The Vast Territory That Our Inflated Monroe Doctrine Obligates Us to DefendThe Vast Territory That Our Inflated Monroe Doctrine Obligates Us to Defend
Our self-assumed protectorate over the South American republics is not welcomed by those countries. They resent our arrogance. We have never cultivated trade with them, nor joined them in the development of their industries, and have never financed their enterprises. Even when an American citizen has paid a visit to a South American country, he has first found it necessary to go to England and take ship from there.
The European countries, on the other hand, have promoted business relations with the South American republics, have supplied them with working capital and cultivated their friendship, confidence, and respect, while we have done nothing of the sort.
The citizens of the United States whom the South Americans have seen in their dominions have usually been adventurous, irresponsible fortune-hunters. Their trouble-breeding propensities have not tended to foster amicable feeling between the great Republic of the North and her Southern sisters.
So long as the Monroe Doctrine did not circumscribe the ambitions of the United States the institution possessed some semblance of vitality; but, when the explosion came that blew up theMaine, it also exploded the Monroe Doctrine, for immediately the United States, abandoning its time-honored policy of keeping within American confines, and out of entangling alliances and complications with other nations, reached out a grasping hand and seized upon the Far Pacific possessions of Spain, right at the door of China and within the legitimate sphere of influence of Japan. Yet, curiously enough, we still adhere to the old proclamation, America for the Americans, oblivious of the equal right of China and Japan to proclaim, Asia for the Asiatics.
Several years ago, I spoke at a luncheon of the Twentieth Century Club in Boston. I was seated beside a noted Japanese diplomat. He said, "Mr. Maxim, you have a Monroe Doctrine—America for the Americans; we also have a similar doctrine—Asia for the Asiatics; but we are not ready to enforce ours yet, and you are not ready, and are not likely to be ready, to enforce yours. A little later, we shall inquire by what logic you can proclaim America for the Americans, and disclaim our right equally to proclaim Asia for the Asiatics."
The Japanese are a far-seeing and a patient people. They know how to wait, but they knowalso when to strike, and how to strike with the force of a Jovian thunderbolt. They are no longer merely a cute little picture-book people. They have risen with stupendous strides into a very eminent position as a World-Power, a Power to be reckoned with. They are different from us, but we have no right to consider them our inferiors. They may very possibly prove to be our superiors. A government of the people and for the people is a failure if the government does not take measures for the adequate defense of the people. Self-preservation is the first law of nature. Consequently, it is a law which must be observed as the chief element of greatness.
I quote the following from "The Valor of Ignorance," by General Homer Lea:
"How unreasonable is it to expect that the combined nations of Europe, with all their military strength, shall remain restricted to one-twelfth of this world's land, burrowed into and hewn over for the last thousand years, while this Republic, without armies, shall maintain dominion over one-half the unexploited lands of the world! Or that Japan, possessed of two-thirds the population of this nation and a military organization fifty-fold greater, shall continue to exist on her rocky isles that are, inclusive of Korea, but one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth of the earth's lands,while an undefended one-half lies under the guns of her battleships!
"The Monroe Doctrine is Promethean in conception, but not so in execution. It was proclaimed in order to avoid wars; now it invites them....
"The Monroe Doctrine, if not supported by naval and military power sufficient to enforce its observance by all nations, singly and in coalition, becomes a factor more provocative of war than any other national policy ever attempted in modern or ancient times.... Societies, religions, unions, business men, and politicians on the one hand, spare no effort to debase every militant instinct and military efficiency or preparation necessary for its enforcement, while, on the other, they demand that the Chief Executive shall assert to the entire world this Republic's intention to maintain, by the force of arms if necessary, this most warlike and encompassing policy ever enunciated by man or nation."
The Monroe Doctrine did not require that any American possessions of the European monarchies should be relinquished, but simply that they should not be extended; and that, if relinquished or lost, they should not be re-established as monarchical possessions.
