously enough it’s the trained soldier who has
+tried to prevent the awful haste, waste and unnecessary
+mortality that have caused these hatreds.</p>
+
+<p>The American soldier is the last man to want
+war or the unnecessary loss of life and treasure in
+war. He shies at war’s hardships, and the added
+horrors, resulting from unpreparedness against war.
+He knows too much about them to want himself
+or anyone else to be in a war. But he feels that it’s
+not quite practical in the present state of the world
+to say that there will be no more armed conflicts.
+With Europe seething with hatreds, Japan flying
+at Asia’s throat, Russia making its militant inroads,
+with no practical progress in abolition of war to
+date, with industrial strife breaking out here and
+there, and with an Army of organized crime in this
+country greater than the Army and Navy of the
+United States, he feels it’s inviting disaster not to
+prepare against war and calamity. So he’s out to reduce
+the tragedy when it comes, or to stop it from
+coming by a proper show of force.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p>
+
+<p>Do you know that one army officer, single-handed,
+without an army at his back, saved or helped
+save this country from six big wars? And do you
+know that another officer staved off another big
+war by being on the spot with three trained corps?
+Do you know that many other officers stubbornly
+opposed the powers in Washington when those
+powers wanted to fight the Indian? Do you know
+who built all our first trails and roads in the west
+and south? Do you know who constructed the first
+railroad to span our United States from east to west?
+Do you know what the army has done to help build
+this country in time of peace? Do you know that
+one branch of the army alone has literally saved
+millions of lives in peace time by its courageous discoveries
+and safeguards? Do you know what another
+branch has done in the riddance of pests from industrial
+plants? Do you know who laid the Alaskan
+Cable? Do you know that not a single covered wagon
+ever reached the coast states in the west without
+being accompanied by soldiers? We rarely hear the
+soldier mentioned or see him shown in the movies
+in his protection of the wagon trains, but there is
+no record of any of those trains ever reaching Oregon
+or California over the wild prairie tracts unless
+soldiers went with them. This is but one instance
+of the suppression of truth about the soldier. We’re
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>pretty well acquainted with what the soldier has
+done in war. But do we know what he’s done for
+the up-building of men and construction of public
+works in peace time? Do we know what he’s done
+against war?</p>
+
+<p>Listen to what comes next.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="II">
+    <i>II</i><br>WHAT HAS HE DONE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Two big pool operators of Wall Street one evening
+were standing in front of a prominent theater
+watching the crowds surge into the doorways.
+There was much display of ermines, sables, diamonds
+and general wealth. One of the two asked the other:
+“Say, where do these lambs get all the money we
+bears take away from them?”</p>
+
+<p>Today many people say, “Where do these soldiers
+get all this peace stuff we extreme pacifists take away
+from them?” The answer lies in cold facts—cold
+facts the historians don’t tell us—cover up almost
+completely. Lewis and Clark, for instance. Why,
+yes, they were two fellows who were the first to
+go across our Continent and back again. But who
+ever told you that it was <i>Captain</i> Meriwether Lewis
+and <i>Lieutenant</i> William Clark who took four sergeants
+and twenty-three privates in that hazardous
+trek between the Atlantic and the Pacific from 1803
+to 1806—that it was the soldier who made surveys
+and maps and created friendships with the Indians,
+many of whom were seeing a white man for the first
+time?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p>
+
+<p>Pike’s Peak! O yes, that was discovered by a man
+by the name of Pike. But where was it mentioned
+that it was <i>Lieutenant</i> Z. M. Pike? And what did he
+do? With three non-commissioned officers and sixteen
+privates, he explored in 1806 and 1807 from
+the source of the Mississippi to its mouth, doing
+from north to south what Lewis and Clark had done
+from east to west. Turning west he discovered the
+peak which bears his name. In what is now New
+Mexico, he even beguiled the Spaniards into taking
+him prisoner so that he could learn their intentions,
+customs and country. For his great deeds of exploration
+and pacification he received the personal praise
+of the President of the United States. Then there
+was Captain Long who in the same way went
+through what is now Colorado, and for whom Long’s
+Peak is named; Captain Bonneville who voluntarily
+lived with the Nez Perces and Flatheads for five
+years, creating friendships and learning their language;
+Lieutenant Litgreaves, who explored the
+Colorado River; and Lieutenant Whipple and Lieutenant
+Ives, who separately went through the southwest.
+And then John C. Fremont. O yes, the histories
+are crazy about calling him the Pathfinder, but
+never told you that it was Lieutenant John C. Fremont
+in 1838 when he started out, and Lieutenant
+Colonel John C. Fremont in 1844—after he had explored
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>10,000 miles of freezing mountain and sickly
+basin? In this brief space I can’t even touch on many
+of these gigantic wedges of understanding. It was
+the soldier who made the first trails, dug the first
+wells, built the first roads, bridges and canals, made
+the first maps, surveyed most of our boundaries,
+erected most of our lighthouses, dredged our harbors
+and waterways, escorted the settlers, braved the
+Indian and suffered in silence. The Hon. John W.
+Weeks, former Secretary of War and United States
+Senator, wrote: “The Army was virtually the
+pioneer of pioneers. As our citizens moved west over
+the prairies and through forests, they traveled
+routes which were surveyed by army engineers,
+constructed by the army and protected by military
+posts. The titles of their land were valid only because
+of army surveys.... Up to 1855 there was
+scarcely a railroad in this country that was not projected,
+built, and operated in large part by the Army.
+Army engineers located, constructed, and managed
+such well-known roads as the Baltimore and Ohio;
+the Northern Central; the Erie; the Boston and
+Providence; the New York, New Haven and Hartford;
+and the Boston and Albany. Practically all
+of the transcontinental railroads were projected by
+the army. An army officer, Lieutenant G. W.
+Whistler, built the best locomotive of his time, after
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>his own design.” The building of the Union Pacific
+Railroad, the first to connect the two oceans, illustrates
+the soldiers’ contribution to national welfare.
+The set-up for this mighty link was a military one.
+The workmen were organized into companies and
+battalions. Soldiers would dig and hammer and at the
+cry “Indians,” would rush to their stacked arms and
+give battle. Nearly every man was a veteran of the
+Civil War. The heads of the most of the engineering
+parties and all chiefs of construction had been officers
+in the Civil War. The chief of the track-laying
+force, General Casement, had been a distinguished
+division commander. In a twinkling, General Dodge,
+the chief engineer, could call into the field a thousand
+men, well-officered, ready to meet any crisis.
+General Sherman also furnished troops. The builders
+contended that this great bridge of progress could
+not have been finished without soldiers and army
+training. During the enterprise Oakes Ames said,
+“What makes me hang on is the faith of you
+soldiers.”</p>
+
+<p>The soldier went further than highways in his
+works. Let’s look at buildings. How many know
+that the difficult Washington Monument, the wings
+and dome of the National Capitol, the old Post Office
+Building, the Municipal Building, the Washington
+Aqueduct, the Agriculture Building, the Government
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>Printing Office, the War College and the beautiful
+Library of Congress were all built by the Army?
+Army engineers supervised the building of the Lincoln
+Memorial, the Arlington Bridge, the parks and
+even the playgrounds of the District of Columbia.
+They even organized the Weather Bureau—and all
+this our government got at the comparatively small
+pay of the soldier.</p>
+
+<p>But the soldier didn’t stop at exploring and building.
+He didn’t stop at just contributing to development
+and peace. He went further. He even tried his
+best to prevent war. So many were his attempts that
+they can scarcely be hinted at tonight. Here is one
+conspicuous example. In 1832, South Carolina was
+verging on secession and civil war. President Jackson
+called in General Winfield Scott and sent him
+to the scene of the trouble. There Scott by skillful
+persuasion and conference helped to quiet the difficulties
+and return the state to peace, without any
+troops at his back. In 1838 there was a revolt against
+Great Britain by Canadian patriots. Many in our
+border states were sympathizing with the rebels.
+Blood had been shed. It looked horribly like a third
+war with Great Britain. Scott was sent north to the
+place of the struggle. After great effort and the most
+tactful arbitration he brought harmony between
+the British officials and our own sympathizers. By
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>his work, war was averted. In the same year the
+great educated, peaceful tribe of Cherokees in
+Georgia and the Carolinas, was enraged at the attempt
+of the whites to force it away from its native
+home because gold had been found there. 15,000
+Indians refused to move. General Scott was sent
+by the government to conduct them west to what
+is now Oklahoma. Sensing the right on their side,
+but being compelled to carry out the government’s
+unjust orders, he was left with nothing but his personality
+and good sense to keep us out of a big fight.
+By his masterful appeal to the Indians not to cause
+war, by his instructions to his soldiers to be gentle
+and firm, by his square dealing and carrying out of
+his promises to the letter, he was able to escort the
+whole tribe west, without the slightest sign of
+trouble. So great was his kindly power, that he even
+had these superstitious redmen submit to vaccination.
+It is estimated that this prevention of war saved
+the government two and one-half billion dollars and
+untold loss of life. (Besides he very nearly washed
+clean the government’s dirty linen.) But he had
+scarcely finished this delicate task when he was
+called to Maine. There the boundary question was
+about to plunge us into that third war with Great
+Britain. The government had already called out
+eight thousand militia. Things were pretty bad. Scott
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>hustled back and forth holding conferences, calming
+this party and that, and finally closed the issue
+to the satisfaction of all. In 1848 after he had conducted
+the brilliant campaign which closed the Mexican
+War, Mexico was in a state of unrest. It was there
+that he established a rule so just and kindly that
+peace came more rapidly, and possibly composed
+Mexico for many years. Never had the Mexicans
+been treated so decently. Their representatives came
+to him and begged him to be their dictator. Though
+he didn’t accept, it was probably the first time in
+history where a conqueror of foreign territory had
+been so cordially urged. Two years later after he
+had returned to the United States, trouble in Vancouver
+Island in the northwest again threatened
+that ever-skulking third war with Great Britain. The
+British Navy was already beating down upon the
+little island of San Juan. Scott arrived on the scene.
+By the cleverest tact he engineered a joint evacuation
+of the island. And no war came. Six times had
+this man, who towered six feet five and weighed
+two hundred forty pounds, showed us that his heart
+and character were as great as his stature. Six times
+had he saved us. In keeping us out of war who can
+compete with him? But he is not alone. Many
+another soldier gave us peace and many another built
+for peace.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+
+<p>In 1907, after long years of trial, President Theodore
+Roosevelt came to the conclusion that high-salaried
+civilians could not complete the Panama
+Canal. They would walk out on him and were inclined
+to the spoils system of wasting money. He
+wanted someone who would stay on the job, who
+would carry on the work for the work’s sake. He
+turned to the Army. He appointed a commission of
+soldiers. Colonel George Goethals with his able
+assistants, Colonels Gaillard and Sibert, Corps of
+Engineers and Colonel W. C. Gorgas of the Medical
+Corps, were sent south to construct the Canal. Gorgas
+purged the place of yellow fever and malaria
+while the others forged ahead on the building. After
+bitter trials and maddening set-backs, they finished
+the Panama Canal. This vast public work, which
+others had failed to complete in almost half a century,
+the soldier gave to his country in the surprising
+space of six years.</p>
+
+<p>But this commercial short-cut could not have
+been so quickly finished, had it not been for the work
+of another soldier. In 1900 Major Walter Reed with
+a group of medical officers and men was sent to Cuba
+to study yellow fever. For several years soldiers
+risked their lives repeatedly in their attempt to find
+out what caused the disease. It came to the point
+where a little banded-legged mosquito was suspected
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>of carrying the fever from the sick to the well. But
+the suspicion had to be proved. Men had to let themselves
+be actually bitten by the deadly insect in
+order to vouchsafe to the world that the mosquito
+was the only carrier. Volunteers were called for.
+Officers and men responded with such willingness
+that the ready victims were always in excess of
+demand. One day Privates Kissinger and Moran
+came to Major Reed as volunteers. He explained
+to them what their offer meant—extreme suffering
+and probable death. They still insisted. They would
+gladly run the risk, if it would save lives afterwards.
+He then told them that they or their relatives would
+receive money. Both men showed their disgust.
+Kissinger stepped forward and said, “I want it understood
+that we are doing this in the interest of humanity
+and for science.” Major Reed rose, touched
+his cap and said with tears in his eyes, “Gentlemen I
+salute you.” The two privates were allowed to be
+bitten by mosquitoes which had fed on persons
+stricken with the malignant yellow fever. They
+took the disease, but God was with them. They
+pulled through. Major Reed said of them: “This
+exhibition of moral courage has never been surpassed
+in our history.” Reed finally proved that the mosquito
+was the only carrier of the disease. Once the
+world found out the cause, the rest was easy—riddance
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>of the horrible insect that had made so many
+countries places of horror and death. In the United
+States alone yellow fever had taken a toll of more
+than half a million. Commerce had been interrupted,
+states and cities had been turned into turmoil and
+whole populations wiped out. Shortly after the proof
+of the discovery General Leonard Wood purged
+Havana in a few months. And today it is estimated
+that by the heroic service of Major Walter Reed
+and his soldiers, thirty million lives have been saved
+in the Western Hemisphere.</p>
+
+<p>Has the soldier done anything for peace? Has
+he done anything for progress? Sentiment, theory,
+loud arguments don’t talk, but somehow deeds,
+facts do.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="III">
+    <i>III</i><br>WHAT MORE HAS HE DONE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>A young farmer lad was once leading a calf by
+a rope down a road. He came to a narrow bridge
+where the animal balked. An automobile moving
+up behind the pair had to stop. The boy turned to
+the car and yelled: “Toot!” The driver gave a great,
+loud blast from his deafening horn. The calf,
+thoroughly frightened, galloped madly over the
+bridge and down the road, pulling the poor boy at
+a break-neck run for half a mile. When the automobile
+caught up to the pair, the lad, gasping for
+breath, blazed out at the driver, “I—ugh—said ‘Toot!’—but
+not—ugh—so loud!”</p>
+
+<p>One shouldn’t toot too loud about the soldier.
+It isn’t done. But since his horn has been so seldom
+blown, I take the liberty to honk just a trifle. Some
+of the noise may leave us breathless, but I hope it
+won’t scare the calf.</p>
+
+<p>Yellow fever. We saw last time how Major Walter
+Reed stopped that disease and saved to date some
+thirty million lives. Long before his time another
+army surgeon by the name of William Beaumont
+had a patient who had been accidentally wounded
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>through the stomach. The case was felt hopeless by
+other doctors. Beaumont not only cured the man,
+but took advantage of the large hole to study for
+the first time the action of digestion in a living body.
+His pioneer work paved the way for cures later.
+Tropical anemia! When our country took over
+Porto Rico, the island was helpless against the disease!
+Army doctors, after baffling set-backs finally
+found the cause. Their work saved the Porto Ricans
+from a scourge that would have stopped their development
+forever. Dengue fever! Again army surgeons
+found the mosquito was the cause. The remedy
+was simple. Empyema, tuberculosis, beriberi, surra
+and bone deformities have been signally and notably
+helped by contributions of army surgeons. Rinderpest—a
+disease that had been carrying off the cattle
+by the thousands in the Philippines for half a century.
+The plague was all the more hurtful since cattle
+are Philippines’ beasts of burden and the key to their
+whole commercial life. Colonel R. A. Kelser, who
+is now in Massachusetts, with other soldiers, went
+deeply into the study of the disease. After patient
+efforts he developed a vaccine, which prevents its
+occurrence. What that discovery has done for those
+islands, cannot be measured.</p>
+
+<p>As with disease, so with disaster. Early one morning
+in 1906, San Francisco was suddenly buried in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>flames. Transportation, telephone and telegraph lines
+were broken down. Hospitals and fire departments
+were out of commission. The police force was helpless.
+Riot and anarchy were expected. No organized
+body of relief was possible but the Army. In less
+than three hours after the first blow to the city,
+General Funston with troops was on the scene. The
+soldier dealt out nearly a million rations, set up bakeries
+and coffee kettles, gave havens of comfort, controlled
+looters, opened stores, supervised hospitals
+and got the fire under control. One private soldier
+assembled several hundred refugees, organized them,
+got eating utensils and put up a field bakery. Many
+a soldier did not sleep while the emergency lasted.</p>
+
+<p>In great catastrophes the soldier has been the first
+one to deliver supplies, succor the helpless and keep
+order. The story of our floods, tornadoes, cyclones,
+typhoons, bursting dams, ice-jams, coal mine disasters,
+explosions, earthquakes and forest fires is the
+story of relief by the soldier. In one Mississippi flood
+the army dealt out over two and one-half million
+dollars worth of provisions for two hundred forty-three
+thousand people. It <i>gave</i> everything from
+stoves to post-hole diggers. In Montana blizzards,
+Texas floods, Michigan snow-storms, Florida disasters
+and Ohio overflows, the soldier was there to
+help the helpless. In the last New England floods,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>army trains were the first to reach the sufferers with
+food and relief, and soldiers at great risk made temporary
+bridges and opened roads. In the Porto Rico
+hurricane, army transports arrived first with supplies
+and help for the needy, and brought the island
+to a state of recovery. We hear much of Mr.
