path: root/77647-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77647 ***




SOLDIERS UNMASKED




  SOLDIERS UNMASKED

  _By_

  WILLIAM ADDLEMAN GANOE

  COLONEL, U. S. ARMY

  [Illustration]

  Author of “The History of the
  United States Army,” etc.


  1939




  FIRST EDITION, COPYRIGHT, 1935, BY
  WILLIAM ADDLEMAN GANOE


  SECOND EDITION, COPYRIGHT, 1939

  FIRST PRINTING JANUARY, 1939


  Published by
  THE MILITARY SERVICE PUBLISHING COMPANY
  HARRISBURG, PA.

  PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
  THE TELEGRAPH PRESS
  HARRISBURG, PA.




  _To
  George Washington
  ever revered
  seldom obeyed_




_HOW IT STARTED_


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, 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.

                                                                  W.A.G.




_I_

WHAT IS A SOLDIER


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.

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.

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
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?”

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 to do, as saying that
firemen are preparing to cause fires.

The soldiers in this country have never prepared to have a war and they
are not doing so now. They have always prepared _against_ 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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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.

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 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?

Listen to what comes next.




_II_

WHAT HAS HE DONE


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?”

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 _Captain_ Meriwether Lewis and
_Lieutenant_ 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?

Pike’s Peak! O yes, that was discovered by a man by the name of
Pike. But where was it mentioned that it was _Lieutenant_ 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 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
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.”

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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.




_III_

WHAT MORE HAS HE DONE


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!”

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.

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 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.

As with disease, so with disaster. Early one morning in 1906, San
Francisco was suddenly buried in 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.

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 _gave_ 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, 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.

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
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 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.

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.

There is much false prejudice against our Chemical 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.

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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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.

Do I toot too loudly--do I scare the calf?




_IV_

THE FIRST GAME


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.”

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.”

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 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 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.

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
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 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
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.

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 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, 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
_much more_ 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.

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 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.”

Thus the people were warned against their slump--and we shall soon see
how they paid for it.




_V_

THE FIELD MEET


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.

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 best that
we do look them in the face--in order to enter into the big charity of
preventive medicine.

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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.

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, 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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

All these actions on land were really more disgraceful than I have
described them. Throughout 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, 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.




_VI_

THE UPHILL GAME


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 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 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 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
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 _run_ or be uselessly _killed in battle_. 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
_then_ 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 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 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.

But then came the rub. Jalapa. Have you ever heard of Jalapa? Well, it
was another Valley Forge 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. 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.

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 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.

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.

But let us hark back to a piece of irony. In the previous years before
this war, _twice had Congress tried to abolish West Point_, and _once_
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 _not_ been forced to let 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?




_VII_

THE SCRAMBLE


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 _not_.”
Just why our country didn’t learn after three wars, two of which we
actually lost through the _absence_ of training, and one of which
we won _because_ 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
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 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 _not_ 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 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.

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,
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.

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 _did_ 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, 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 _nothing_. So we proceeded to call out one _million_ men with
more pandemonium, more ill-supplied concentrations, more sufferings and
more expense.

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:

“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.”

The diary goes on to show how this detachment 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.

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 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 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.




_VIII_

MORE SCRAMBLE


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 _monkey_,
you’re in a devilish fix. If you’re _not_ a monkey, _I’m_ 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 _terrible_ 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 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 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.

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 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.

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.

And it was so all through 1861. We had five other 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 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 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.

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 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.

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 _one_ 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 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 _mis_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 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?




_IX_

FIDDLING


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.”

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 _right after_ 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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

Similarly trained troops took their places along 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!

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 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.

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,) and barely escaped with the remnants of his force.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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?




_X_

MORE FIDDLING


Abraham Lincoln one afternoon sat listening to the members of a
committee arguing. The next day he heard them arguing _more_ 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 _still_ 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 _louse_ on your eyebrow’.”

If Lincoln were alive today, I fear he’d discover 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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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 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:

“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’.”

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 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.

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 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.

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 more than the Indian respected _size_. 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?




_XI_

THE BLACK HOLE


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.

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.

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 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 disasters of our own making. We
showed to the world the greatest unreadiness we’d had since we’d been a
nation.

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.

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?

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
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.

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 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.

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 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.

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, 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.

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 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.

Even so, in only one hundred nine days of war, the volunteers alone
lost two hundred eighty-nine killed--but--listen to the _but_--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.

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 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.

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.

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.




_XII_

BACKING AND FILLING


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.

“Well,” he said, “I got married.”

“Hm,” I said, “That’s good.”

“No,” he said, “Not so good. My wife turned out to be a tartar.”

“Well,” I said, “That’s bad.”

“No,” he said, “Not so bad. She brought me twenty thousand dollars.”

“O,” I said, “that’s good.”

“No,” he said, “Not so good. I invested the money in sheep and they all
died.”

“Hm,” I said, “that’s bad.”

“No,” he said, “Not so bad. I sold the wool for more than the sheep
cost me.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s good.”

“No,” he said, “Not so good. I bought a fine home and a fire burned it
to the ground.”

“Hm,” I said, “that’s bad.”

“No,” he said, “Not so bad. My wife was in it.”

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 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.

For war suddenly _was_. 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 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 _then_ 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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 _this_ 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 deprived of modern methods in
Europe, couldn’t give them all they needed. But they _did_ get many
essentials, which they could pass on to the drafted men.

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.

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 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 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
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.

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?




_XIII_

NOW


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.”

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

False views--errors of fact--lead many to believe 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 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.

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.

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 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?

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 wonders whether
we can hold our own against the signs of the times. Or whether we must
have just faith without works.




_Other Books Recommended_


_The History of the United States Army_--Colonel William Addleman
Ganoe--D. Appleton-Century Co., 35 West 32nd Street, New York City.

★

_Chasing Villa_--Colonel Frank Tompkins--The Military Service
Publishing Co., 100 Telegraph Building, Harrisburg, Pa.

★

_Inevitable War_--Lieut. Col. Richard Stockton--The Perth Co.,
393 Seventh Ave., New York City.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


Page 83: stray comma removed after “Napoleon the third”.

Page 85: missing apostrophe added in “know it’s a funny thing”.

Spelling errors corrected and missing quote marks added.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been left unchanged.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77647 ***