England, being in possession of the vast domainof Canada in North America, British Honduras and British Guiana in South America, and a goodly number of the West Indian islands, was in a position to look with favor on the Monroe Doctrine, because in the event of Great Britain being defeated in war by any of the Great Powers, her victor or victors would be unable to seize any of her American possessions, for automatically the United States would become an ally of Great Britain, and would, in order to defend the Monroe Doctrine, have to defend these possessions.
When Sir Charles Tupper was High Commissioner of Canada, the writer saw him in London, and suggested to him that it would be a good idea for the Canadians to buy some automatic guns. He replied that Canada was very peculiarly situated; that she could not be attacked successfully by any Power unless the British fleet were first destroyed, which was not likely, and, in the possible event of that fleet being destroyed, then the United States would be obliged to defend Canada in order to defend the Monroe Doctrine.
The peace sophists often refer to the unfortified border-line between the United States and Canada as an argument in favor of the abolition of armaments throughout the world. They fail to perceive that the same unarmed condition would not work between European countries, as, for example, between France and Germany. If the people of Canada and the United States were asdifferent in race, language, ideals, and ambitions as are the French and Germans; and if, also, the two countries were as thickly settled and the inhabitants as land-hungry; and if each had a history as antagonistic as the French and Germans; then fortifications would be needed on the Canadian border. But the Canadians and ourselves are of the same race, we speak the same tongue, we have similar ideals and ambitions, and our history is not antagonistic; on the contrary, it has been largely a common history—the history of England, the mother country.
England and France were obligated to defend Belgium against Germany. Their defenses consisted mainly in bluff, but they were, nevertheless, far better prepared to support Belgium than we would be to support any South American country against German aggression.
The navy of England is so far superior to ours that should she at any time care to ignore the Monroe Doctrine and colonize in South America we should be absolutely unable to prevent her. She would be able to isolate us from South America and from the rest of the world, within the continental territory of the forty-eight states. An impenetrable barrier of British warships would lie between us and the Panama Canal. Therefore, it will be seen that our Monroe Doctrine is an Anglo-American compact, anentente, which we are obliged to defend if it should be in the interestof Great Britain, and which Great Britain would not be obliged to observe in case she might want to ignore it:
Let us invite Admiral Mahan to conclude this chapter:
"In the Monroe Doctrine, as now understood, and viewed in the light of the Venezuela incident, with the utterances then made by our statesmen of all parties, we have on hand one of the biggest contracts any modern state has undertaken."
"In the course of time, no one knows when or how soon, the family of nations may get to playing at cards, and beyond the sea, perhaps, will be found a 'full hand' against our three 'aces'—the Navy, Coast Fortifications, and the Militia."Lieut. Gen. Adna R. Chaffee, U.S.A."Whenever a nation's attitude toward war is evasive, its conduct indecisive, and its preparation an indifferent, orderless assembling of forces, it prepares for defeat."Homer Lea.
"In the course of time, no one knows when or how soon, the family of nations may get to playing at cards, and beyond the sea, perhaps, will be found a 'full hand' against our three 'aces'—the Navy, Coast Fortifications, and the Militia."
Lieut. Gen. Adna R. Chaffee, U.S.A.
"Whenever a nation's attitude toward war is evasive, its conduct indecisive, and its preparation an indifferent, orderless assembling of forces, it prepares for defeat."
Homer Lea.
In theSunday Americanof the seventeenth of January of this year, Mr. Andrew Carnegie gave expression to some opinions that challenge the attention of all thinking people of our country who, in this trying time of war, are becoming aroused and are asking themselves the question: Are we adequately prepared against the dread eventuality of war, and if not adequately prepared, why not?
There is no person, of howsoever humble a station, whose opinion has not some weight. Horace Greeley—or was it Henry Ward Beecher?—once said that his views upon a very important subject underwent a material change from conversation with a blacksmith while having his horse shod.
The opinion of Andrew Carnegie, the greatest steel and iron smith the world has ever known, is certain to have great weight with a very large number of persons, whatever the subject may be upon which he expresses himself.