+Hoover’s magnificent relief in Europe, but whoever
+told you that five army colonels were his principal
+assistants and that three hundred twenty officers and
+four hundred sixty-four enlisted men made up his
+agencies distributing American relief? The Russian
+relief was wholly the work of our soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>The triumph of service by the army in our possessions
+of Alaska, Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii,
+Porto Rico and the Canal Zone doesn’t often come
+to the ear of the average citizen. In the great archipelago
+of the Philippines, the soldier calmed strife
+between savage tribes, built roads, railroads, schools,
+churches, gave spiritual aid and comfort, and was
+at once, instructor, leader, governor, judge, jury,
+councilor, constructor, almsgiver and peacemaker.
+He did more in 20 years to make the Philippinos a
+united people than had been done in the previous
+centuries. It was his labor largely that caused their
+great desire to retain the supervision of the United
+States. Alaska, too, knows the army as a friend in
+need. When the territory was bought, soldiers were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>immediately sent there to keep order and open up
+the land. In the pioneer days, under great hardship,
+the army made surveys and kept watch over the
+frontiers. In the Klondike rush, it opened the harbors,
+built the roads and trails leading to gold, and
+protected newcomers against mob rule and lawlessness.
+In order to make the only link with the mainland
+of the United States, the soldier laid four
+thousand, five hundred eighty-eight miles of cable
+and built six hundred miles of telegraph, all of which
+he operated. He largely administered the government
+of the territory and at low cost furnished to
+business millions of dollars worth of returns. The
+signal corps soldier gave during the Civil War the
+greatest boost to our telegraph systems. As late as
+1877, he operated three thousand miles of telegraph
+in the South. Today in Washington he operates the
+largest radio net in the world, handling messages
+for forty-eight departments of the government. In
+one year for this service the Army was able to turn
+over to the United States Treasury, two hundred
+sixty-eight million dollars. It was General G. O.
+Squier, Chief Signal Officer, who made the outstanding
+invention of sending a number of telephone
+and telegraph messages over the same line at the
+same time. His work improved and revolutionized
+that industry. It was the soldier, too, who took the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>lead in developing the short wave, high frequency
+transmission and opened up vast channels through
+the air. It was the soldier who developed the radio
+beacon, which guides the airman through fog, cloud
+and darkness safely. It was the air soldier who perfected
+the parachute which has already saved many
+fliers. Of course everyone knows how the soldier
+helped the Wright Brothers in their great pioneer
+flying, and men like Lieutenant Selfridge sacrificed
+their lives for the sake of progress. Later others made
+the great good-will flight to South America, covering
+twenty-two thousand sixty-five miles in two
+hundred sixty-three and one-quarter hours of flying
+time. Lieutenants Maitland and Hegenberger made
+this first non-stop flight from our west coast to
+Honolulu. Army pilots have photographed thirty-five
+thousand square miles in eighteen states for geological
+survey maps. Others have covered half a
+million square miles of our forests and reported
+hundreds of beginnings of fires. Others gave Colonel
+Lindbergh and many commercial pilots advanced
+training in flying.</p>
+
+<p>In a different field, it was the soldier who started
+our steel industry, developed the tractor and was
+the first to bring interchangeable parts to machinery—making
+possible American mass production.</p>
+
+<p>There is much false prejudice against our Chemical
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>Warfare Service. Did you know that since the
+war it has done much for life and progress? It has
+aided industry by developing gas masks against the
+deadly carbon monoxide in mines, the fumes from
+burst pipes of ammonia refrigeration and from
+cyanide gas. It has aided the Public Health Service
+in the successful fumigation of ships; the Bureau of
+Biological Survey in ridding the commercial world
+of rats, gophers, locusts, grasshoppers, the boll
+weevil, marine borers, vermin and moths. At a cost
+of $106 in a western plant, it saved $75,000 worth
+of cloth goods by a single fumigation. With the air
+service it developed a quick method of spraying
+fruit trees, has aided police departments immeasurably
+with chemicals against mobs and bank robbers,
+and led the way in the foundation of the American
+dye industry.</p>
+
+<p>There is scarcely any path of our progress that
+the soldier has not made or followed with helpfulness.
+His activities turn into so many avenues that
+I’m unable to give more than a hint tonight. Here
+is a late one.</p>
+
+<p>Within two weeks after President Roosevelt’s
+inauguration a bill to put a quarter of a million jobless
+men in Reforestation work was passed by Congress.
+The army didn’t want the task of taking over
+a mass of men twice its size, of butting in on the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>Forest Service, and of robbing the soldier of his
+peace time training. The army’s representative so
+stated to the White House. The reply was: “You
+have given all the reasons in the world why the
+Army should do this job. As a matter of fact all the
+reasons you state show that nobody else can do it.”
+The army got the job. The General Staff was wisely
+ready for that possibility. A month later at the rate
+of one thousand five hundred thirty a day, fifty-two
+thousand were enrolled, and forty-two camps had
+been established. Fifty-one days after that three
+hundred ten thousand had been enrolled. The rate
+of reception and caring for this vast number was
+greater than for both the Army and Navy during
+the World War. And this was peace time when the
+spirit, money and cooperation of the people were
+not so great. And what did the soldiers have to do
+for these men? Everything and more than a preparatory
+boarding school must do for its students.
+It had to examine them physically, classify them,
+clothe them, feed them, transport them, do all the
+work of paying them, put up their camps in the
+wilderness, and supervise their moral, mental and
+spiritual welfare and conduct. Army training
+stopped. The soldier had to put every ounce of his
+energy into the task and spent many sleepless, working
+nights, if it were to be a go. The little available
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>army not one-eighth the size of those finally enrolled
+had to press these raw men from every walk
+of life through their new work in a fair and orderly
+way. The entering C.C.C. boys were of equal rank.
+There were no seniors, no foremen, no variations—just
+a crowd. They were not being received into any
+organization. The whole structure had to be built
+from the ground up. The situation was as strange to
+the soldier as to the C.C.C. boy. The only recourse
+the Army Officer had for keeping contentment,
+orderliness and efficiency were precept, example and
+expulsion from camp. He could not use even
+minor forms of correction. He wasn’t allowed to
+make the boy stand up, look one in the eye, or say
+“Yes, sir” or “No, sir.” It was a fearful handicap,
+when he was responsible for their safety, good order
+and reputation in a strange community. But the records
+show surprisingly little discord for the vast
+numbers taken in. The records also show how proper
+sanitation, a balanced diet, daily medical attention
+and patient supervision turned out. An inventory of
+one hundred ten camps reveals that the boys gained
+from five to twenty-seven pounds. Only five per
+cent left camp—a surprisingly small proportion when
+you realize that their main qualification was lack
+of a job. Under skillful guidance they developed
+rapidly. The white anemic faces and flabby arms
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>of early spring were changed into bronzed skins
+and bulging muscles in late summer. Professor Nelson
+C. Brown, New York State College of Forestry,
+says: “The usual army disciplinary methods were
+not permitted, but by precept and example and by
+an exhibition of tolerance and patience, and a
+friendly attitude of helpfulness, the camp commanders
+and forestry officers have made a really
+notable contribution to the upbuilding of character
+and good citizenship in this great army of young
+men.” But let no one think for a moment that it
+is an army, or even the barest beginning of one. These
+young men are no more soldiers than any other
+rugged young men of our country. They have had
+no more military drill, military teaching, military
+environment, military discipline, military progress
+than high school lads at a fire drill. Why they’re not
+even allowed to have military books in their libraries.
+To be soldiers, they would have to start at the bottom
+in everything—forms of courtesy, upright posture,
+neatness in dress, obedience, discipline, team work,
+scouting and patrolling, guard duty, the use of
+weapons and all the thousand and one things that
+the trained man must know. The fact that C.C.C.
+boys wear parts of army uniform misleads many.
+That clothing, salvaged from the war, was all the
+country had to give them. The army dispensed it
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>to keep the lad covered up. But a lion skin doesn’t
+make a lion. No, anyone seeing an army post and
+then a camp of the C.C.C. boys would notice the
+complete difference. The C.C.C. is wholly a peacetime
+project for the interior development of our
+country, the largest one ever undertaken in the
+United States.</p>
+
+<p>Today nearly a million C.C.C. boys have passed
+through the soldier’s hands. Ninety-four per cent
+of the camps are now under Reserve Officers from
+civilian life, who are carrying on with great efficiency
+and success. This vast enterprise is just
+another by-product of the army’s normal work of
+being fit and ready against an emergency. And all
+of these services of the soldier come to the average
+taxpayer for less than a penny a day.</p>
+
+<p>Do I toot too loudly—do I scare the calf?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">
+    <i>IV</i><br>THE FIRST GAME
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>One day at West Point it was my duty to take
+a prominent visitor, an Englishman, to a football
+game. We sat through three periods with little conversation.
+Knowing that British Rugby corresponds
+in its continuous motion to our basketball, I finally
+got up courage to ask him what he thought of the
+game he was witnessing. “Well,” he said, “I think
+it’s all very jolly, but I can’t understand why they
+get down and pray so much.”</p>
+
+<p>That brings up the very first serious game we
+played with the British in this country. It was a contest
+we had for freedom between 1775 and 1783.
+Incidentally we lost the game, but we gained our
+independence. If the actual score could have been
+displayed in the headlines of a great news sheet, it
+would have read something like this: “The British
+rout the Colonials, 31-6.”</p>
+
+<p>In the first period of that game, after the kick-off
+at Lexington and Concord, the English General
+Howe shoved the Colonial Team right out of Long
+Island, and sent many of them to the sidelines. When
+he appeared before Manhattan, they ran away at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>the first sight of the British Team—ran pell-mell right
+through New York’s East Side, until our head coach
+jumped in and actually had to beat them over the
+back to get them onto the playing field again. But
+they melted away despite entreaties and prodding.
+Of course, it wasn’t a team that George Washington
+had at that time. It was a collection of fellows who
+hadn’t been taught the rules and principles of the
+game, did not understand team-work, who had few
+togs, were poorly conditioned and scarcely knew
+how to line up. All this was very humiliating since
+our country was abundantly rich to support a good
+coaching staff and to make an outlay for training
+and equipment. Besides the game had been advertised
+for over ten years. Yet nothing had been done
+to present even a good defensive line and back field.
+In fact, most of the men who turned out had never
+even tackled the dummy—let alone being assembled.
+It is not surprising then that when the Colonists were
+chased by General Howe down through New Jersey,
+that over half of Washington’s squad just picked
+up and went home, refused to play any longer, said
+they’d played as long as they’d agreed to, and left
+him with a few to carry on against a quantity of
+well drilled and trained opponents. They were discontented
+not only at the poor showing but because
+they didn’t have a chance. But Washington, instead
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>of quitting, showed how much determined stuff was
+in him. When, with the handful remaining, the game
+looked hopelessly lost, he called for two brilliant
+forward passes down on his one-foot line at Trenton
+and Princeton, which were successful. It was a daring
+play, but besides throwing a tiny scare into the
+British, the Colonists netted only eight yards and
+were forced to kick. They did a lot of justified
+kicking at this time in many other ways, but these
+desperate plays put back a lot of spirit into the team,
+in spite of the discouraging situation, and the desertion
+from Washington’s ranks of players.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the second period of the game that the
+Colonists made their first real touchdown at Saratoga.
+Of course, they outweighed the British about
+thirty pounds to the man, and that helped. Then,
+too, they had a fine captain of the team by the name
+of Arnold, who afterwards because of ill-treatment
+on his own squad at the hands of some disgruntled
+alumni, went over and played on the British team.
+But meanwhile General Howe added to his lead by
+scoring with wide end sweeps and perfect interference
+two more touchdowns at the Brandywine
+and Germantown—and there the half ended. During
+the intermission both teams rested. The British went
+into luxurious training quarters in Philadelphia,
+where they built themselves up with good food and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>generally had a sprightly fine time, whereas the
+Colonists’ squad sat out in the open and shivered
+and starved through a freezing winter, and the hardships
+took a further toll of Washington’s line and
+backfield men. But a great thing happened at Valley
+Forge for Washington’s remnants of a squad. The
+pupil of the master strategist abroad, Frederick the
+Great, arrived. It was Baron Von Steuben. At once
+Washington made him principal assistant coach.
+There was no department of the game in which he
+was not skilled. He was an untiring worker and had
+a kind, attractive personality as an instructor. He
+picked out the best material and made a sort of varsity
+squad. He emphasized the fundamentals of
+blocking and tackling in which the colonists were
+sadly lacking. As he drilled them in diversified plays
+and got them clicking as a team, the rest of the
+players watched them and then attempted to imitate
+them on separate fields. He did much as they do
+in those schools where everyone has to take part
+in sports, where intra-mural athletics are treated
+seriously. The effect of such coaching was immediately
+felt at Monmouth in the beginning of the
+third period, where the Colonists played the British
+to a standstill; and could have made another touchdown,
+had not Charles Lee, a good half-back when
+he wanted to play, run with the ball full-tilt toward
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>the enemy’s goal. He would actually have made a
+touchdown for the other side, if one of his own
+team-mates had not tackled him a little past midfield.
+But shortly afterward, this good showing of the
+Colonists was overcome by two touchdowns made
+by the British at Newport and Camden, where undrilled
+players faced veterans. Later Nathaniel
+Greene, a fine team captain, played well with a green
+squad riddled with injuries. Although he could not
+threaten the goal line, he stood the British on even
+terms at Guilford Court House. His defensive work
+with his inferior line was praiseworthy, but it didn’t
+thrill the spectators or advance the ball. Then came
+Washington’s strategy as a great coach. He fooled
+the British into the belief that he was playing a
+6-2-2-1 defense and suddenly with a fake kick attack,
+swooped down on Cornwallis at Yorktown.
+Even though the team was penalized for holding, he
+hung on. But the touchdown he was responsible for
+in his excellent head-work was offset by the fact
+that there had been imported more men from France
+to block the British than he had players from his
+own institution. The officials took the view that
+players brought in from another institution were
+ringers, and therefore the score as applying to the
+Colonists would have to be thrown out. And besides
+this touchdown didn’t end the game, as so many
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>people think it did. It was just the end of the third
+period. In the last and fourth quarter, the British
+quarter-back realized his lead of 31 to 6, and just
+held on, since he had a squad of three times as many
+hardy and well-drilled players as had been lost at
+Yorktown and altogether a better and bigger one
+than the Colonists had. Of course, the British were
+just content to stall around in midfield, occupying
+our principal cities. The game ended just as the
+entire British squad was called back to England,
+because the schedule makers in Europe had more
+important games for them to play over there. And
+that left the gridiron empty. If the game was not
+won by the Colonists, at least the field was. So irrespective
+of score, the Americans surged all over the
+gridiron and carried off both sets of goal-posts with
+a great hurrahing over the victory. And we’ve been
+hurrahing ever since.</p>
+
+<p>Now the story of our Revolution as a game may
+appear to some to sound flippant, to poke fun at
+our troops and belittle them. No one reveres more
+the courage and fortitude of the men of ’76 than
+the soldier. But so many of their sufferings and defeats
+were unnecessary, and so much of their efforts
+wasted because of lack of timely coaching, that the
+story as a game can briefly picture the play as the
+action took place. In principle, that was exactly what
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>happened in our fight for freedom. We really never
+won the Revolution by either our power or our
+skill. And what’s the use of fooling ourselves now?
+Are we not ready to look at this contest frankly
+in the face and learn its lessons? Because of our
+failure to coach or equip our squad properly, we
+dragged on eight years of death by exposure, disease
+and the bullet. And this procedure is all the
+sadder and more tragic when we recognize that the
+material available in the colonies was as fine in raw
+ruggedness, character and marksmanship as anywhere
+in the world. Men who joined the ranks became
+discouraged by the wholesale when they saw
+themselves too often officered by persons as unskilled
+and unlettered as they, when they realized
+that they had little chance against soldiers well-trained
+and equipped. They keenly felt the disgrace
+and uselessness of it all. It was natural that they
+deserted in shoals or left at the expiration of short-time
+enlistments. The Continental Line, which
+Steuben coached and who stuck all through the
+war, were able and heroic, but were few by comparison.
+The great majority stayed only as long a
+time as would correspond to a few days on a football
+squad. Washington and Steuben couldn’t count
+on what material they could coach or could have for
+any one game. Green Americans against expert British,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>were the rule. If you can picture a coach on any
+gridiron receiving from the farm or the store a new
+set of men every two days, with most of the old
+set leaving at the same time, and attempting to produce
+a team for a game each Saturday, you have in
+a mild way Washington’s situation. We know that
+when we put untrained and unconditioned men into
+a football game, we reap more serious injuries than
+if the men are hardened and trained. If those casualties
+exist where the human body is the only
+weapon, how <i>much more</i> unspeakable are the added
+injuries where bad weather, poor shelter, loss of
+food and sleep, bullets and cannon balls were the
+weapons. So in the Revolution we put men in a
+more terrible plight than we’d think of allowing even
+in modern football.</p>
+
+<p>But a more surprising thing is what we did after
+the war was over. We dismissed our entire coaching
+staff and all of the squad except 80 men, who just
+worked around the training quarters and received
+no practice or instruction in the game. Our people
+had the idea that there would never be another
+game. They contended that any attempt at a continuous
+coaching system with a paid staff was getting
+back to professionalism—to despotism and
+tyranny. Since armies in Europe were playthings of
+Kings, then all armies would be that way. They
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>took the same line of reasoning as the man who says,
+“Since some church members are hypocrites, then
+all churches are wrong.” Washington tried his best
+with all his pleading and logic, to show how false
+was such a view. He begged and advised in so many
+of his letters and testaments that it seems nothing
+could be more important to him. He wrote of the
+Revolution: “Had we formed a permanent army in
+the beginning—we should not have been the greatest
+part of the war inferior to the enemy, indebted for
+our safety to their inactivity, enduring frequently
+the mortification of seeing opportunities to ruin them
+pass unimproved for the want of a force, which the
+country was completely able to afford; and of seeing
+the country ravaged, our towns burnt, the inhabitants
+plundered, abused, murdered with impunity
+from the same cause.” He also wrote, “To
+be prepared for war is one of the most effectual
+means of preserving peace.” Henry Lee, Governor
+of Virginia about the same time went further. “Convinced
+as I am that a government is the murderer of
+its citizens which sends them to the field uninformed
+and untaught, where they are to meet men of the
+same age and strength, mechanized by education and
+discipline for battle, I cannot withhold my denunciation
+of its wickedness and folly.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus the people were warned against their slump—and
+we shall soon see how they paid for it.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="V">
+    <i>V</i><br>THE FIELD MEET
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>First of all, I’d better warn you to turn the dial,
+if you don’t want to hear some shocking things
+about ourselves—things I daresay you haven’t heard
+before. You remember what Hegel said—“We learn
+from history that we learn nothing from history.”