The world owes Andrew Carnegie a debt of deep gratitude for many most munificent and beneficent actions, and our gratitude to him has begotten love for him, and our gratitude and our love beget our sympathetic attention whenever he speaks. Consequently, when Mr. Carnegie speaks upon the subject of our national defense, he is bound to exercise a tremendous power for good or evil, and this power for good or evil is directly proportionate to the extent that his opinions are right or wrong.
At this time, the question of our national defense is one of so serious concern that anything a well and favorably known man says may have a determining effect upon the minds of many persons, and thereby be fruitful of national good or national harm.
If Mr. Carnegie is right in his belief that our best defense is in military defenselessness, then he is doing the country a great service through the wide publicity given to his opinions. If, on the other hand, he is in the wrong, he is doing this country a very great injury, and his words notonly help defeat Congressional appropriations for building more guns, but also help to spike the few guns we have.
Let us first consider some of the more remarkable and also the more radical of his statements. He says, to quote:
"Not one of the great nations has the slightest desire to be other than friendly with the United States. We are a friend to all; an enemy of none. They could gain nothing by a war with us, nor would we by a war with them. We have no territorial ambitions, and only desire to be left alone.
"As for this foolish talk of an invasion, that is an impossible contingency. Imagine any country being able to successfully bring enough troops to accomplish anything worth while from a military standpoint from a point three thousand miles off and attack a hundred millions of people!
"I have always said that if at any time any country was foolish enough to attempt invasion the best possible plan would be to make their landing as easy as possible, point out to them the best possible roads, and allow them to go as far as they desired to go inland. Then warn them to look out, and turn a million of our 16,000,000 of militia loose upon them. Getting in would be easy, but how to get out would result in surrender.
"There is no other country in the world so wellequipped to repel invasion or make it so hot for an enemy should he land as to make him exceedingly sorry he ever tried it."
The foregoing statements of Mr. Carnegie contain in a nutshell the whole pith and gist of the present anti-armament peace advocacy, backed by the ten-million-dollar Carnegie foundation, representing an income of half a million dollars a year.
Now, if it happens to be a fact that these views of Mr. Carnegie and his coterie of peace advocates are wrong, and if we need to take immediate and radical measures for our national defense, then whenever the Carnegie advocacy prevents a battery of guns being built, the resultant injury to the country is as great as though a battery of our guns were to be destroyed, or as though a battery of guns were made for a possible enemy.
Truly, as Mr. Carnegie states, we are friendly to other nations, and we do not want any of their territory, but I do not agree with him that we have nothing which they might want, for we are both very rich and very defenseless, and the history of nations has shown that always the rich and the defenseless sooner or later become the prey of the poor and the powerful.
One after another of the surrounding nations will likely be drawn into the war before it is over. After the present belligerents have settled their scores with the sword, there will be other scoresto be settled between the victors and the neutral nations. Differences between the warring and the neutral powers—differences which, in time of peace, might produce very strained relations or precipitate war—may now be lightly passed over as mere discourtesies. But, after the war, some of the acts of the neutrals that at present seem quite insignificant may be magnified to advantage ascasus belli.
It is my opinion that, whichever side wins, the United States will likely have to fight the winner within a short time after the war is over, for neither the Germans nor the Allies, in the heat of passion that now dominates them, will be in a mood to forgive some of the things that we may feel compelled to do in the maintenance of our neutrality. In short, the things that we may be led to do to avoid being embroiled in the present war may serve to embroil us with the victors, unless the war should end in a draw.
Mr. Carnegie thinks it would be quite a difficult undertaking for a foreign nation to land troops enough on our shores successfully to contend with our people. Our expert army and navy officers, who have been educated at government expense, and who are supposed to know about such matters, tell us that it would be impossible for us to mobilize and bring to the front more than 30,000 of our standing Army during the first month; and that it would be impossible to mobilize and get ourmilitia into shape to resist an army of 100,000 of the well-trained and well-armed troops of one of the Great Powers, inside of a year and a half.