+I think he meant that we just won’t say, “Because
+Mark Anthony, Aaron Burr and Belgium did those
+things, we won’t do them either.” O no, we must
+poke our nose right into the fire and get our fair
+eyebrows burnt off, before we beware. You and I
+often take singeings like that and charge them up
+to human nature. But as a people after our Revolution
+we took red-hot scorchings all over the face
+and down the body over and over again. Never did
+we profit less by the bungling of any activity than
+we did in those years following our escape into freedom.
+But I’d better tell you the facts and let you
+judge for yourself.</p>
+
+<p>And yet—I hesitate to tell them—these black
+things that our histories cover up with a sheet, a
+lily white sheet. As often as I have looked at them
+I still get a quake in the stomach. But maybe it’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>best that we do look them in the face—in order to
+enter into the big charity of preventive medicine.</p>
+
+<p>Well here goes! After the Revolution, in the face
+of Washington’s pleading, Steuben’s example, and
+stout statesmen’s warnings, we cast out discipline
+and training like life boats from a new ship and
+reduced the army to eighty men. Then we put seven
+hundred on legal paper, who couldn’t be raised or
+kept going. Three years after the war we had for
+the common defense less than a thousand men
+poorly equipped and trained and scattered in the
+lonely forts on our borders—the equivalent of one
+hundred policemen on the outskirts of Boston today,
+with none in the city. So when Daniel Shay
+organized his rebellion, forced the court to adjourn
+and marched on Springfield, he had things pretty
+much his own way. It was only after tumult and
+bloodshed that peace was restored, whereas a small,
+well-trained force at hand would doubtless have kept
+the uprising from even starting. But the people refused
+to look at this picture—refused to take out preventives
+or insurance against the dreadful happenings
+to follow. Even when the United States became
+a nation and our Constitution was adopted, we had
+an army of the magnificent size of five hundred
+ninety-five men. Can you believe it? But listen to
+the consequence of this neglect. Seven years after
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>Revolution, one thousand souls in Kentucky alone
+perished by tomahawk and arrow, with no one to
+protect them. Then a force of hastily recruited men
+in Ohio were ambushed and wiped out. The next
+year fourteen hundred quickly raised defenders were
+also annihilated. And of course our weakness furnished
+the savage with a new courage for depredations,
+so that the thousands of persons who perished
+cannot now even be estimated. There was only one
+bright spot in this decade of terror. Washington,
+despite the laxness of the country, selected Anthony
+Wayne to lead troops against the Indians. Wayne,
+who had seen Steuben’s careful coaching, trained
+his men for over a year before he took them into
+action. At the Battle of Fallen Timber, eleven years
+after the Revolution, he won our first well-executed
+victory over any sort of disorder. The Indians were
+so completely spanked that they let the settler live
+in peace for a long time—and thousands of lives were
+thus saved. But this action was a live coal in a bed
+of ashes. For soon the war scares crept steadily upon
+us—with France fifteen years after the Revolution,
+with Spain twenty years after, with Great Britain
+twenty-five years after. At each new scare, Congress
+voted huge sums of money and called out
+thousands of men on paper, but at no time did our
+actual forces even poorly trained, number four
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>thousand men. The soldier seemed to be the thermometer
+of the nation’s fear. His numbers would
+rise and fall like the encased mercury to record the
+heat and cold of the people. But he never rose in
+time before, or stayed long enough afterward, to
+have any effect upon the temperature. He just didn’t
+exist in time. William Duane in his writings of the
+period complained, “There is no discipline; there is
+even no system; and there are gross misconceptions
+on the subject. There appears to have been a disposition
+to discourage the acquisition of military
+knowledge.” So we arrived at our Second War with
+Great Britain, twenty-nine years after the Revolution,
+weaker proportionally than when we faced
+that war.</p>
+
+<p>Now the land warfare of 1812 would be so
+funny, if it weren’t tragic; so laughable, if it weren’t
+shameful, that our school histories just must omit
+much of it, if they’re going to show that we are the
+perfect people of the world. You could scarcely
+describe the affair in football language, as I did
+with the Revolution, because the candidates for
+that gridiron didn’t stay long enough to last much
+after the kick-off. It had better be classified as an
+open tournament of all games and events, under
+any rules which the particular coach wanted to
+make, and at any time he wanted to play. It probably
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>could be described somewhat as a track-meet,
+if it were confined to running events. I tell you those
+men who played against or rather opposite Great
+Britain the second time, and who took no coaching
+for their particular stunts, could outsprint anything
+you’ve seen in shorts. The first event was staged at
+Detroit where our force of eighteen hundred had
+covered themselves up with fortifications. On the
+appearance of only twelve hundred of the enemy,
+the eighteen hundred gallantly surrendered without
+firing a shot or putting up any sort of resistance. This
+display of talent was soon followed by even a more
+disgraceful one at Queenstown. General Van Rensselaer
+got together nearly three thousand hastily
+recruited fellows at Lewiston to take the heights
+across the river. Two hundred and twenty-five
+picked men succeeded in crossing and stormed the
+place. This little courageous band withstood charge
+after charge of the enemy, hoping for reenforcements.
+But the large force on the American side refused
+to budge or even help their stricken comrades,
+who were finally killed or captured. After seeing
+their gallant fellows perish, they made their way to
+their homes quite quickly. A little later General
+Harrison got together from four states ten thousand
+men with no background or experience of warfare.
+After a short march and slight flurry with the Indians
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>their speed in getting back to their homes and
+camp was far beyond the most sanguine expectations.
+You couldn’t exactly say they ran. No, they
+evaporated and their work was over. Then General
+Dearborn sent an expedition of fifteen hundred men
+against a small post on the River LaColle. The British
+garrison consisted of only two hundred men, seven
+and one-half times smaller force than ours. But by
+unskilled leadership the American columns were
+separated and had an exciting time firing into each
+other while the enemy escaped. After all these
+escapades, along came General Smythe, who openly
+confessed how wrong other leaders had been and
+how he was the one hope of the war. By bombastic
+proclamations he induced over five thousand men to
+come to him at Black Rock for an invasion of
+Canada. On the promised day for the crossing, less
+than half the command embarked in the morning
+and waited there for the order to push across. In the
+afternoon, Smythe sensing the weakness of his
+troops, ordered them to disembark, and stated that
+the expedition was temporarily postponed. The men
+were so resentful that he promised he would invade
+Canada at a later date. Three days afterward he got
+them into the boats—and then out of them the very
+same way. The scene of riot and discontent was indescribable.
+Men fired off their weapons in every
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>direction, and threatened Smythe’s life. Hunted and
+pursued, he finally made his way to his home in
+Virginia, and his command dispersed in disorder.</p>
+
+<p>The next episode was that of General Winchester
+who sent Colonel Lewis to take Frenchtown, which
+he captured with a superior force. But after he had
+gained his victory, his soldiers were so lawless, undisciplined
+and ignorant of the first essentials of
+precaution, that the enemy returned and killed or
+captured the whole of the ten hundred and fifty
+Americans. Then came two successful expeditions.
+General Pike with seventeen hundred picked men
+took Toronto garrisoned by half that number and
+General Harrison with a force three times as great
+as the enemy, won a victory at Thames River. But
+these engagements were isolated and did not have
+much effect upon the war. Then General Hampton
+marched on Montreal with about five thousand untrained
+men, who met eight hundred Canadian regulars,
+before whom they fled in utter panic. After this
+General Wilkinson tried the same thing with a similar
+force. When his advance guard of sixteen hundred
+men met eight hundred British at Chrysler’s
+Field, they did the usual scampering and Wilkinson
+gave up the idea of invading Canada. After all this
+weakness there was nothing to stop the enemy from
+swooping down upon us. They took Fort Niagara,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>occupied Lewiston, Youngstown and Manchester
+and burned Buffalo. When six hundred and fifty
+British and Indians appeared before Black Rock,
+nearly three thousand Americans going by the name
+of soldiers ran away without even aiming—ran to
+cover so fast that the enemy had no trouble pillaging
+and destroying everything in sight.</p>
+
+<p>But through these lowering clouds of neglect
+and ignorance there came a rift of sunshine. Three
+young generals, Brown, Scott, Ripley, in spite of
+the backward administration, decided on their own
+hook in these dark ages to pull out of their shelves
+the old learning of Washington and Steuben, to
+have a little renaissance of their own. For a year they
+worked on preparing thirty-five hundred men for
+real service in the field. And they were rewarded
+by the heroic battles of Chippewa and Lundy’s
+Lane. Ah, yes, our histories record these actions,
+but they don’t tell why they were successful. The
+men were trained and disciplined. And these two
+contests put a wholesome stop to depredations and
+invasions of American soil in the north.</p>
+
+<p>Yet much of that work was counteracted by
+Bladensburg, the prime disgrace of American History.
+Little anxiety had been felt in Washington,
+over three thousand British troops who had
+been hovering about in the Chesapeake for a year.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>The Secretary of War, the President and General
+Winder fell into a lengthy argument about how
+many troops should be called out to oppose this
+force. Meanwhile, the enemy was marching uninterruptedly
+toward our Capital. Finally sixty-four
+hundred Americans were collected just before the
+battle to oppose the invaders. The camp of men was
+wild with disorder and drink, while our so-called
+leaders were stupid with perplexity. Just before
+actual contact the three gentlemen mentioned above,
+fell to discussing the situation as if it were something
+quite new. The troops were posted on the
+heights—badly. At the firing of some harmless
+rockets, our force which outnumbered the enemy
+two to one, fled right through the nation’s Capitol,
+leaving it open to plunder and rapine. Why the
+British chose to burn only the public buildings, was
+probably due to their sportsmanship.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, General Jackson did excellent defensive
+work at New Orleans, but that was after
+the war was over—after the whistle had blown. Of
+course the Navy, too, did perfect work. The government
+had seen to it that they had been well-trained
+for a long time before the war. There were
+no novices in that organization.</p>
+
+<p>All these actions on land were really more disgraceful
+than I have described them. Throughout
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>the War of 1812, as you see, most any unqualified
+man could be put in the saddle and every kind of
+unprepared man could be put in the field to fight.
+We were helpless, hopeless, impatient, disgraceful,
+because we had discarded training and foresight in
+the years beforehand. In this war, over two decades
+after we had become a nation, we committed all
+the errors of the Revolution to a greater degree—and
+one more. We had no management or leadership—no
+commander-in-chief or the commonest business
+organization. Fine manhood, for want of previous
+training was held up to ridicule, suffering, casualties,
+and disgrace. Now for the figures. We called out
+over half a million men and could not drive a maximum
+of sixteen thousand from our shores for over
+two years. We spent nearly two hundred million
+dollars, not counting pensions, when two per cent
+of that sum with a small well-trained force would
+have sufficed. And above all we sacrificed six thousand
+lives in camp and on the battlefield, when that
+figure should not have been over two hundred. As
+far as might, efficiency, planning and management
+were concerned, we muddled this war on land to
+the tune of death and shame. Again we couldn’t
+defend our country against our enemies and had to
+thank God for European weariness from Napoleon,
+which called off the British. That’s the reason why,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>when our raw material is finer and greater than anywhere
+else in the world, the soldier is so wrought up
+over our people rushing into future extravagance,
+unnecessary slaughter and possible defeat. For somehow
+war has a habit of sneaking up on us craftily
+and quickly, like a thug.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">
+    <i>VI</i><br>THE UPHILL GAME
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>How about giving our imaginations a little exercise
+for a minute before we start in on the evening’s
+story. Are we set for the effort? Well, here’s the
+picture. Just suppose a great plague of flu were
+to sweep this country from end to end. And suppose
+there were not a single doctor or nurse in the
+United States. Now suppose that Congress, all excited,
+voted great numbers of doctors and nurses to
+stem the scourge. Well, how many people would
+die, and how much neglect and horror would visit
+our doorways, while the doctors and nurses were
+being trained and educated? Just go over in your
+mind that little chaos and you have almost a view
+of the War of 1812—almost—for then we went this
+fancied epidemic one better. We didn’t provide
+training and education at all for the doctors and
+nurses—the officers and men of that calamity. The
+plague of war just went along from bad to worse—and
+then from worse to awful. There was much
+excuse for our slips before and during the Revolution,
+when we were a loose lot of colonies and were
+divided into Whigs and Tories. But by 1812 we had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>been a nation for over twenty years. Few realized
+then, and some don’t now, that the soldier needs
+just as much preparation and education as the doctor
+and the nurse. For preparedness against war and
+shortening a war amount to a vast science and art
+which cannot be trusted to quacks without undue
+loss of life to our sons. After our narrow escape from
+this plague of 1812, when our enemy providentially
+was called back to Europe, we didn’t do away with
+our preventive medicine, as we did after the Revolution.
+No sir, we kept that training for three whole
+months. Then we reduced it to ten thousand men
+on paper. Five years later, in the face of protests by
+such men as John C. Calhoun, we cut it to six thousand
+men. Then the Seminoles, Creeks and Black
+Hawk promptly entered into the gentle art of taking
+scalps. Settlers were slain. Dade’s Command of one
+hundred seven officers and men marching on a
+peaceful errand were massacred. Other officers and
+civilians were mowed down. Cholera attacked the
+troops against Black Hawk, and yellow fever took
+its toll of those against the Seminoles. In the Florida,
+Georgia and Alabama country a force of less than
+a thousand trained troops tried to keep safe a vast
+unexplored country against three thousand Indians.
+By 1834, for the whole of the United States, less
+than four thousand troops attempted to guard over
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>ten thousand miles of seacoast and frontier for fifteen
+million people. Two years later, after these
+killings had been going on for some time, our legislators
+with frenzied haste voted our army to be
+raised back to ten thousand. But the troops could
+not be had or trained in time. So the slaughter went
+on. Mr. Hearst quotes Alfred Henry Lewis as saying
+that a Congressman is like a man riding backwards
+in a train. He never sees anything till after it has
+passed. Well, that may be a little unfair to our
+legislators, but it surely applied to these enactments.
+For what happened afterwards? The usual waste
+and ineffectiveness. General after general on the
+frontier asked to be relieved of command because
+of the impossibility of the task, the smallness of the
+force and the wholesale, needless deaths. Of the
+trained men in this Seminole War over forty-one
+per cent perished—nearly half of all the troops—and
+to little purpose. One hundred seventeen of our best
+officers, in one year, seeing the fruitlessness of their
+services resigned from the army rather than to be a
+party to stagnation. Among them were such prominent
+men as Horace Bliss, W. C. Young, R. R.
+Parrott, Alexander D. Bache, Albert Sydney Johnston,
+N. B. Buford, Leonidas Polk, Jefferson Davis,
+Joseph E. Johnston and George G. Meade. By 1842
+the army in the face of the want of a strong national
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>police force was reduced to eighty-six hundred and
+thirteen men. A Congressman on the floor of the
+house stated in that year: “We have no prospects of
+war. We have more reason to suppose that the world
+will grow wiser and that the humane and oft-repeated
+wish of the wise and good, that the sword
+and bayonet may be converted into the scythe and
+ploughshare, will be realized.” We have no prospects
+of war! Four years after this statement, came
+the War with Mexico like a bolt out of the red,
+white and blue. It found our seventeen million people
+with an army of fifty-three hundred men all
+told, or what would correspond for a university of
+seventeen hundred students to a football squad of
+six men. Six whole men. Think of that. A line, all
+but one man, no backs and no substitutes. Of course,
+you couldn’t play the game at all, under those circumstances.
+Well, as the Mexican War was in sight
+General Zachary Taylor had to. He had to fight
+with less than that. He had just three thousand
+troops against a possible fifty thousand Mexicans.
+Even so, his command was the largest regular force
+we had assembled since the Revolution. Whatever
+the rights and wrongs of this war were, Taylor was
+in a perilous position. When hostilities came, he had
+to go forward with his little band of trained soldiers.
+Against superior forces he won the battles of Palo
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>Alto and Resaca de la Palma. Then he was held up.
+Untrained volunteers poured in upon him too late—right
+in the midst of campaign—just as applicants
+for a medical school might rush in and clog up a
+busy hospital. Imagine that situation, hundreds of
+novices running around the corridors and into the
+wards of a big hospital. Would the doctors be crazy?