Also, our naval and military experts tell us that it would require not only months, but years, to get our Navy into such efficient fighting trim as to be able to resist the navy of any one of the leading Great Powers of the world. They tell us that we are so short of ammunition that we might easily exhaust the present supply in the first four weeks of the war, and possibly in the first few days of the war.
We are in the habit of speaking of our Navy as ranking somewhere second or third from the top. As a matter of fact, we rank much lower than that, because of the shortage of our ammunition supply. Just as a steam-engine cannot be run without fuel, regardless of its size and power, so a navy cannot be run without gunpowder.
When the present war broke out, France, Germany, and England each had ten times as much smokeless powder on hand as we had. We have between forty and fifty million pounds of smokeless powder at the present time, whereas we should have 500,000,000 pounds.
The only difficulty in landing as large an army as an enemy might desire upon our shore, would be in overcoming our fleet. Once our fleet were smashed, an enemy could land a hundred thousand men, either on our Atlantic or on our Pacific seaboard, long before we could mobilize the troops we have. In fact, a quarter of a million men could be landed before we could get the troops we have into fighting shape.
Let us examine for one moment Mr. Carnegie's proposition to welcome an army of invaders, showing them the best roads to the interior, and then turning lose on them a million improvised citizen soldiers. Like Pompey, Mr. Carnegie seems to believe that he can raise an army at will by stamping his foot upon the ground.
Not only should we have to raise the million men, but also we should have to provide small arms, Maxim guns, rapid-fire field-cannon, and siege howitzers for them. At least four years' instruction and experience in the use of these weapons would be required; furthermore, the men would have to be imbued with the courage that veterans have, which can be acquired only after much experience on the firing-line; they would have to be officered by men of military education and training, and lastly, they would need large corps of trained and experienced engineers, and also a trained commissariat.
None of these things can be created in a day, or a month, or made efficient in a year, so that the army of invaders, after it had received the Carnegie welcome and had taken possession of the country, would have quietly to wait for us to getready to swoop down on them, as Mr. Carnegie suggests.
When the present war is over, should one of the belligerent nations, with its veteran fighting blood up, attack us, how are we prepared to meet that attack?
Our army and navy men tell us that our position is pathetically defenseless. They tell us that, should our Navy be destroyed or evaded, and an army of only a hundred thousand men, equipped with all of the arms and paraphernalia of modern warfare, be landed on our coast, the invading army could go anywhere it might see fit, live off the country, capture our big cities, and hold us up for ransom in spite of all that we could do.
What could we do? How could we flee? Where could we flee? We simply could not flee. Most of us have doubtless thought that if war should be declared, we would seek safety in the interior. But immediately war is declared, all the railroads and all automobiles will be commandeered for military purposes. All banks will close. All securities will be rendered worthless, and we, reduced to penniless hoboes, will be compelled to stay right here and face the music.
Let us assume merely that an invading army of a hundred thousand men should be landed near New York. Should this army send out detachments to capture the places where our arms andmunitions of war are made, they would not have far to go.
A Rich Prize for a Hostile Army
They would find the smokeless powder works of the United States Army and the Picatinny Arsenal, where all the smokeless powder and high explosives of the United States Army are stored, near Dover, New Jersey, about thirty-five miles from New York; also they would find there the big naval depot for ammunition and explosives.
At Bridgeport, Connecticut, they would find the Union Metallic Cartridge Works, and the American and British Manufacturing Company's Works for the manufacture of rapid-fire cannon, and at New Haven they would find the Winchester Repeating Arms and Cartridge Company's Works and the Marlin Firearms Works. At Springfield, Massachusetts, they would find the Smith and Wesson Revolver Works and also the United States Arsenal, where our rifles are made. At Hartford, Connecticut, they would find the Colt Patent Firearms, and the Pratt and Whitney Works; at Ilion, New York, the Remington Small Arms Works, and at Utica, New York, the Savage Arms Works.
They would find one of our most important big-gun factories at Troy, New York, and another at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where also much of our armor-plate is made. The big Cramp Shipbuilding Works would be found at Philadelphia. They would find at Groton, Connecticut, the factory where all the interior parts of the Holland submarine boats are made, and at Fore River, Massachusetts, the big shipyard where the Holland submarine and other war vessels are constructed.
The Heart of AmericaThe Heart of America
They would find the Lake Submarine Torpedo Boat Works at Bridgeport, the United States Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, and one of our biggest navy yards, together with the E. W. Bliss Torpedo Works, in Brooklyn. The New York Arsenal they would find unprotected on Governor's Island. They would find the great duPont Smokeless Powder Works at Carney's Point, Parlin and Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, and at various points in New Jersey the largest and most important high-explosives works in the world.
Take a map of the United States, and a pair of compasses, and with one point placed on the Hudson River, at Peekskill, New York, draw a circle having a radius of a hundred-and-sixty miles. There will be included within that circle all of the above-mentioned ammunition and armament works, which constitute nearly all the smokeless powder works, cartridge works, torpedo-boat works, small-arms works, and big-gun and armor-plate works in the United States. Also, this circlewill include not only New York and nearby cities, but also Boston, Albany, Syracuse, Philadelphia, and the most important coal fields of Pennsylvania.
The conquest of this area would not be a work of months, or of years, but only of a few days, and the thing would be done before we had time to mobilize the available fighting forces we have, much less to enlist and train and arm a citizen soldiery.
This vital area is the solar plexus of Uncle Sam, and an army of a hundred thousand trained men, landed on our Atlantic seaboard, would be able to capture this entire area and subdue the populace as easily as the police force of New York can subdue a rioting mob.
While we were arming and training our million men to make the Carnegie swoop, the army of invaders would be very busy.
They would commandeer all our above-mentioned factories, and proceed to operate them with skilled American labor, which they would also commandeer and force to work, just as the Germans have forced the Belgians to work for them, and Mr. Carnegie's army of citizen soldiers would find themselves without means either of arming themselves or of supplying themselves with ammunition or of getting the skilled labor necessary to do the work.
But this is not all that the invaders would bedoing while we were getting our million men together. They would have means of knowing what we were doing, and they would send out a detachment and defeat our whole enterprise. They would probably levy on New York City for a billion dollars, and levy upon all the cities in the captured area for every dollar that could be squeezed from the inhabitants under threats of destruction.
Not only this, but they might take the notion, and probably would take the notion, to annex the conquered territory, just as Germany has annexed Belgium, and, as we should then automatically become citizens of the enemy's country, we should be conscripted and forced to fight our own people, just as the Belgians, according to report, have been forced into the ranks of the Germans.
Such a military measure is not new; it is as old as war itself. Frederick the Great frequently forced his prisoners to fight in his own ranks, and Napoleon Bonaparte sometimes gave them the option of joining his legions or of faring much worse. Attila took with him the entire male population of the countries through which he passed as additions to his military host. Those who resisted were immediately killed, and those he did not need were killed, whether they resisted or not. As to what may be done in war, there is no arbiter but necessity.
To receive an invading army is not so pleasant athing as Mr. Carnegie assumes. As guests they are just about as lovable and make just about as good pets in the family as rattlesnakes, cobras, scorpions, and tarantulas.
A few Americans who were caught in the war zone when the present war broke out got some useful knowledge of war's inconveniences and harassments. What the people for whom there was no escape suffered in Belgium and Northern France, is beyond our powers of conception. No one who has not had personal experience can form the least idea of the barbarous atrocities perpetrated by an invading army on the defenseless population.
Invaders always live off the invaded country. It is considered more important that they should live well than that any one else should live at all. If, after the invaders' wants are supplied, there is enough left for the people to live on, well and good; if not, then the people must starve. The invaders must have food and clothing and the bare necessaries of life; also, they must have luxuries. They must have cigars and cigarettes, wine, women, and song. If our country should be invaded, we should not only have to furnish food, clothing, cigars, cigarettes, and wine for the armies of the enemy, but also our wives and our daughters and our sweethearts would be commandeered to supply the women and song.