+Taylor’s position was worse. The government had
+forced him to keep these men in his institution and
+many of them hadn’t the inclination to learn, many
+had come out for a lark, and all of them had to be
+taught from the ground up obedience, punctiliousness,
+cleanliness and the technique and character of
+the soldier if they weren’t going to <i>run</i> or be uselessly
+<i>killed in battle</i>. It took four months’ waiting
+and preparing in a hostile country before Taylor
+could go into his next engagement. Besides he
+couldn’t get enough transportation. But he had one
+big advantage over leaders in 1812 and the Revolution.
+West Point was beginning to account for itself—not
+because it was West Point, nor because I would
+emphasize the United States Military Academy unduly,
+but because it was the only place in the Western
+Hemisphere <i>then</i> where a man could get four
+years’ training and education toward being a doctor
+for the plague of war. Five hundred West Pointers—the
+Grants and Stonewall Jacksons as lieutenants
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>and captains, made things easier for Taylor, and
+other West Pointers, like Jefferson Davis, were coming
+back to the colors with the volunteers. So Taylor,
+after his green men had been taught something,
+won the battle of Monterey. But these victories
+weren’t getting us anywhere. They were just scattered
+first downs. Taylor was much like the hen
+that pecks, but has nothing to cackle about. Over
+his advance into nowhere the administration was
+beginning to be nervous. He could scarcely have
+been called an educated soldier. On the contrary,
+Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the
+army in Washington, was professionally trained and
+self-educated to the point of brilliance. For a long
+time Scott had told Polk and Marcy, just what
+would end the war quickly—a strike at the very
+heart of Mexico—nothing less. But the powers
+wouldn’t listen to him, scoffed at him, called him
+visionary. The quacks were ridiculing the doctors.
+But when Taylor got nowhere more leisurely, the
+administration threw up its hands and chucked the
+whole affair into Scott’s lap, because the people were
+becoming restless for a solution. Yes, the President
+gave permission to Scott, but he had called Scott’s
+plan visionary, and therefore had to prove his point
+by taking a pot shot at Scott’s efforts when he could
+safely do so from executive cover. In spite of this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>double-crossing, Scott finally got enough troops at
+Vera Cruz to start shoving through to the finish.
+Meanwhile Taylor, who could scarcely have been
+accused of planning his battles with knowledge and
+decision, won Buena Vista. A number of trained
+subordinates, such as Wool and Jefferson Davis, together
+with seasoned troops were mainly responsible
+for the victory. But beyond drawing a large part
+of the Mexican Army away from Scott, it did not
+accomplish much toward ending the war. Scott had
+given it out that he was going to conquer a peace
+and he was determined to do so with all speed.
+By skill and energy he took Vera Cruz with only
+twenty losses to his troops. But then he was met
+with horrible obstacles. Polk had not kept his part
+of the bargain—to send the rest of the troops, transportation
+and supplies. Yellow fever would soon be
+attacking the forces in this low country. Scott
+pushed on toward the highlands anyhow with what
+he had. At Cerro Gordo he faced a natural stronghold
+in the mountains that was terrifying. With
+excellent scouting and planning, with the aid of
+able subordinates such as Robert E. Lee, he pushed
+through the scowling, fortified barrier and sent the
+Mexicans flying, pursuing them as far as he could.</p>
+
+<p>But then came the rub. Jalapa. Have you ever
+heard of Jalapa? Well, it was another Valley Forge
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>in our history, a Valley Forge in a hostile country
+far from home. There, seven regiments and two
+companies of Scott’s volunteers went home in a
+body because their enlistments expired. Over thirty-six
+hundred men left him, and nothing could stir
+their patriotism to remain. His force was reduced to
+less than seven thousand in the face of twenty
+thousand Mexicans. Also James K. Polk was continuing
+his undercutting work at home. Scott was
+being too successful and would be too strong politically.
+So money and recruits did not arrive. The
+troops were not only low in numbers, but in spirits,
+too. Scott pleaded in vain with the government for
+the life of his men and honor of our country to
+send him what he needed. Some of his troops were
+beginning to feel it was no use trying to go forward.
+It was all they could do to survive now in the center
+of Mexico. One of his generals advised going back.
+Would they have to give up? It was a desperate
+situation. But Scott meant to go forward. He began
+by winning over the hostile inhabitants through his
+kindly, square treatment. They grew to like him
+better than their own leader, Santa Anna. He kept
+his troops in hand and generally well-behaved. So
+he was finally able to barter with the inhabitants and
+get food for his men. He pushed on toward Puebla
+without the money and recruits promised him.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>Finally, after two months’ delay, fresh troops and
+money came. Even though he had only ten thousand
+seven hundred eighty-one effectives, mixed with
+green men, he went further onward immediately.
+Came the victories of Contreras, Churubusco, Molino
+del Rey, Chapultepec and Mexico City. The
+capital was taken and the war was over. In six
+months, trained troops, trained subordinates and a
+trained commander had marched through the heart
+of a hostile country, against vastly superior numbers
+of the enemy, against a bloodsucking administration
+at its back, and had conquered a peace, as Scott had
+said he would. Had his advice in the first place been
+heeded, the war, the sufferings, the deaths, and the
+expense could have been cut in less than a fourth.
+But again the value of training and education for a
+plague had been flouted. Yet training and training
+alone had won for us our first successful war on land.
+And from it came a third of the present area of the
+United States, which we weren’t loath to accept.</p>
+
+<p>And the cause of our success? Well, we must be
+frank and honest. We must admit that the opposition
+wasn’t really first class. Had it been, dear knows
+what beatings our paltry number of trained troops
+would have taken. But the Mexicans were by no
+means as weak as we were in 1812. If they had been,
+we could have walked into the Mexican capital
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span>without much more than a loud booh. We mustn’t
+get the idea that the Mexicans couldn’t fight. They
+disputed the way so hotly at Contreras and Molino
+del Rey, that it looked for a time very doubtful for
+the United States. It was no afternoon’s parade such
+as the British had had into our capitol.</p>
+
+<p>But our quality was superior and we could force
+our way through the opposition. Why? Well, Scott
+tells you, Scott, who was not a West Pointer. He
+said that had it not been for the graduates of the
+Academy, the war would have lasted four or five
+years, with more defeats than victories in the first
+part. At any rate, these young men proved to be a
+great foundation for efficient leadership. Specialized
+education and training whether or not by West
+Point had saved money and life in this war, despite
+untrained inpourings, despite a hampering administration,
+and despite our pitiful numbers.</p>
+
+<p>But let us hark back to a piece of irony. In the
+previous years before this war, <i>twice had Congress
+tried to abolish West Point</i>, and <i>once</i> it made no
+appropriations for it, so that the Superintendent at
+his own risk had to borrow $65,000 from a private
+individual to keep it going. What ugliness would
+have been added to our history, had the abolitionists
+been successful? What shame and slaughter would
+have come had the President <i>not</i> been forced to let
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>Scott carry out his plan? Is it to laugh or weep at
+the sentimentalists who would do away with the
+doctors and squander human life? Well, let’s see the
+Civil War next. Not so pretty—what?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">
+    <i>VII</i><br>THE SCRAMBLE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>At a game of bridge, a player once tried to excuse
+himself to his partner for trumping his ace, “But you
+see,” he said, “I’m just learning.” Said the partner,
+“That’s the devil of it—you’re <i>not</i>.” Just why our
+country didn’t learn after three wars, two of which
+we actually lost through the <i>absence</i> of training,
+and one of which we won <i>because</i> of training, is a
+mystery to more than good bridge players. Well,
+we didn’t learn, for right after the Mexican War, we
+reduced our trained force to the size it was shortly
+after our miserable War of 1812, thirty-six years
+before. And we made this astounding reduction, in
+the face of an increase in our population of twelve
+millions, and in our territory, of nearly a million
+square miles. The soldier was almost immediately
+put up against an impossible task. He was sprinkled
+about so thinly beyond the Mississippi that often he
+despaired of his own existence. A paltry seven thousand
+struggled against hundreds of thousands of
+Indians for the sake of the settler. Besides, the western
+land was familiar to the savage and strange to
+the soldier. The odds against this meager force were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>increased when gold was discovered in California,
+when the forty-niner came along. The soldier had
+to build forts, roads and trails—and escort the endless
+caravans of wagon trains over the prairie, if the
+settler was to arrive safely in our coast states. Meanwhile
+uprisings of Apaches, Yumas, Navajos, Cheyenne
+and the deadly Sioux had to be repulsed. Tardy
+increases of the trained force by Congress came far
+behind the heels of the unwarranted killings. By
+1861 the entire army, trained only in small actions,
+numbered a little over fifteen thousand men. And
+eighty-four per cent of this force was scattered so
+completely and remotely from Washington, that it
+would have taken months to collect them. We sat
+through all this, like the man watching for weeks the
+flood approaching his house, and making no attempt
+to remove his furniture, or get a boat. We watched
+the skies grow darker and crooned, “It ain’t goin’ to
+rain no more.” For thirty years the North had been
+trying to black the South’s industrial eye, and the
+South had as vigorously defied the threats. Violent
+abolitionists, cartoonists, pamphleteers and novelists
+had been using hot words and making insulting
+gestures at each other. Yet the Yankee, doubling
+one fist and opening the other, kept saying, “O, no
+there won’t be a war. Brother couldn’t fight brother.
+Even if there is one, it can’t last.” When South Carolina
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>seceded four months before the conflict, and
+six states followed her example, we did not wake
+up to the protection of our youth. When nearly one-fourth
+of the army, with its proportion of government
+property in Texas, was surrendered to the
+South, we did nothing to overcome the loss. When
+we saw the South call out one hundred thousand
+men for a year’s service, we sat like spectators on
+the bleachers. We let the Confederates seize the
+arsenals in their states and all the government property
+they wanted. We let them boldly inaugurate a
+rival republic within our borders, elect a president
+and declare their independence. Even then we made
+no effort to school and train our men so that they
+might have some chance. General Scott early begged
+Buchanan and Secretary of War Floyd to raise a
+small, efficient, trained force to stem possible trouble,
+but these men of state merely shrugged. Since Scott
+was too old to mount a horse, he was too old to give
+advice. After all he was only at the top of his profession,
+practically and theoretically. Our attitude
+was <i>not</i> to be ready for possible emergencies, and
+particularly an emergency that had been slapping
+us in the face for over thirty years, but to do as
+wretchedly as we could when the emergency
+struck us. And we surely lived up to expectations.
+When the gun at Fort Sumter waked the sleeping
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>North into action, we were destitute of anything
+like a proper tool to handle the situation. Even our
+new President because there were no trained troops
+in the East to protect him, had to make his way in
+disguise to a threatened White House; whereas
+President Davis, a trained, tried and educated soldier
+and statesman had collected thirty-five thousand
+troops, who were being trained and equipped. So
+when President Lincoln, unlettered and unskilled
+in the art and science of war arrived in office, he
+found the South had a magnificent start on him.
+From then on throughout the war he had to work
+against horrible handicaps, even though we had
+three times the man-power and many times the resources
+of the Confederates. In desperation he called
+out seventy-five thousand men for three months—seventy-five
+thousand raw men to do the work of
+veterans. In response to this call, a Massachusetts
+regiment was mobbed while passing through Baltimore
+and a Pennsylvania regiment had to turn back
+because it had no arms. Meanwhile nearly three
+hundred southern officers of the small, far-scattered
+trained army went over to the South.</p>
+
+<p>Washington and other cities were deluged with
+a bewildered, undisciplined and poorly led and
+organized lot of fellows. Under little restraint they
+wandered aimlessly about, often unfed for weeks,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>quartered in muddy, filthy buildings, with ill-fitting
+and oftimes insufficient clothing and with little
+idea of their duties, conduct or responsibilities. The
+trained men were so few they couldn’t be found,
+and the government, unlike the able management in
+the South, made no effort to find them or use their
+services to the best advantage. Why, when U. S.
+Grant wrote to Washington offering himself for
+duty, he wasn’t even replied to. Naturally you can’t
+blame the rank and file, if there was an unwarranted
+lot of brawls and disturbances. Idleness and lack of
+discipline just means that. Public buildings were defaced.
+Even the Capitol itself suffered damage and
+abuse from a regiment quartered in its halls and on
+the very floors of the Senate and House. The farmer
+colonel and the apothecary major stalked the streets
+in showy uniforms, drew their pay, and didn’t go
+near their commands for weeks. Not all of them.
+There were some very worthy ones, who strove
+under hindrances of little opportunity, to bring
+order out of their units. But they were the accidents
+in our country’s arrangements—or lack of them. In
+these first few months of grand hubbub, misfit and
+waste, the country had spent more money than
+would have supported an army of prevention during
+the preceding ten years. And what needless hardship
+and suffering it had brought to more than
+seventy-five thousand people.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span></p>
+
+<p>But something had to be done. These three-month
+men would be going home soon and we’d have to
+begin all over. The people of the North, having had
+such a long sleep, demanded action. What matter
+if we did throw our poor men into a raging torrent
+before we taught them how to swim. On to Richmond!
+Those who had said there couldn’t be any
+war, were the loudest in screaming for a fight. On
+to Richmond! So McDowell became the scape-goat.
+He had to go. They gave him only thirty thousand
+men, but that was ten times more than any active
+officer in the regular army had ever had a chance
+to handle. They also gave him eight days in which to
+transform this excursion into an army. Eight days. It
+was a compliment to his magical powers. But the
+administration and the country were really serious
+about it. So he took them out to do battle. Fatigue,
+waste, meandering, sore feet, green apples, overdrinking
+and all those hundreds of vices, which the
+recruit learns to get over, appeared on the march—a
+march that allowed him to go the great distance
+of fifteen miles in two days. What else could have
+happened at Bull Run but what <i>did</i> happen? Of
+course they’d run. It wasn’t their fault, nor had it
+anything to do with their bravery. It always will
+happen when untrained men meet a sudden reversal.
+Training and discipline are the equivalent of confidence,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>and these men hadn’t been allowed by their
+people to have any confidence. Some of them never
+stopped fleeing till they got to New York. Had it not
+been that there were a few trained regulars to stop
+the onrush of the Confederates, more men would
+have been uselessly slaughtered. This spectacle gave
+us less than <i>nothing</i>. So we proceeded to call out
+one <i>million</i> men with more pandemonium, more ill-supplied
+concentrations, more sufferings and more
+expense.</p>
+
+<p>Two weeks ago a listener to these talks, a total
+stranger to me, sent me an extract from a diary of
+a gentleman now living, a survivor of this war, one
+of those noblemen who at this period of the story
+volunteered to be met with unnecessary cruelty by
+his country. Here is some of the extract:</p>
+
+<p>“In due time we arrived in Washington on a
+drizzly, sloppy evening and were marched to and
+housed in some large building already occupied by
+larger numbers than should have been there. We had
+no food, the place was dimly lighted with smoking
+torches. The floor was so muddy and foul that we
+could not lie down and no place for so doing being
+provided. We stood and shivered and said things
+and wondered if all heroes lived in such style as
+this.”</p>
+
+<p>The diary goes on to show how this detachment
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>wandered about unassigned to any organization, for
+days without food, and living in indescribable filth.
+That is a sample of what these hordes of fine men
+suddenly called out, suffered. The author of this
+diary is now ninety-one, one of the few left to tell
+the tale. Let me extend to him the admiration and
+gratitude of our army for his needless and heroic
+endurance and fortitude.</p>
+
+<p>To go on with the story, during this haphazard
+condition the South was allowed to develop itself by
+its comparatively efficient methods, undisturbed by
+us. McClellan had now the task of building up the
+great part of these heterogeneous masses into something
+of an organization. The war had stopped to
+let us train. But had it? The terrific expense and
+useless deaths went on. In this first year thousands
+died of disease under new conditions of exposure
+and hardships. Meanwhile McClellan had to have
+time for his gigantic task. The people of the North
+began to be irritated. Why didn’t he do something?
+Why didn’t he go on to Richmond? He had plenty
+of men. The Yankee brain felt that numbers were a
+solution for anything. It little realized that the
+officers had to be taught the technique of the march,
+the camp, the battlefield, security, supply, guard,
+unit management, drill and staff work. The men had
+to be taught all sorts of movements, the use of their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>weapons, sentry duty and above all discipline. All
+this would have to be done now at this late date, if
+the North were going to have any success at all. So
+for nearly a year against the ignorant clamor of a
+nation, McClellan worked in schooling, and preparing
+a huge army that would not have been necessary,
+had Scott’s advice been heeded. And he turned out
+a well-knit machine ready for action—but just a year
+too late to save the great carnage. When finally a
+year after the war opened, the Peninsular Campaign
+was begun, the administration of novices in Washington
+held out troops from McClellan, heckled and
+hampered him and finally stopped him when he
+was beginning to get somewhere. Meanwhile the
+South was making consummate use of Robert E.
+Lee’s brains and leadership. Then came the empty
+victory of Antietam, and the defeats of Fredericksburg
+and Chancellorsville. It wasn’t until the middle
+of the third year of the war that we won our first
+decisive battle at Gettysburg. But why shouldn’t we
+at that late date? It was no glory to us. We had the
+man-power and money. It’s nothing to be particularly
+happy about as far as efficiency is concerned.