Occasionally, an American citizen, with moremanhood than discretion, would resent a nameless indignity, and kill some military blackguard, who would immediately be avenged by the burning of the town and the corralling and shooting of the people with machine-guns. This is not an overdrawn picture—the thing has actually been done in the present war.
It is very likely that some of us who look upon this page will be forced to see wife or daughter or sweetheart namelessly maltreated to gratify the brutal lust of an invader, and lose our own life for a blow on the scoundrel's jaw or a stab in his ribs, unless—aye, there's the rub—unless this whole country awakens to its danger and rises up as one man and demands prompt and adequate defensive measures for national protection. As this saving thing is not likely to happen, the entire country east of the Alleghanies will probably be Belgiumized with fire and the sword, depredated, degraded, and desolated by an invading army within a very short time after the European War is over.
This is an age of mechanics—an age wherein man-made mechanism more and more replaces hand work. Everywhere in our industries of peace, we have seen labor-saving machinery replace the labor of human hands. Today all the men in the world could not do by hand all of the world's ploughing, sowing, reaping, and carrying of the world's food to market; all the women inthe world could not, today, do the world's sewing without the sewing-machine; and all the men in the world and all the women in the world combined could not, today, do a tenth of the world's writing without the typewriter and type-setting and printing machinery.
One of the giant dredges that have been ladling out of the Panama Canal the vast landslides, can do the pick and shovel and wheelbarrow work of a thousand men. Everywhere, in everything we do, and in everything done for us, we find human hands now mainly engaged in guiding the work of labor-saving machinery.
The people of the United States of America have been able to develop their enormous resources and to keep abreast of the world's industrial progress mainly by the invention of labor-saving machinery under the protection of our patent law.
In our competition with other nations for the markets of the world, no one thinks of referring to the prowess of our unskilled citizen soldiers of industry unsupported by machinery, but all reliance is placed upon our multiform labor-saving machinery, and our skilled labor behind that machinery.
With these pregnant facts before us, it is very strange that it should not be perfectly plain to every one that what is true of labor-saving machinery in peace is likewise true in war. It isvery strange indeed that there should be intelligent men and women among us unable to see and to understand that labor-saving machinery and labor skilled in its use are as applicable and as indispensable to successful warfare as to peaceful industry. Furthermore, labor-saving machinery in war is life-saving machinery. The quick-firing gun is the greatest life-saving instrument ever invented. These persons do not seem to appreciate that war is an industry. As a matter of stern fact, war is, and has always been, the biggest and the most vital industry of mankind, and in no other industry is labor-saving machinery so important and so vital, and in no other industry does so much depend upon the skill of the labor operating the machinery.
We are the slaves of belief, and we love our chains. Although our faith may be false, we hate the hand that tries to free us. The people of this country have a great false faith in the fighting qualities of their citizen soldiery, improvised in time of war. They point proudly to the War of the Revolution and the War of the Rebellion to prove how our volunteer soldiers can fight. They overlook the fact that fighting was then mostly done by hand; that now it is mostly done by machinery, and that it is just as foolish and absurd to think of taking untrained men off the farm to operate the guns and machinery of war as it would be to try to operate the factories with themwhere the guns and machinery are made. It takes as long today to convert a farmer into a skilled soldier as it does to convert him into a skilled mechanic.
Battles are no longer decided merely by the patriotism and personal bravery of the rank and file, nor even by their numbers, but by the efficiency and sufficiency of machinery and materials of destruction and the science and scientific experience of the commanding officers. There is no time to build steam-fire-engines or to train fire brigades after a conflagration has broken out.
A citizen soldiery without years of training in the discipline and weapons and mechanism of modern warfare is only a mob, as easily scattered by a few real soldiers as chaff by a whirlwind.