+It’s far better for us to grieve over the losses, the
+extravagant, ignorant, idle, silly, moronic losses—losses
+that could scarcely be attributed to men in
+their senses. I cannot make invectives too strong
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>against my fellow Yankee, who murderously treated
+his fellow man by his inhuman dullness before the
+war. For in this conflict we fought the bloodiest
+war, man for man, in all our history, when by
+wisdom and foresight of ordinary business, we could
+have saved ninety to ninety-eight per cent of the
+deaths. By our late start, our failure to apply preventives
+in time, our unreasoning obtuseness in not
+listening to the experts, we had to call out nearly
+three million men. Of these we lost by battle over
+one hundred ten thousand men. But listen to this—by
+death from disease we threw away nearly a quarter
+of a million, and the main part of the awful sickness
+was in the first part of the war and among men
+utterly unfit for campaign. Among the trained men
+sickness was so rare that it wasn’t often reported.
+Besides this mortality, of the many fine souls and
+bodies of volunteers who with high motives came
+into the ranks, fought and escaped death, there were
+thousands who went back home stricken by the
+effects of the bullet, dysentery and fever for the
+rest of their lives.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="VIII">
+    <i>VIII</i><br>MORE SCRAMBLE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Over my bed in college hung a drawing made by
+a member of the Class of 1837. (Not a classmate of
+mine.) It showed a college youth of the time, quite
+wabbly from too great association with John Barleycorn.
+He was pointing his brace of pistols at a
+monkey perched on the foot of his bed. Underneath
+the picture were the words: “If you’re a <i>monkey</i>,
+you’re in a devilish fix. If you’re <i>not</i> a monkey, <i>I’m</i>
+in a devilish fix.” Just whether or not it was a real
+monkey I never knew, but there was no mistaking
+the fix. The more closely we study the Civil War,
+the more we find that we were in a <i>terrible</i> fix. And
+the more we get away from it, the more we hate to
+look the fix in the face, especially because the fix
+was our own fault. Today the World War is so
+close to us that it screens the errors and calamities
+of our Civil War. We forget too often that in the
+early sixties we endured the most awful catastrophe
+this country has ever seen—a thing far more bloody
+man for man than what we went through in the
+World War. But maybe it’s a healthy thing to look
+at our Civil fix now, as the doctor studies past epidemics
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>in order to prevent future horrors to mankind.
+A picture of the year before that war is full
+of so many fixes—so many pieces of indulgence in
+artificial stimulation and neglect that they’d fill a
+book. But here are two. In 1860 just before we were
+rushed into the struggle, a bill was introduced into
+Congress to abolish the Navy, on the ground that
+we’d never have any more war. Fortunately it failed
+of passage. But the only legislation for the army that
+year was the appointment of a committee to look
+into West Point and an authorization to increase the
+sugar and coffee ration of the soldier. And all this,
+while the tension between the North and South was
+about to snap. A school and a drink, while blood
+and flame were in sight. And there was no fire department
+to quench the raging blaze. A hose in
+Oregon, a nozzle in Florida, horses in Arizona and
+an engine nowhere! And suddenly Sumter’s guns
+cracked out and set the nation on fire. We began
+to seethe and mill around. The President was caught
+in the furor and had to exercise his war powers.
+Later when Congress met, it made the entire set-up
+for the war in less than four weeks. Less than four
+weeks! Why you couldn’t do that with a new factory,
+much less a police department. And here we
+were with a massive business undertaking that meant
+life and death to the whole country. Of course, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>legislation teemed with mistakes, which we paid for
+extravagantly and are still paying for. The men
+called out weren’t soldiers any more than they could
+be lawyers, managers and operators without practice
+and education.</p>
+
+<p>The thirty thousand collected for Bull Run were,
+in the mind of the North, going to march right
+through to New Orleans. And people came out
+from nearby towns to watch, from a very safe distance,
+the battle—congressmen in carriages, women
+in barouches, sutlers in wagons and reporters in
+tree-tops. They would behold this battle that was
+going to bag these rebels and drive them into the
+Gulf of Mexico. The spectators having comfortable
+and uncomfortable seats, the engagement after some
+delay started. Tyler was slow in getting into position
+and Hunter’s brigade rested for refreshments by the
+waters of Bull Run a bit too long. After a time the
+Southern masked batteries began to have their telling
+effect. Lines were formed slowly and badly
+under fire. Many did not know the use of their
+muskets. Those in the rear were almost as deadly to
+friend as foe. Too many officers were killed or
+wounded in trying to get their men forward. The
+green troops finally mistook a regiment of Confederates
+for their own and received a murderous fire.
+Then the rout began. One regiment fled and then
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>another. The untrained men stampeded across the
+field toward Washington. The eager observers
+scaled down the trees faster than they had climbed
+them. Barouches, carriages and wagons wheeled
+about and clattered away with much dust, turmoil
+and crowding. A vehicle overturned and blocked
+the main road, adding to the panic. The retreating
+recruits in their excitement fired mostly into the air,
+fortunately for those about them. Some officers
+sought to rally their men, here and there, but in
+vain. The majority rushed across fields, over lanes
+and pushed through jammed roads in their hurry
+to get away. And thus the first northern force
+evaporated.</p>
+
+<p>Haste, haste everywhere. Haste in forming a force—haste
+in legislation—haste in getting away. Men
+who would otherwise have been staunch and vigorous—men
+who were naturally brave—were hurried
+into a life-and-death-position they had no chance to
+fill. The size of the two forces had been about equal,
+but the South had had the advantage of six months’
+training, whereas the North had used mostly eight-day
+wonders. And this decided jump of the Confederacy
+on us—their planning—their foresight—their
+business arrangements had meant the turn of
+the tide against the Union.</p>
+
+<p>And it was so all through 1861. We had five other
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>battles in that year, all of which we lost in the same
+way and for the same cause, except one. Drainesville—have
+you ever heard of it? That was all we had
+to show for the whole year’s effort—a tiny battle
+having no influence on cutting the war shorter. And
+in that time we had killed and wounded three thousand
+three hundred seventy-one men and spent four
+hundred nineteen million dollars—all to no purpose—sheer
+waste. In fact worse than waste, because the
+setbacks had paralyzed our efforts. Then came the
+mismanagement of the second and part of the third
+year of the war. While the Union was organizing
+as a loose Confederacy, the Confederacy was organizing
+as a close Union. The southern government
+keenly abandoned states’ rights for their army
+shortly after they had begun to fight for states’ rights
+as a national policy. The northern government
+inanely took up states’ rights for their army immediately
+after they had begun to fight against states’
+rights as a national possibility. Both were inconsistent,
+but the South was inconsistent wisely.
+It did away with voluntary enlistments and the
+power of independent states to appoint officers
+and to offer whole units—and vested the control
+in its President. It made a unified army. It
+then enacted the first proper draft law in any English-speaking
+country—a thing which was afterwards
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>the greatest single stroke of efficiency for
+America in the World War. On the other hand,
+the Union persisted in lopsided volunteering and
+gave away to the governors absolute authority to
+create organizations and appoint the officers over
+them. And Mr. Lincoln had to receive these irregular
+lots and do the best he could with them. He was
+powerless at the head of this great organization to
+have control over the selection of his employees.
+And the way they were selected didn’t help much
+either. Political favorites, farmers, clerks, ward
+bosses and men about town, were given command of
+regiments and battalions, when they knew nothing
+about the technique, tactics or art of their undertaking—nothing
+about the real business of their jobs.
+Professional qualifications had little to do with their
+selection. Influence, popularity, deference, obligation
+and even pity put them in their positions. Why,
+one officer was elected a captain of a company
+because he had the most children and needed the
+money. Others were made colonels or majors for
+just as sensible reasons, while three hundred and
+eight trained officers were overlooked and kept in
+small positions throughout the war. Would we put
+plumbers or carpenters over our sick in the hospital?
+We did worse. We put them over well men, fine
+bodies, whose lives depended upon knowledge and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>experience against the awful things they had to
+face. For the camp and bivouac are even more
+deadly than the battlefield under untrained leaders.
+In more ways than one our hurried management
+caused the lengthening of the horror into four long
+years of unnecessary slaughter.</p>
+
+<p>At the top, the North had a President and Secretary
+of War, distinguished members of the bar, but
+utterly unfamiliar with the technique and art of
+ending a war as quickly as possible. The country’s
+policies had placed them in this unfair position.
+There was no active general-in-chief of the armies.
+The Secretary of the Treasury was given the task
+of making an organization plan. Other members of
+the cabinet and bureau chiefs were given similar
+military problems. A group called the Second Aulic
+Council debated, fussed and mostly collapsed into
+grand meddling. It was the old story of a large cumbersome
+committee getting nowhere—a committee
+that rarely understood the vital needs of the occasion.
+So it was not surprising that the most ineffective
+soldier with military education was finally
+chosen as General-in-Chief, General Halleck. And
+he added to the confusion. Generals in the field
+didn’t know where they stood. They were promised
+troops that never arrived and shorn of troops they
+had with them. Their plans, by mail, telegraph or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>personal travel had to be approved in Washington
+before they could proceed. Often the opportunity
+passed before the veto or approval arrived. During
+his campaigns, McClellan received hundreds of
+telegrams, letters and courier packets a week, counseling
+one thing and then another—and often contradictory.
+He could not change his base, make a new
+plan, operate in a new place or go enthusiastically
+forward without first having his proposals crunch
+through the slow grinding mill of Washington.
+Commanders grew to be more fearful of the District
+of Columbia than the enemy. For it’s hard to fight
+to your back and front at the same time. And your
+back happens to give you more creeps.</p>
+
+<p>In a little over two years the main army of the
+East had in succession as commanders McDowell,
+McClellan, Pope, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker and
+Meade. In the whirlpool of mismanagement, heads
+fell fast. And subordinate generals notoriously
+feared most being placed in command of the Army
+of the Potomac. Certainly the whole fault couldn’t
+lie with six different commanders. With the same
+system—or lack of it—sixteen would probably have
+failed. Certainly <i>one</i> could have been wisely selected
+who could have gone on, if properly backed up.
+The answer lies in the Confederacy. There, a single
+trained and experienced man picked a trained commander
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>and placed him over better trained and
+organized troops than the North had. He was held
+on whether he won or lost and became more capable
+as he proceeded. This sample of management and
+organization, always a few steps ahead of the North
+is why the South held off the Union against odds of
+three to one for four staggering years. That is what
+was done while the Yankee was paying millions in
+bounties for recruits, uselessly wasting his men, undergoing
+draft riots and enduring one of the ablest
+<i>mis</i>managements our country has seen. The lack of
+any action before the war—any wakefulness from
+our deep sleep—any use of ordinary sense plunged
+us into the waste of wastes and told the world ever
+since that we were the incompetent of incompetents.
+And for all this the North paid nearly ten billion
+dollars. And how we spent lives. Why, we were in
+such a rush at the beginning that we sent in three
+hundred thousand men without even examining
+them physically. Think of what that meant in mortality.
+We fed our manhood like babes into the
+burning cauldron of Moloch, all because we sat and
+waited with no idea of a preventive in those years
+and months before the war. Experts, foreign and
+domestic, agree that if we had had a trained force
+in the East in December 1860, of not more than
+twenty-five thousand, the war could not have lasted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>over three months, with a maximum of a thousand
+casualties. As it was in the North alone we threw
+away three hundred sixty thousand lives. With the
+South counted we filled prodigally way over a half
+million graves. No, we don’t care to snuff things
+out at the source. We prefer to dam them at the
+mouth. We do that with crime. Why not do it
+with war?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="IX">
+    <i>IX</i><br>FIDDLING
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Do you remember the pillow shams of the gay
+nineties? For those of you who don’t, I’ll tell you
+that they were clean, ruffled upright coverings for
+pillows in the daytime. When they were laid aside
+at night, they revealed too often a certain amount of
+real estate underneath. What a cleanly view for the
+daily visitor and what an unpleasant surprise for the
+nightly sleeper. I remember such a set of shams. On
+the left one were embroidered in pink the words: “I
+slept and dreamed that life was beauty.” On the right
+one in blue: “I woke and found that life was duty.”</p>
+
+<p>Now that we’ve laid aside the shams of our school
+histories and looked upon the tragically soiled linen
+of the Civil War, we find even cleaner shams laid
+over the period <i>right after</i> that war. You know as
+we scratch our head and try to look wise when our
+young son attacks us with a question about his history
+lesson, we see, among the cobwebs those days
+of ’65, ’66 and ’67 as a time of sleeping beauty. The
+tired, worn soldiers of the war, in our misty memory,
+are beating their swords into pruning hooks and all
+that sort of thing. Are we wrong? Yes, we are. Life
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>was anything but beauty for our country then. They
+were days of frightful, alarming duty. For we were
+even in a worse fix than when Sumter’s guns
+tumbled us helter-skelter into catastrophe. On all
+sides were threatenings of big wars and slaughter.
+On the north the Fenians were trying to carry on
+strife against Great Britain from within our borders,
+and the Alabama claims were adding to the fuel. The
+South, smarting under revengeful reconstruction
+laws, was angered to a pitch of frenzy. In Mexico,
+Napoleon the third had set up an empire, placing
+the Archduke Maximilian of Austria on the throne
+in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine. The thousands
+of irreconcilables of the former Confederacy could
+there find a foothold to work against us. And in the
+West, a half million Indians, unrestrained during
+the Civil War, were overrunning half our territory,
+and sprinkling the soil with death and massacre. In
+the midst of all this trouble, Abraham Lincoln was
+shot down in cold blood. We had gone from a
+sizzling frying pan into a surrounding fire.</p>
+
+<p>The situation in Mexico was so perilous that Sheridan
+was torn away before the Grand Review in
+Washington, and sent immediately south. When he
+arrived near the Rio Grande, the republican force in
+Mexico was weak, worn and scattered. But it wasn’t
+hopeless long. For Sheridan had something—we had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>something we’d never before had—a decent sized,
+trained force. Even if it had been expensively trained
+under the bullet, it was trained and well-trained.
+Sheridan just sat down in Texas with almost three
+corps, and peered threateningly into Mexico. Maximilian
+knew there wasn’t anything he had which
+could overcome such a force. Little by little under
+the American display of strength, the republicans
+gained power. In a year and a half the Empire fell,
+without a single American gun being fired and with
+no bloodshed for us. We had gained our ends by
+merely a show of force. Here is something for our
+histories to brag about. Why do they cover it over
+with a sham? You remember experts said that if we
+had had twenty-five thousand trained men in 1860,
+the Civil War could not have lasted more than three
+months. Well that statement, however careful, is at
+best theory, but taken with the example of Sheridan’s
+force, it becomes a fact. And there are other
+examples in our history where a sufficiently trained
+force prevented bloodshed. The only reason we
+haven’t had more examples is because we haven’t
+had more force.</p>
+
+<p>But we had a force this once, and one part of it
+had as difficult a task as ever fell to the lot of soldiers.
+Nineteen thousand of them were scattered in one
+hundred thirty-four places in the South to enforce
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>stringent, cruel laws for a conquered people. The
+ire of the North had vented itself in insulting control.
+No one who had given aid to the Confederacy
+was allowed to hold office. The northern carpetbagger
+swaggered in to lord over poverty-stricken
+communities. This exhibition of revenge leads one
+to believe the statement of the clergymen that peace
+treaties, peace reactions and peace societies are our
+most fruitful causes of war.</p>
+
+<p>But there was one saving grace—and that lay in
+the treatment of the southern people by the soldier.
+You know it’s a funny thing about fighters. After
+the fight is over, they seldom hold grudges. We can
+all call up many instances where they were outstandingly
+friendly with the former opponents. The
+Union soldier in the South was no exception. He
+saw too clearly the injustice to these stricken people
+and sympathized with them. He leagued up with
+the former Confederate soldiers in efforts to help.
+He often got around the laws and sometimes overrode
+them. His reports to Washington had much to
+do with rescinding cruel legislation. So helpful was
+his attitude that a southern city afterwards erected a
+monument to a Union general. The soldier’s understanding
+sympathy was the big factor in overcoming
+riots, disorders and slaughter.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly trained troops took their places along
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>the northern border, and beyond a little wire cutting,
+overcame the disturbances from the Fenians.
+And as these fearful threats to the north, east and
+south of us were slowly calmed, we began to be
+over-confident and stupid again. We failed to see
+that our unusual strength had been the reason for
+coming through these calamities unscathed. In our
+customary way we descended into weakness. And
+how we were going to pay in human life for this
+let-down!</p>
+
+<p>At first we pared the Army down to thirty-eight
+thousand. The day before General Grant took the
+oath of office as President, we again reduced it,
+against his urgent recommendation, by twenty regiments.
+By 1876 it was a scant twenty-five thousand
+soldiers, at which figure it remained up until the
+time of the Spanish-American War—during almost
+a quarter of a century. Thus we stagnated while our
+population was increasing, savages were roaming
+over half our territory and we had acquired Alaska.
+There was a war party who wanted to keep peace
+and a peace party who let us fall into war. Naturally
+you’d know which party would win in the United
+States. A paltry seventeen thousand soldiers were
+strewn around the west in little groups. Their task
+was to control hundreds of thousands of Indians in
+protection of the advancing settlers. It was the dark
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>age for the soldier. Impossible was his struggle to be
+everywhere at once and to do the government’s bidding
+against odds of twenty-four to one. In return
+the government often armed the Indian with fine
+repeating rifles and always gave the soldier a single-loader.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the tragedies that follow in the wake
+of helplessness. In our history books, we have placed
+an embroidered, starched sham over them, but underneath
+none the less lie very dirty pillows. Massacres
+of our settlers and soldiers were too frequent.
+The Indian was one of the shrewdest warriors of all
+time to sense the size and strength of his opponents.
+Weakness to him meant a call for scalps. At Fort
+Phil Kearney in Nebraska the officers and men were
+engaged in building their own barracks and quarters
+(if they were going to have a roof to cover them)
+and the work was going along quite smoothly, when
+one morning two thousand Indians swooped down
+on the small garrison of two hundred fifty and killed
+and mutilated one hundred seventy-four of them.
+In Kansas when eighty-four settlers were slain or
+captured by a band of Cheyennes, Major Forsyth
+with fifty scouts tried to trail the Indian desperadoes.
+When he came upon them he was trapped, had to
+fight for his life, lost half of his command, (among
+whom was the nephew of Henry Ward Beecher,)
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>and barely escaped with the remnants of his force.</p>
+
+<p>Later came the Custer affair. Probably no action
+in our history has been more discussed and less
+understood. The story goes back a long way and
+doesn’t show us up in any fine colors. The government
+had made a treaty with the Great Sioux Nation
+in which it gave to these tribes the Black Hills and
+all of South Dakota west of the Missouri River.
+Gave them what was theirs in the first place. Kind
+of us. Another law confirmed by our Senate, made
+it a crime for a white settler to go into this region.
+Well, the whites as usual went in, because the land
+appealed to them. And they went out of their way
+to trespass because the Indians were six hundred
+miles from the nearest railroad and far from white
+settlements. When the Indians complained and got
+no redress, they went upon the warpath. Did so for
+the same reason that we took up arms in the Revolution—from
+behind each “farmyard fence and wall.”
+The Secretary of the Interior ordered the troops to
+put the Indians on their reservations. He made a
+consistent sweep of things for he not only violated
+the treaty, but did not uphold the law. So, little
+companies of Infantry and Cavalry under General
+Terry, were ordered to drive the victimized Indians
+to where neither the Indian nor the soldier wanted
+to go. Fifteen hundred troops, half of whom were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>afoot, were sent against six thousand hardy Sioux
+who were well-mounted. Why such a small body of
+soldiers? Because other little groups were busy with
+Assineboines, Piegans, Arapahoes, Kiowas, Pawnees,
+Commanches and Flatheads. And there weren’t any
+more troops. The entire regular force on the plains
+would scarcely have been a match then for the Great
+Sioux Nation, but we were content to send this
+paltry number out against this overwhelming force.
+Terry’s command accordingly advanced toward the
+Indians. Custer, who was in command of the Cavalry,
+was sent ahead with instructions to move
+toward the Tongue River, keep on the flank of the
+Sioux, and not let them escape. It was an impossible
+task in the face of so many Indians. But the soldier
+couldn’t know that such a big force was there, for
+there were too few troops to scout the Sioux country
+and find out. And if they could have found out,
+what was there to do about it? They had to go
+against the Indians. No matter how perfectly
+Terry’s force might act, it was in for a licking. So
+Custer split his command into three parts in order
+to keep the Indians from escaping. The irony!—from
+escaping. Well, it happened just as you would
+expect. Custer’s little band was overwhelmed and
+annihilated. The other two parts were backed against
+the wall and had to fight in desperation for their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>lives. It was not a real massacre. It was a fight in
+which the Indian used his normal methods of no
+quarter. We knew his methods. And we unjustly
+and murderously sent a puny force against him to
+be butchered to the extent of two hundred sixty-five
+killed and fifty-two wounded.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians could have overwhelmed the rest of
+the force, but feeling they had taught the white
+man a lesson in fair play, they drew off. But the
+ones who bore the brunt of the punishment by paying
+the extreme penalty, were innocent soldiers, who
+had had nothing to do with the cause of the fight.
+The instigators were walking the eastern streets crying
+for an investigation. And how the affair was
+investigated! After reams of testimony had been
+taken down, and much money expended, it was
+found that we had sent a pigmy out barehanded to
+fight a giant. The result? True to form.</p>
+
+<p>Would we have been a little more decent, had we
+spent more on soldiers beforehand and less on testimony
+afterward? If we had, it’s quite possible we
+wouldn’t have needed the testimony. For it’s an accepted
+fact that had we had ten thousand trained
+men for the Sioux alone, placed in some conspicuous
+spot, the Custer fight would never have been. The
+Indian would have been too wary. He always was.
+And many another fight would not have taken
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>place, as we’ll see. Going back over the true events
+of these times, are we made to wonder whether we
+really do care about human life? We talk a lot about
+it. Is it another starched sham?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="X">
+    <i>X</i><br>MORE FIDDLING
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Abraham Lincoln one afternoon sat listening to
+the members of a committee arguing. The next day
+he heard them arguing <i>more</i> without arriving anywhere.
+In a pause, he said, “I am reminded of old
+Zeke Williams out in my home town. Zeke was the
+finest rifle shot with his Brown Bess in those parts.
+One day he took his young son out hunting with
+him. They approached a tree. Said Zeke, ‘Boy, shake
+that ’ar tree. They’s a squirrel in it.’ The lad shook
+the tree, the father blazed away, but nothing happened.
+Said Zeke, ‘Shake that ’ar tree agin.’ The boy
+obeyed. The father blazed away and <i>still</i> nothing
+happened. The father brought his gun down from
+his shoulder and almost wept as he said, ‘I must be
+gettin’ old. I can’t hit ’em no more.’ The son was
+very sorry for his father. So he went and looked the
+tree all over. Seeing no sign of a squirrel, he came
+over to his father and gazed intently into the old
+man’s face. ‘Why pap,’ exclaimed the boy, ‘That
+’ar ain’t no squirrel in the tree. That ’ar a <i>louse</i> on
+your eyebrow’.”</p>
+
+<p>If Lincoln were alive today, I fear he’d discover
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>many lice on our eyebrows—many fancies about our
+past that are contrary to reality. And nowhere would
+he find more than in our mistaken notions of the
+Indian struggles in our West. Soldiers fighting Indians!
+That’s what the school histories lead us to see.
+We get the feeling that the soldier was a bloodthirsty
+fellow who loved to go out before breakfast
+and kill a few redmen for pastime. The truth of the
+matter is that he was the best and almost the only
+friend the Indian had. The reason for this relationship
+is natural and simple. The soldier had no personal
+gain to get from the West. He wanted nothing
+that belonged to the redman. If he were out for
+greed, as the settlers, traders, trappers and adventurers
+too often were, he wouldn’t have been a
+soldier at his paltry wage. And as a hardy fellow,
+he appreciated the good points in other hardy fellows
+like the Indians. So let us look at real scenery
+and not at lice for a few minutes. Here is the tale
+of the Modocs.</p>
+
+<p>The Modocs had always been a peaceable tribe,
+often assisting the whites in their undertakings, and
+even going so far as to help save a California town
+from fire. The government had made a treaty with
+them. As usual it violated it. All that these Indians
+asked was to be moved to a small strip of land, no
+good to anybody. General Canby, known as the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>Indian’s friend, tried to make the Indian Agents and
+Washington see the point of view of these redmen
+and begged and entreated that their simple request
+be granted. But the powers stubbornly refused. The
+Indians, denied and double-crossed, went on the
+warpath. The soldiers were ordered to fight them.
+In the ensuing engagements many of them were
+killed. But that was not all. General Canby, Dr.
+Thomas and other soldiers, in trying to carry out the
+government’s unjust orders, were killed also. The
+very men who had tried to avert injustice and bloodshed,
+were butchered. Dr. Thomas’ son has always
+claimed that the government murdered his father.
+But the tragic irony of this whole affair is that after
+all this debauch of human life and craze of injustice,
+General Canby’s advice was finally heeded. Those
+that were left of the Modocs, were transported to
+where they wanted to go in the first place. But General
+Canby and many another good soldier and Indian
+were dead. This story does not stand alone by
+any means. That of the Nez Perce’s is even worse.
+This tribe was more peaceful, high-minded and
+friendly than the Modocs. From the time that it
+had helped the Lewis and Clark expedition, way
+back after our Revolution, it had held uninterrupted
+good-will with the whites. But the government defrauded
+these Indians of a little strip of poor land
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>where they wanted to go. They asked to be taken
+there. Chief Joseph, handsome, intelligent, upright,
+patiently pleaded his cause. General Howard naturally
+interceded and begged the government to let
+them go. But he also like Canby was met with curt
+refusal, over and over again. After long drawn-out
+insults by our government, the Nez Perce’s rebelled,
+and Howard was ordered to fight them. An officer
+and thirty-three of our soldiers were killed in the
+first action. Then began a chase through three territories.
+In one instance, so few were the troops that
+a general had to use a rifle himself and was severely
+wounded. The tribe was finally captured after much
+loss of life to white and redman. The government,
+contrary to General Miles’ recommendation, transported
+what remained of the tribe to an unhealthful
+region where they quickly perished. And that was
+our way of disposing of the Nez Perces. The Ute
+uprising of 1879 was in principle a repetition of these
+events. Major Thornburg and a large part of his
+command were killed because of the stubbornness
+of an Indian Agent.</p>
+
+<p>Let’s look for a moment at another tribe. In 1870
+the Apaches, the most subtle redmen we’ve ever
+dealt with, broke from their reservations and went
+upon the warpath. The cause as usual was our injustice.
+Colonel George Crook with a small force
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>was sent against them. He was the kind of man who
+believed in a square word rather than a round bullet.
+He was in every way (unlike his name) the kind of
+man you’d want your boy to be like. But he faced
+a racking problem. The Apache country in the
+rugged Sierras was one of the toughest spots anybody
+could search, and when you added to it a wily
+Indian, ready to snare you at every turn, you had
+something that looked hopeless. It meant that the
+soldier had to master the country, know the valleys,
+streams, canyons, water holes, and unexplored
+mountain ranges; and hang doggedly on the trail,
+hour by hour, day by day through exhausting
+privation and bitter disappointment. Crook trailed
+the Apaches, but not with menace or threats. With
+a small escort he sought out the chiefs, ever imperilling
+his life by exposing himself. After months
+of effort he succeeded in getting a few of the chiefs
+to come in for a talk. Little by little his strong personality
+and shining integrity led them to listen to
+him. More chieftains came in. At length they talked
+to him freely, and he in turn saw that they were
+well cared for. He offered them forgiveness for any
+past misdeeds and urged a life of peace. Slowly they
+began to believe in him. At the end of six years of
+utmost patience he had calmed them, brought them
+into the reservations and made them contented—without
+bloodshed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span></p>
+
+<p>But then the Sioux uprising called him and his
+troops away to the north, because of the smallness
+of the army. Crook, a general now, tried to round
+up the Sioux with two thousand soldiers, whom he
+had drained the west to get. Conditions there
+wouldn’t permit him to use his Apache methods.
+Even under his able leadership he was nearly trapped
+and reduced to starvation. All he could do was to
+make his escape and let the Indians roam on. The
+Sioux were too strong for his puny force. Meanwhile
+the Apaches were left to the control of Indian
+Agents, who mishandled, defrauded and abused
+them. So awful did the conditions become, that even
+in the east the President felt obliged to send General
+Crook back to the Apaches in 1882. There Crook,
+after six years’ absence, found his previous work had
+been worse than undone. The Agents had ejected
+the Indians from their reservations because silver had
+been found there, had thrown them into prison to
+languish for months without trial, starved them,
+stolen their crops and in general treated them like
+cattle. Crook set himself to win them back by his
+old methods. But it was a monstrous task now, since
+the Indian had been infuriated afresh and had lost
+faith in all whites. In his old, bold way Crook set
+out through the trails to investigate complaints and
+find out the causes. Fortunately the Indians recognized
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>and remembered him. They told him stories
+that would have wrung pity from a hardened criminal.
+But the way they met him—a real friend and
+champion after all these years of cruelty—was
+pathetic in its child-like appeal. The faces of the old
+men brightened and the squaws wept when they
+saw him again. The chieftain, Old Pedro, with
+dimmed eyes spoke to him pitifully. His words were
+taken down at the time and here they are:</p>
+
+<p>“When you, General Crook, were here, whenever
+you said a thing, we knew it was true, and we
+kept it in our minds. When Colonel Green was here,
+our women and children were happy and our young
+people grew up contented. And I remember Brown,
+Randall, and the other officers who treated us kindly
+and were our friends. I used to be happy. Now I am
+all the time thinking and crying, and I say, ‘Where
+is old Colonel John Green, and Randall, and those
+other good officers, and what has become of them?
+Where have they gone? Why don’t they come
+back? And the young men all say the same thing’.”</p>
+
+<p>That was how the Indian in his simple faith,
+trusted and regarded the soldier, who was too often
+unjustly sent out to fight him. And how do you
+suppose the soldier felt when he had to? Certainly
+he could have no relish for such dismal, perilous
+work. Anyway Crook and his small command kept
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>up their exhausting efforts to avoid bloodshed. But
+all the while the Indian Agent Ring was sending out
+newspaper accounts of murder and depredations by
+the Indians, in order to involve Crook in a fight,
+which would drive the Indian away from the land
+on which the agents wished to profiteer. These
+stories Crook investigated and wherever he could,
+gave the lie to the rumor. Despite this knifing in the
+back, he again restored peace and contentment to
+the Apache—after two years.</p>
+
+<p>And so I could recount for many evenings true incidents
+like this. In five years one regiment had sixty-seven
+battles and skirmishes and another marched
+sixty-four hundred miles. In the first six years after
+the Civil War, the army experienced two hundred
+three actions with the redmen. And Indian troubles
+didn’t dwindle out until over 30 years after the Civil
+War. But the uphill work with the redman was by
+no means all that the soldier had to encounter.
+Between 1886 and 1895, he was called upon to
+restore order in civil uprisings throughout every
+state and territory in our country to the number of
+three hundred twenty-eight. And he accomplished
+these tasks with almost no bloodshed. The show of
+trained force was enough, small as it was. But during
+all this time when the soldier was enduring the hardships
+of intense heat and cold, and running untold
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>risks for his nation, his work was little understood
+or appreciated. Once Congress tried to reduce the
+army to ten thousand, which would have brought
+on more slaughter, especially to the whites, and
+prolonged the Indian troubles indefinitely. Fortunately
+the reduction didn’t succeed. But something
+else did. No appropriation for the pay of
+the army for the fiscal year 1877-78 was made by
+Congress, and this right after the Custer fight. The
+soldier without his meager wage had to borrow
+money at interest, in order to live—to go on—go on
+enduring rude conditions and the hazards of life
+and death. There was a faction back east which
+believed the Indian should be exterminated. There
+was another which believed the Indian was right
+and should be left alone. There were very few who
+realized that there were good Indians and bad Indians
+just as there are good and bad white men.
+When the soldier lost battles, he was investigated.
+When he won some, he was branded as a butcher.
+Meanwhile the settlers were crowding in and had
+to be protected, and the Indian Agent Ring was
+forcing Crook, Canby, Howard, Miles and many
+others into fights they wished to avoid.</p>
+
+<p>But the soldiers’ position was unfortunate mostly
+because his force was not large enough to awe the
+Indian into peace without fighting. For no one
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>more than the Indian respected <i>size</i>. He was an
+expert scout and had a keen eye for numbers. One
+hundred thousand soldiers would doubtless have cut
+the losses in half. And had the government used the
+Indian with common decency, they would have
+been cut to nothing. We talk a lot about the violation
+of Belgium and we are justly enraged at the
+Germans. But the Germans at least didn’t murder
+their soldiers in addition to their enemies. Are there
+lice on our eyebrows? Are there sins of our own?
+Greater sins?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">
+    <i>XI</i><br>THE BLACK HOLE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>One day in Texas after a long hike through
+broiling heat and alkali dust, we came at last to our
+camping-place. Weary officers and men went about
+their appointed tasks of setting up tentage, attending
+to the water-supply and sanitation and generally
+making the place livable. After a brief meal from
+rattling mess-kits, most of us lay down to get the
+kinks out of our muscles. One company on a little
+hill in plain view of the rest of the brigade, was resting
+quietly under its pup-tents. Suddenly a Texas
+twister, one of those little mysterious whirlwinds,
+came tearing along out of the silent, clear afternoon.
+It pounced upon the most conspicuous tent, grabbed
+the canvas and personal covering off the big First
+Sergeant, lifted them high in the air, and left him
+lying in the open like a plucked chicken. A thousand
+pairs of eyes fastened on him. He slowly awoke,
+rubbed his face, squirmed a little and squinted at
+his coverings swishing about in the heavens. “Well,”
+he said, “Who in the devil started that?”—and
+rushed threateningly toward the nearest group of
+soldiers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p>
+
+<p>The American people, after a sleep of a quarter
+of a century, woke up one morning in 1898 to find
+that a twister out of the blue had pitched the battleship
+Maine to the bottom of Havana Harbor, and
+tossed us into war. Amazed, we asked, “Who started
+that?” Amazed, we said, “How could war have
+come upon us?” Amazed and confused we rushed
+threateningly this way and that. And why the surprise
+when for three years we’d been shaking angry
+fists at the Spaniard—when we’d been lying in the
+path of twisters from a land of twisters. And how
+completely we’d been lying.</p>
+
+<p>All the while we were provoking Spain to wrath,
+we were using sugared cut-throat words to our own
+people. Well-meaning idealists, thinking to calm
+our citizens, were really running them into misery.
+Two years before the twister struck us, Mr. Livingstone
+in the Congress of our nation, rose and stated:
+“I do not take much stock in an early war with
+Spain or England.” The same day on the same floor
+Uncle Joe Cannon said, “I want to say that I do not
+believe we will have war the coming year, nor the
+year after. I doubt if there will be any during this
+century or perhaps the early years of the next century.”