George Washington held the following opinion about the value of militia in warfare:
"Regular troops alone are equal to the exigencies of modern war, as well for defense as offense, and when a substitute is attempted it must prove illusory and ruinous. No militia will ever acquire the habits necessary to resist a regular force ... the firmness requisite for the real business of fighting is only to be attained by a constant course of discipline and service. I have never yet been witness to a single instance that can justify a different opinion, and it is most earnestly to bewished that the liberties of America may no longer be trusted, in any material degree, to so precarious a dependence."—Washington.
If Washington held it a mistake to rely on untrained, undisciplined men in time of war, who can differ with him today, when not only bravery and discipline are required, but also a knowledge of the complicated enginery of warfare?
It is obvious to any one that ten men armed with the modern magazine shoulder-rifle, with a range of more than two miles, would easily be able to defeat a thousand men—a hundred times their number—armed with slings and bows and arrows, short-swords and spears, as was the army of Hannibal. Hannibal's famous Balearic slingers were able to hurl a slug of lead through a man. But ten riflemen would have time to kill a thousand of them before they could get within sling range. A thousand of the famous English bowmen who fought at Agincourt could all be destroyed by our ten riflemen before they could get within bowshot.
The same thing holds equally true with old short-range and obsolete firearms, as compared with the longer range and more accurate guns of the latest pattern. Ten good marksmen, armed with the latest rifles, could kill a thousand equally skilled marksmen armed with the old muzzle-loaders of the Civil War, before they could getwithin range. These ten men would each be able to fire with ease a carefully aimed shot every two and a half seconds; the ten men could fire 250 aimed shots a minute. A thousand men, armed with the old muzzle-loaders, would surely have to advance at least a mile and a half after coming within range of the modern rifles before they could get the ten riflemen within range of their muzzle-loaders. Charging forward on the run, it would take them at least ten minutes to cover the mile and a half. In that time the ten riflemen would be able to fire 2,500 carefully-aimed shots. Such is the difference in the potentiality of troops dependent upon suitable arms.
With the modern automatic magazine-rifle a single soldier would be able to defeat a hundred men armed with the old smooth-bore single-shot muzzle-loaders of the Civil War; in fact, he would be able to kill or wound every one of them in an open frontal attack over level ground with his long-range rapid-fire rifle before they could get near enough even to reach him with their short-range muskets. One man operating an automatic machine-gun would be more than a match for a thousand men, armed with the old Civil War musket in an open-view frontal attack, over a distance covered by the range of the machine gun. In fact, with this weapon, firing 600 shots a minute, he could play the gun on their advancing line with the freedom of a hose pipe, and put themhors decombatin a few minutes—certainly, before they could get near enough to reach him with their short-range guns.
Half a dozen automatic machine-guns supported by a battery of half a dozen modern rapid-fire field-guns throwing shrapnel shell at the rate of from thirty to forty a minute, planted on Cemetery Hill, would have been able to defeat Pickett's charge at Gettysburg more quickly than did the entire Army of the Potomac.
It is obvious, therefore, that a nation's war potentiality depends very largely upon its preparedness to fight by machinery, and that a mere citizen soldiery, without the machinery of modern warfare, is as impotent in the face of modern war engines as a swarm of ants in the face of an anteater. It is obvious that, whereas fighting machinery is very expensive, modern warfare is a very costly business, and a business requiring an enormous investment; and also that, whereas a thing is worth most in war which can, for the least cost, produce the best results, machinery becomes much more valuable than life. A single field-piece may be worth more than a hundred men, and at times even more than a thousand men.
In modern warfare, the cost in treasure and machinery is of far greater concern than the loss in blood. Therefore, the efficiency and great cost of all kinds of modern fighting equipment haveserved to give the great nations pause, and to make them consider well the awful risk before precipitating war. The progress in fighting machinery of every sort has been so rapid, and the number of wars so few, that until now there has been no adequate opportunity to test fighting machinery in actual warfare.