+At the same time in Europe, Czar Nicholas II
+of Russia showed how arbitration would settle
+everything; and books and articles were published
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>proving that modern mechanisms would make war
+result in suicide—in short that war was impossible.
+Under this dangerous racket of propaganda the only
+attention paid to our land forces, was to pick at
+them and tear off little pieces. Any attempt to keep
+us from slaughtering and distressing our youth
+needlessly as we’d done in the past, was laughed out
+of court. When the twister struck us, the army was
+just the same size it had been twenty-two years
+before. Little groups of soldiers were scattered all
+over the west and on our borders. The overhead of
+these little posts had become drab routine. The War
+Department was clogged with thirty years’ mold.
+Its personnel was just sufficient to carry on a peanut-stand
+administration and supply. There was no
+thought for expansion or operating the army as a
+whole. There were no plans, no staffs, no proper
+maps of Cuba, no set-up for any respectable force.
+The army had not been brought together since the
+Civil War—a third of a century before. No officer
+in the service had commanded more than a regiment,
+about 700 men, and few had seen that many together.
+The soldiers had had no chance to act as a
+unit, as an organization, as a going concern. Supplies
+of all sorts were lacking—food, equipment, guns and
+ammunition, everything. We had not learned a
+single lesson from a hundred years of horrible
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>disasters of our own making. We showed to the
+world the greatest unreadiness we’d had since we’d
+been a nation.</p>
+
+<p>We still persisted in the idea that an able bodied
+man was a soldier. The President in this belief called
+out one hundred twenty-five thousand volunteers
+when there wasn’t ammunition enough in the country
+to let them fight one battle. The people seemed
+to feel we were going out with brass bands playing
+to bag the Spaniard. One day in a conference, the
+President turned to the Secretary of War and asked,
+“How soon can you put an army into Cuba?” Said
+the Secretary, “I can put 40,000 men there in ten
+days.” Later we found out we couldn’t put half that
+number there in two months.</p>
+
+<p>General Miles, the head of the army, suggested
+the training of fifty thousand soldiers rather than
+put in jeopardy a great quantity of untrained men.
+But the President rejected that expert advice and
+called out seventy-five thousand more volunteers to
+be exposed to death in camp. The people were crying
+“On to Havana!” as they had yelled, On to Richmond,
+Mexico and Canada. What matter utter extravagance
+and human life?</p>
+
+<p>The government now had two hundred thousand
+men on its hands. Where would they put them?
+O yes, the question of camps. Tampa, New Orleans
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>and Mobile were decided upon. It was found that
+all but Tampa were unsuitable. After much investigation
+and delay. Camp Alger in Virginia, and
+Camp Thomas in Tennessee were selected. They
+afterwards proved to be far too small. Meanwhile
+the volunteers were flocking in much as they had
+done in the Civil War—in a sad state of neglect.
+Unequipped, untaught, unfed, uncared for, uneverything,
+they were all struggling to the front.
+The little crippled War Department was beset with
+every kind of request it could not fill. Congressmen
+who had taken delight in blocking legislation for
+preparedness were the loudest in crying for guns
+and vessels to protect their districts. Where were
+any implements for the crises? Without having any,
+the President ordered General Miles to take to
+Havana seventy thousand troops—(troops, mind
+you—real troops)—when such an irregular mass
+could have fired little more than one shot, if they
+had been troops. Then he ordered General Shafter
+at Tampa to the north coast of Cuba, but it was
+found there were no transports. Then he ordered
+twelve thousand troops to Key West, but the place
+was found unsuitable.</p>
+
+<p>A month and a half passed. Why weren’t we getting
+on? General Miles went to Tampa to see. There
+he found what you’d expect. Troops were slowly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>assembling. Why not? One regular regiment had
+to come clear from Alaska. Supplies were failing.
+Loading of transports was helter-skelter. Miles reported
+that the principal part of the regular army
+was there, but that of the fourteen regiments of
+volunteers nearly forty per cent were undrilled and
+in one regiment over three hundred men had never
+fired a gun. And these were the pick of the untrained
+men.</p>
+
+<p>Finally most of the regular army and a few volunteers
+set sail, after a mad unmanaged scramble to
+get trains, and go abroad. Supplies were hustled into
+holds helter-skelter. Most of the volunteers had to
+be left behind because they were not equipped or
+trained. But the little seventeen thousand were off.
+Were they? The Navy thought they had sighted
+the Spanish fleet. The troops out at sea were turned
+back to the mainland. The presence of the Spanish
+fleet proved to be a myth. Again they set sail,
+crowded like galley-slaves into small vessels, with
+little water, on pine cots, among neighing horses
+and foul odors. The food made them sick. The embalmed
+beef by hurried contracts became notorious.
+The boats moved seven miles an hour, then four
+miles, and often not at all. After much suffering
+they arrived at Daiquiri near Santiago harbor. There
+the civilian transports refused to land and kept far
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span>out. Men were hurt and drowned in getting to shore.
+Fifty horses swam out to sea and were lost. Fortunately
+the Spaniards fled inland. If they hadn’t,
+their superior weapons would have torn our foolhardy
+little force to pieces. One hundred ninety-six
+thousand, eight hundred twenty Spanish troops
+were in Cuba, but we didn’t know it. Nor did we
+know that they were as badly led and cared for as
+troops could be. By the godsend of their complete
+lack of resistance, the little seventeen thousand got
+ashore in five days.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the scrambling action of Las Gausimas
+through the brush. The Army was used to this sort
+of bushwhacking against the Indians. And the
+Rough Riders, though they’d just received their
+new Krags the day before the fight, did good work.
+But the Spaniards fled—and that helped. Then came
+a delay of a week. Supplies were hard to get from
+the boats. Troops milled around with little food
+and ammunition. The artillery wasn’t brought forward.
+What a chance for the Spaniard then! A determined
+charge of a quarter of his force and the
+United States troops would have been helpless. But
+since the Spaniard didn’t do anything right, we were
+saved again. Half the regular army and three volunteer
+regiments went on to San Juan and El Caney.
+Although assaulting El Caney was a military blunder,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>the little force went charging along with useless
+losses. One volunteer regiment funked the fight.
+And another, though acting well, had to be sent out
+of it because its ancient black powder weapons made
+it an easy target for the smokeless Mauser rifle of
+the enemy. More useless casualties. The artillery
+had nothing but black powder too. Every time it
+belched, it threw up clouds of smoke that could be
+seen for miles. Still more casualties. The Spaniards
+had put up barbed wire around their little forts. And
+we had no wire-cutters. It was a long day’s work of
+slow progress. The Spaniard, like all poor troops,
+could shoot well as long as his vitals were covered
+up. But we finally took the two strongholds, with
+over twelve per cent losses. We had won because
+the enemy was grossly mismanaged and inefficient.
+We were badly managed, but we had streaks of
+efficiency. Therein lay the difference—our salvation.
+When the siege of Santiago was undertaken, General
+Shafter’s lines were so thin that even poor troops
+with a little zeal could have punctured them. But
+the Spaniards for some unknown reason seemed to
+be more fearful than we were.</p>
+
+<p>Even so it would have been a stand-off, had it not
+been for the great victory of our Navy in destroying
+Cervera’s fleet. And of course it would destroy the
+Spanish ships. It had had seven years’ building before
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>the war. Under the supervision of Presidents
+Cleveland and Arthur, we had developed the famous
+White Squadron. What would the soldier have done
+without the Navy? What would he have done without
+the complete sloppiness of the Spaniard? One
+authority shows that the war would have lasted four
+or five years with more useless slaughter of our own
+men than we had seen even in the Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>Even so, in only one hundred nine days of war,
+the volunteers alone lost two hundred eighty-nine
+killed—but—listen to the <i>but</i>—three thousand eight
+hundred forty-eight by sickness. Thirteen times as
+many by disease as by battle. And most of these
+deaths occurred in our country—before the poor
+volunteer had had a chance to lift a finger of help.</p>
+
+<p>When the twister caught us, we had the great sum
+of one hundred seventy-nine army medical officers
+for a mass of men that swelled to two hundred sixteen
+thousand in four months. In our sleep there
+had been no thought that the camp is more deadly
+than the bullet, that any doctor can’t be a sanitary
+man in the field—that field sanitation is a specialty
+like eye, ear, nose and throat or abdominal surgery.
+Doctors can’t get that training in a few months. In
+over-crowded camps in the United States many an
+otherwise fine medical man made a fizzle of sanitation.
+Others who did know sanitation were not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>backed up by the untrained volunteer officers. So
+our best youth died like flies and by flies. And the
+suffering of those who did not die was appalling
+torture. Filth was too often in the open. An untrained
+regiment would be strewn with sickness,
+while a trained one right beside it would have no
+sickness at all.</p>
+
+<p>By our sleep beforehand and our unjust haste after
+we were waked up by the twister, we had done
+worse things. We had forced the little seventeen
+thousand into Cuba at the height of the fever season.
+Right after the surrender of Santiago, seventy-five
+per cent of Shafter’s command, the majority of our
+entire trained forces were on the sick list. Had the
+Spaniard held out a little longer, he’d have had only
+a handful or none at all to fight. But he didn’t hold
+out. And we had another miraculous escape. But
+the death toll went up. And over in the Pacific it
+went up higher. In the Philippine Insurrection that
+followed the Spanish-American War, we lost in two
+years over seven thousand men.</p>
+
+<p>Sleep is a very soothing thing, isn’t it? Quite
+necessary as a part-time job. But when we sleep all
+the time, our friends know that we are sick. When
+such a sickness overtakes a nation, how quickly it
+spreads into death. How suddenly it kills innocent
+persons, when the twister comes out of the blue
+and leaves us naked.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XII">
+    <i>XII</i><br>BACKING AND FILLING
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>One day an old friend of mine, whom I had not
+seen for nearly twenty years, burst into my office.
+After the gladsome handshakes and slaps of affection,
+I asked him to tell me about himself.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” he said, “I got married.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hm,” I said, “That’s good.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he said, “Not so good. My wife turned
+out to be a tartar.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” I said, “That’s bad.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he said, “Not so bad. She brought me
+twenty thousand dollars.”</p>
+
+<p>“O,” I said, “that’s good.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he said, “Not so good. I invested the money
+in sheep and they all died.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hm,” I said, “that’s bad.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he said, “Not so bad. I sold the wool for
+more than the sheep cost me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” I said, “that’s good.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he said, “Not so good. I bought a fine home
+and a fire burned it to the ground.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hm,” I said, “that’s bad.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he said, “Not so bad. My wife was in it.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p>
+
+<p>Before and during our part of the World War
+we were not so good and not so bad. Two years after
+that comedy of errors and tragedy of blood called
+the Spanish-American War, we did the most unusual
+thing in our life as a nation. For the first time
+after a war, we increased and helped our land forces.
+Under the pressure of Philippine Wars and onward-looking
+men like Elihu Root and Theodore Roosevelt,
+we raised our army to one hundred thousand
+for a hundred million people. We set up new service
+schools and broadened others for the higher military
+education of our officers. We at last formed a general
+staff. And in 1911 we assembled during peace
+a regular division of troops for the first time in our
+history. To be sure, it took months to do so, it
+drained the country of nearly all its trained forces,
+and the division couldn’t be entirely collected, but
+the move wasn’t so bad. For several years it looked
+as though our army would be a going concern.
+Then we lagged. The wolf in sheep’s clothing began
+to bleat. In 1913, Congressman Dies, in the House
+of Representatives, stated: “God has placed us on
+this great, rich continent, separate and secure from
+the broils of Europe.” Dr. David Starr Jordan,
+President of Leland Stanford University, flooded the
+country with his prophesies. Here is one. “It is
+apparently not possible for another real war among
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>the nations of Europe to take place.” As for our
+getting into any war, he threw it off as so much
+silliness. That was just the opium the country
+wanted in 1913 and early ’14. The people ate up
+the idea. Anyone who spoke preparedness was a
+jingoist and wanted war. Why, war was impossible.
+It meant too much to Wall Street. European nations
+were too poor to fight. Modern weapons would be
+too horrible to allow a war. What was the use of
+paying out good money for scientific training—for
+modern materials—for being ready at all? War
+couldn’t be. Not so good.</p>
+
+<p>For war suddenly <i>was</i>. Right in the midst of
+this dangerous propaganda. Someone struck a match
+at Sarajevo and set all Europe on fire. Despite those
+priceless brains that had so lately invented no war,
+Russia, England, France, Belgium, Austria and Germany
+were flaming. What a sight! Americans rushed
+for front seats and bought concessions. Wasn’t it an
+awful fire! What a pity! As for us—poof! We
+couldn’t get into it. It was Europe’s affair. We sensed
+no tidal wave of emotions. We didn’t even send
+experts over there to see how modern war was conducted.
+Not so good, for the rumblings grew plainer
+and plainer. In 1915, Colonel House, the President’s
+confidential adviser, wrote to Woodrow Wilson: “If
+war comes with Germany, it will be because of our
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>unpreparedness and her belief that we are more or
+less impotent to do her harm.” He was on the ground
+and saw. But did we take his word and see? Our
+mobile army <i>then</i> was smaller than our trained force
+before the Spanish-American War. Our general
+staff was reduced and our equipment laughable.
+No so good. We entered 1916 still unconcernedly
+watching the drama in Europe, while U-boats were
+sinking our shipping, Germany was sticking out her
+tongue at us and we were getting hotter and hotter.
+Were we doing anything for our safety? No, no,
+that would be a violent gesture. Despite our watchful
+waiting and utter helplessness, General Leonard
+Wood established the business men’s training camp.
+And Congress, by some miracle, put over our first
+real National Defense Act—a comprehensive thing
+built on sound lines. Not so bad.</p>
+
+<p>But the legislation wouldn’t be fulfilled for five
+years—and here we were ten months before we got
+into the war. Even if the act had been immediately
+and wholly effective, we wouldn’t have had time
+to get the men and train them. Not so good.</p>
+
+<p>Then out of the blue came Pancho Villa. He
+crossed our border March 9, 1916, raided the defenseless
+town of Columbus, New Mexico, and killed
+eleven civilians and nine soldiers. It looked like a
+horror for us. Not so good. But the tragedy was a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>blessing in disguise. It probably kept France from
+being German today. It gave an excuse to the President
+for rushing to the border a large part of the
+regular army and one hundred and fifty thousand
+National Guardsmen. There they received fine
+training in fundamentals. Their experience gave the
+foundation for the 1st, 2nd, 26th and 42nd Divisions—the
+first ones to be factors in France later. Not so
+bad. But it took a brutal act to compel us to do what
+we wouldn’t do under our own steam. Even so we
+were magnificently unready. And we jumped into
+the European War, April 6, 1917, because we were
+angry, inflamed, anxious to punish Germany at any
+cost. No catch phrases, no plottings of a few could
+possibly have pitched us into the struggle without
+that general hatred. And we had little with which
+to carry out the wholesale desire for force. Immediately
+we needed two hundred thousand officers.
+We hadn’t ten thousand trained ones to instruct
+them and at the same time lead our forces. In equipment
+we were worse off. We had a few out-of-date
+airplanes, only enough artillery ammunition for a
+two-day battle, no automatic rifles and comparatively
+few machine guns and ordinary rifles. Materially
+we lacked almost everything. Although we
+had the best rifle in the world, there was not anywhere
+near enough. We had to arm our men largely
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>with British Enfields—unfamiliar to Americans—at
+best poor makeshifts. We couldn’t manufacture any
+of these things in time. In July 1917, Congress voted
+six hundred forty million dollars for airplanes.
+Nearly a year later we hadn’t any of our aircraft in
+Europe. Where had the money gone? An investigation
+was ordered. After seventeen thousand pages
+of testimony were taken down, it was found that
+aircraft couldn’t be built and shipped abroad in that
+time. Not so good.</p>
+
+<p>In our equipment we were helpless without our
+Allies. But in our manpower, we did surprisingly
+well. A little over a month after war was declared,
+we did the astonishing thing of passing a Draft Act.
+We put teeth in the law of 1792 promoted by
+George Washington, which had been a dead statute
+for over one hundred and twenty-five years. Instead
+of the horrors of volunteering, of utterly untrained
+men, of political shilly-shallying, we turned to a just
+and equalizing system. We did away with the woes
+of extra disease and death—and put our soldiers into
+training. Not in <i>this</i> war would absolutely green
+officers send into eternity helpless volunteers. Our
+best men went to training camps, where they at least
+had to qualify in leading others. Not so bad. But of
+course these candidates couldn’t be fully trained in
+eighty days. And the regular officers, who had been
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>deprived of modern methods in Europe, couldn’t
+give them all they needed. But they <i>did</i> get many
+essentials, which they could pass on to the drafted
+men.</p>
+
+<p>Today, many don’t realize what a vast amount of
+hardship, sickness and death was saved by our moves
+of the draft and officers’ training camps. It has been
+estimated that by the draft alone we saved five per
+cent in money and possibly twenty per cent in
+human life. Not so bad. To be sure we had unnecessary
+suffering and mortality. No system invented
+as late as 1917 could have overcome our
+shiftlessness during the years before. A month after
+we declared war, General Pershing was sent to
+Europe with a handful. “Where are the Americans?”
+asked our Allies. “Why,” he had to explain, “they
+are back in the United States getting ready.” And
+for a year they had to keep getting ready before
+they were of real physical help.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose you were attacked on the street by a
+strong bandit. I calmly from my window watch you
+struggling against him for several hours. Finally my
+wrath gets the best of me. I rush out to the curb. I
+see blood and bruises on your face. I yell to you:
+“I’m for you, old man. I’ll fight on your side, but
+chuck me a pair of brass knuckles. I’ll go down town
+and have them made to fit me. I may get a few boxing
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>lessons too. I’ll be back in about an hour. Just
+keep on going. You’re doing fine.” What would you
+think of me? Not so good. Well, we did that very
+thing to our Allies. Sixteen months after we entered
+the war, General Pershing pathetically stated: “This
+is the first time the American Army has been recognized
+as a participant alongside of the Allies.” What
+we did after war was declared was about as good as
+could humanly be expected. What we didn’t do
+beforehand was about as dumb as could humanly
+be expected. Most of the unnecessary woes of the
+war can justly be laid to this stupidity. Out of nearly
+two million Americans who went to Europe, over
+fifty thousand were killed by battle. Out of the three
+and one-half millions in service, sixty-five thousand
+died of accident or disease. Much of this waste could
+have been avoided. It is estimated that there are
+fifteen thousand graves of our soldiers in France,
+which should not be there. Men were sent overseas
+who didn’t know how to load their rifles, use their
+gas masks, or take the simplest precautions of taking
+cover or care of themselves. They hadn’t been given
+a chance to learn. There was no time to teach them.
+The training camp products, though better than untrained
+volunteers, were too often uncertain in their
+movements and orders. There were times when they
+brought unnecessary slaughter to themselves and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>their commands. The German General Ludendorff
+after the war, paid great tribute to the gallantry of
+the individual American soldier, but at the same
+time told of the inferior quality of some American
+troops—as troops. General Pershing’s complaints
+about the lack of training of men sent over, remind
+us of George Washington’s pitiful pleas during our
+Revolution. We waited for the calamity to get us,
+instead of getting the calamity beforehand. The sad
+part is that our losses, our hardships, our waste of
+money and material could all have been prevented,
+had we had strength in ’14, ’15 and ’16. German
+records and statements brought to light since the
+war, prove beyond doubt that we would never
+have been insulted by Germany, had our people
+drowned at sea and been drawn into the war at all,
+had we not been considered so senselessly weak.
+And we were weak—just as weak as Germany estimated
+us. As it was we were barely able to help. In
+the spring of 1918 all looked lost for our Allies. They
+were making their last stand. A matter of hours and
+nothing could stem the German onrush. By the
+greatest fortune and luck we had, by that time, a
+few troops worthy of taking the places of French
+and British reserve divisions and releasing them to
+the front. It was that plugging up of the tiny hole
+in the dyke that let the Allies hold on. Had we not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>shown an unbelievable efficiency over all of our
+other wars, after we got into the fight, and had not
+Villa crossed our border in 1916, the hole could not
+have been plugged—and America would have been
+on the losing side. Our unreadiness before war—not
+so good. Our surprising efficiency after we got into
+the war—not so bad. Our dependence upon a Mexican
+bandit for partial preparation—not so good.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose we had been forced to fight our
+enemy alone. Suppose we hadn’t had Allies to spend
+their lives in defense for a whole year. Suppose in
+wandering off for brass knuckles and boxing lessons
+we’d have been left alone with him. Can you picture
+the frightful, extravagant, tremendous deaths we
+would have dealt out to our own young men?</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="XIII">
+    <i>XIII</i><br>NOW
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>One very rainy day my regiment was marching
+through that gloomy red-mud country of North
+Georgia. We were cold and tired, and our shoes
+were heavy as suit-cases. Our camping-place was to
+be at a little town of Jasper. We had trudged along
+for about ten miles when we came to a sign which
+said: “Seven miles to Jasper.” That was encouragement.
+Only seven more miles. The old Sergeant near
+me set his jaw. In a few minutes we came to another
+sign which said: “Seven miles to Jasper.” The old
+Sergeant glared at the words as if he could bite
+them. In about ten minutes we came to a third sign
+which said: “Seven miles to Jasper.” It was too much
+for the Sergeant. He plunked his foot down in the
+mud. “Well,” he said, “thank God, we’re holding
+our own.”</p>
+
+<p>As we look over the history of our country, we
+can sincerely thank God that we’ve held our own.
+For we didn’t do much of the holding ourselves. In
+every one of our major wars, some outside influence,
+some accident, some big defect of our enemies, some
+miracle pulled us through to safety. In every big
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>fracas we were caught napping—caught saying there
+wouldn’t be a war—caught in the midst of brazen
+defiance of simple protection. Our utter weakness
+didn’t keep us out of war. In fact we chose our
+weakest times because our extreme anger wouldn’t
+wait for anything. We’d have gone in with pitchforks,
+we were so hot. That was courage all right,
+but it was stupid courage—and slaughter—unnecessary
+slaughter of our finest young men by the hundreds
+of thousands—young men we hadn’t given
+even a fighting chance, young men whose dying
+voices call to us today to give our manhood a little
+break—a little break against that sudden hurricane of
+anger which dashes a whole people into war.</p>
+
+<p>Listening to these voices after the World War,
+we raised our army to two hundred eighty thousand.
+We were going to be organized on a business basis
+for defense. We were at last going to obey the Constitution
+and give our manhood a chance. The soldier
+went to work to build for safety. But his efforts were
+short-lived. In 1922 Congress reduced the army to
+one hundred and seventy-five thousand men for one
+hundred twenty million people. Over one thousand
+officers and one hundred thousand enlisted men
+were cast out of the service. Then the parings of the
+budgets began. Since that time the army has never
+been greater than one hundred nineteen thousand
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>and often less—about forty-two per cent of what in
+1920 we felt proper. Today the C.C.C. outnumbers
+the army three to one—and organized crime many
+times. We have but fifty-five thousand soldiers in
+the United States, subtracting for foreign possessions
+and overhead. They would make a small crowd in
+the Yale Bowl. It would be difficult to get two
+divisions of regular troops together. The National
+Guard has been similarly cut down. In 1920 it was
+given a strength of four hundred twenty-five thousand.
+Today it is about one hundred ninety thousand—a
+reduction of fifty-six per cent. The Reserve
+Officers number but eighty-nine thousand and their
+active duty training—their opportunity to keep
+abreast—has been sliced to the bone. Since 1920 their
+efficiency has been slowed down sixty per cent. Altogether
+our land defense in manpower is more than
+fifty per cent lower than it was fifteen years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Our material deficiency is even greater. Our tanks
+are hopelessly out of date. We have only twelve
+modern ones—and only one of them is the most
+efficient type. We have aged field artillery, practically
+worn out. Our rifles are older. We have only
+eighty new semi-automatics—the normal weapon of
+the foot-soldier nowadays. Our ammunition is tremendously
+short. We have the barest few modern
+anti-aircraft guns and devices. Our motor vehicles
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>are way behind in numbers. Our airplanes are excellent
+in quality but slim in quantity. All these
+supplies would take from a year to two years to
+manufacture. Does this condition remind you of
+anything before our other wars? Does it give you a
+little feeling of the days before the Spanish-American
+tragedy? Our problem of National Defense has
+not been critically analysed since 1920. It is due the
+public to know where we stand. For it’s the public
+only that can make or break national defense.</p>
+
+<p>The soldier doesn’t want a big army. He wants
+a safe army. He’s not after a large military nation.
+That would be contrary to American ideals and
+traditions. After all he’s simply an American citizen.
+He wants only a well-knit skeleton upon which flesh
+and blood can be laid in case of emergency. He
+wants the protection of a real defense man to pull
+through a possible conflict without unwarranted
+killings. He wants himself and every other man in
+his nation defended. He doesn’t want to see the
+waste of money and life that has characterized all
+our wars, because we were unskilled, unmanned,
+careless, neglectful. If he were after a large force,
+he’d ask for a million men under arms. That would
+be parallel to what other civilized countries are
+doing, but it wouldn’t be decent for us. He doesn’t
+want that. He wants the barest sufficiency to prevent
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>habitual useless deaths. But he sees our woeful
+weakness now and shudders at the thought of what
+might happen were our country suddenly to become
+angry, as it has too often done in the past. He
+asks now for one hundred sixty-five thousand regulars,
+two hundred ten thousand National Guardsmen
+and one hundred twenty thousand reserve
+officers. He asks that thirty thousand reservists receive
+active duty training—every year. He asks that
+our supply of materials be brought up to standard.
+Such a force is less than sixty per cent of what we
+felt necessary in 1920. After General Staff study it
+is the bare minimum for our protection—very bare.
+The change would make us the sixteenth land power
+in the world instead of the seventeenth. But the
+soldier doesn’t care whether we’d be the sixteenth,
+the seventeenth, the second or the thirty-second. He
+wants enough to ensure our safety and keep us from
+being swept into eternity as the British regular army
+was in 1914. We have seen that an economy which
+cripples National Defense is extravagance past the
+point of folly. On the other hand, we see that too
+great a National Defense is also extravagance.</p>
+
+<p>If you ask the average citizen how many wars
+we’ve had he’ll answer offhand, “O, about six.” That
+reply illustrates our knowledge of our past. We’ve
+had actually one hundred and ten wars, great and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>small—an average of one oftener than every year
+and a half. We’ve fought all told eighty-six hundred
+battles. Compare this record with that of Germany,
+who from 1870 to 1914—44 years—had continuous
+peace while she was the most powerful military nation
+in the world. During that time we were one of
+the weakest nations and were almost constantly at
+war. A study of history proves that strength or
+weakness has nothing to do with the motives of war
+in a republic. It’s the temper and urge of the people
+as a whole when suddenly, unexpectedly they’re
+provoked. So we must be thinking about a possible
+catastrophe as we live under a volcano of human
+emotions.</p>
+
+<p>Is the soldier thinking about war? Of course—but
+only to stop it as quickly as possible if it comes—only
+to prevent its coming to us by being strong. He’s
+hired by this nation to study war as the doctor
+studies disease, as the fireman studies fire, as the federal
+agent studies crime. Does a fireman want fire?
+Does the federal agent want crime? No more does
+the soldier want war, but he wouldn’t be a true
+American, if he didn’t want to do a good job, if war
+comes. Does the doctor know when an epidemic
+will break out? Does the fireman know when a fire
+will start? Do federal agents and policemen know
+when a crime will be committed? No more does the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>soldier know when war may start. For it always has
+started with us suddenly—when people scoffed at
+our getting into it. Does the surgeon scoff at the
+possible outbreak of an epidemic, the fireman at the
+possible outbreak of a fire, the federal agent at the
+possible outbreak of crime? He’d be silly to do so.
+Yet fire, disease, crime are easier to lessen than war.
+For the cause of war is not a thing. It’s a frenzy of
+emotions. Education and experiment help prevent
+fire, crime and disease. But they value little with
+emotions. The office manager is as likely to lose his
+temper as the janitor. If you don’t believe it, try it
+out. But when a nation loses its temper, it’s a boiling
+pot. Nothing can stop its mass hatred. It’s like a
+plague of grasshoppers, Japanese beetles or white
+ants. We rush to force whether we are weak or
+strong. And how we sacrifice our young men when
+we are weak.</p>
+
+<p>We look at war as a horrible thing. It is. So are
+crime, fire and disease. But we don’t do away with
+policemen, firemen and doctors when we want to
+stop those ills. Yet that’s what we’ve done in this
+country about war. We’ve trimmed down our soldiers
+after every one of our conflicts. Trimmed them
+so that when we were hit by the next one, we squandered
+life like confetti. In our short history we’ve
+had in campaign over one million two hundred thousand
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>casualties. At least a million of these frightful
+deaths and sufferings need never have been, had we
+been strong. Bereaved mothers all over this land
+have mourned and cried out against war. It is only
+natural they should. We all hate war—no one more
+than the soldier, for he knows what it is. But it
+would have been a lot more practical to have faced
+the facts and cried out against our unreadiness. That
+is the only real thing we can lay our hands on which
+could have stopped or lessened the slaughter. To cry
+out against war, much as we want to do away with
+it, is like crying out against fire, crime or disease.
+We must work on the human soul to keep from
+anger—on human souls to keep from mass anger.
+Therein lies the great cause of war. But who can
+tell when a nation may lose its temper? To be ready
+against that explosion is not contrary to trying to
+abolish war. The two go hand in hand, as all history
+teaches. Each may be a preventive, but readiness is
+also a safe-guard. The great harm which some peace
+movements are doing lies in their attempt to make us
+weak—in doing away with the safeguard, while they
+push along a royal road to eternal peace. Let them
+push along that road. Let’s all help. It’s a fine thing.
+But let us not at the same time open up an avenue to
+the murder of our young men.</p>
+
+<p>False views—errors of fact—lead many to believe
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>that mechanisms, machines, devices will make war
+impossible. We’ve felt that way before many wars.
+Far back in history people were sure that there’d be
+no more war when the blunderbuss took the place
+of the bow and arrow. We’ve found out for centuries
+that machines can’t do the trick. We’ve found
+out scientifically that man is the big factor. Weapons
+change but principles don’t. The only thing man
+runs from or ever has been known to run from, is
+another man. He just won’t be stampeded by engines,
+machines, mechanisms or missiles. He digs in.
+He protects himself. There’s not a thing man invents
+that man can’t find a reply to. Machines are for only
+one purpose—to help the man on the ground get
+forward. Battles in the air may help the man on the
+ground, but they wouldn’t settle anything. They
+couldn’t end the war. All this hysteria about the
+machine being the answer is unscientific, untrue and
+sensational. And bombing, gassing, strafing communities
+or cities not in the fight, or not with the
+army, is just as absurd. It would be the last thing a
+trained general would undertake. Nothing could be
+worse for his own side and his own success. Only
+the untrained general would indulge in such errors—and
+even he would soon learn his mistake. And as
+for wiping out whole cities by air bombing or by
+gas it’s mechanically impossible. Why, there’s not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>enough gas in the world to destroy New York City
+alone. And if there were it would take fifteen thousand
+airplanes, unhampered, to make any impression.
+And where would fifteen thousand airplanes
+come from at a hundred thousand dollars a throw?
+Don’t be fooled by these silly flights of fancy of unschooled,
+untaught, unscientific blunderers.</p>
+
+<p>Then there’s the cry of militarism against decent
+readiness. Militarism. Why there never has been
+such a thing in the United States—and least of all
+with the soldier, and there’s no reason to believe
+there ever will be. I defy anyone to show me a single
+instance of it in any group at any time in this country.
+If more people knew our true state, our true history,
+they’d see the rotten absurdity of shouting against
+it. But theorists, revolutionary socialists, peacebreakers
+are using this cunning false method of
+gulling our youth into striking against any little
+strength the United States might have.</p>
+
+<p>It’s a day of questionnaires, of polls of votes.
+We’ve gone wild with them. The college youth
+particularly is pursued by this plague. Led on by a
+professor who either doesn’t know our true history
+or doesn’t care about our country, the poor lad is
+gulled into blowing pledge-bubbles. The questions
+in themselves are so degrading that George Washington,
+Abraham Lincoln, all our presidents, would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span>sicken at the sight of them. “Would you bear arms
+in any war of your country?” is the favorite. The
+poor lad, without background of our whole history
+wavers. Under the glamorous, treacherous teachings
+of his professor, he writes: “No.” And he believes
+what he says. He has no idea he’s giving voice to a
+flimsy New Year’s resolution. Let me ask him now
+what he’d do if a bandit attacked his home and tried
+to ruin his sister. Would he bear arms? He’d bear
+everything he had to fight with or he wouldn’t be
+worthy of the name of a man. Yet he said he’d never
+bear arms against an enemy attacking another home.
+What of the golden rule? What of selfishness? What
+of American sportsmanship?</p>
+
+<p>Our nation’s ability to protect itself is its highest
+insurance. For our insurance companies would be
+nowhere, our commerce, our comfort, our happiness
+would be nowhere, if our defense broke under
+attack. There is no insurance to compete with National
+Defense. For it’s our blanket insurance. It’s
+just plain business sense. The soldier realizes that
+we have that sense in almost everything else but
+National Defense. He realizes we’re living in a
+world—not heaven, Utopia or the millennium. He’s
+got to face proven experience and facts as they are,
+like the doctor, the fireman, the federal agent. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>wonders whether we can hold our own against the
+signs of the times. Or whether we must have just
+faith without works.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Other_Books_Recommended">
+    <i>Other Books Recommended</i>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>The History of the United States Army</i>—Colonel
+William Addleman Ganoe—D. Appleton-Century
+Co., 35 West 32nd Street, New
+York City.</p>
+
+<p class="center">★</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Chasing Villa</i>—Colonel Frank Tompkins—The
+Military Service Publishing Co., 100
+Telegraph Building, Harrisburg, Pa.</p>
+
+<p class="center">★</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Inevitable War</i>—Lieut. Col. Richard Stockton—The
+Perth Co., 393 Seventh Ave., New
+York City.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+<div class="transnote">
+<p class="ph2">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_83">83</a>: stray comma removed after “Napoleon the third”.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_85">85</a>: missing apostrophe added in “know it’s a funny thing”.</p>
+
+<p>Spelling errors corrected and missing quote marks added.</p>
+
+<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been left unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>A Table of Contents has been added by the transcriber to this edition for convenience.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77647 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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author	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-01-08 05:44:10 -0800
committer	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-01-08 05:44:10 -0800
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