In direct proportion as warfare becomes more scientific, complicated, and expensive does it require longer time to prepare for war, both in the making of the enginery and in the making of the soldiers.
Time signifies only the measure of change. Consequently, time is merely a relative term, indicative of the sequence in a series of happenings or eventuations. If the universe were annihilated, there would be no such thing as time because nothing would happen.
Were we to be attacked by any foreign Power, we should be able to rely, not upon what we might be able to produce three or four years afterward, but upon what we should be able to put into action at once. Modern methods and machinery of war cause events to move many times as fast as in former wars. Three months is a long time after war is declared. A six months' war today is relatively as long as a six years' war used to be.
The following extract from Bernhardi's "How Germany Makes War" is evidence of that expert's opinion of the factor of time:
"If Germany is involved in war, she need not recoil before the numerical superiority of her enemies. But so far as human nature is able to tell, she can only rely on being successful if she is resolutely determined to break the superiority of her enemies by a victory over one or the other of them before their total strength can come into action, and if she prepares for war to that effect, and acts at the decisive moment in that spirit which made Frederick the Great seize the sword against a world in arms."
Napoleon once said, "The fate of nations often hangs on five minutes," and, "God fights on the side of the heaviest artillery." Also, he said, in effect, that the art of winning battles depends upon the concentration on the chief point of attack of a force superior to the enemy at that point.
If we pass our finger down the pages of history, we shall find the above expression of Napoleon thoroughly substantiated and vindicated. Most great battles have been won by the concentration of a superior force upon an inferior force at some vulnerable point, and often quite irrespective of the sizes of the opposing armies taken as a whole. Everything depends upon the quickness in concentration of concerted action. The herculean physique of Goliath did not count for much after little David hit him with the pebble. He needs be a big man indeed not to be whipped when even asmall antagonist has succeeded in thrusting a dagger close to the heart. Armies, like individuals, have vital parts, the penetration of which means defeat.
Alexander the Great frequently met and annihilated armies many times larger than his own. He was often weaker than the enemy as a whole, but at the point of attack he was always vastly the stronger. This enabled him to crush the enemy in detail. Hannibal, Cæsar, Charles Martel, Marlborough, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Grant, Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Sheridan—all great captains—appreciated and applied this winning principle: Be able to strike the enemy upon one given point with greater force than he shall be able to oppose, and strike first; then follow up the advantage and crush the enemy in detail by concentrated force always superior at the point of attack, however inferior to the general force to which it is opposed and through which it penetrates.
Broadly speaking, the machinery of modern warfare adds a thousand-fold to the potentiality of the soldier in battle above his potentiality at the time of the Civil War.
Ten thousand men, armed with modern guns and all the paraphernalia of modern warfare, would on the battle-line be more than a match for a million men armed with the old smooth-bore guns of the Civil War. As a matter of fact theycould kill all that surrounded them as fast as they approached from every quarter, and they could advance through the opposing lines with absolute freedom without the loss of a single man from the fire of the enemy.
Let us see for one moment what ten thousand men would be able to do upon such a host in open frontal attack: Let us assume that the ten thousand were armed with a thousand automatic guns, and, say, a hundred rapid-fire field-guns, in addition to the usual magazine shoulder-rifle. As soon as the enemy came in sight, the ten thousand would open on them with their hundred field-guns, pouring into their ranks a perfect storm of shrapnel. The old, smooth-bore field-guns of the enemy would be completely disabled before they could be brought within cannon-shot of the ten thousand. As soon as the enemy came within rifle range, the ten thousand would open on them with their thousand automatic machine-guns and magazine-rifles. As an automatic machine-gun fires at the rate of 600 shots a minute, a thousand would fire at the rate of 600,000 shots a minute. The magazine shoulder-rifles would fire aimed shots at the rate of twenty-five a minute, and the quick-firing field-guns would each fire shrapnel at the rate of forty a minute. Making every allowance for stoppages and for variables, dispersion of fire and bad marksmanship, there would be enough effectual hits with the shrapnel, the automatic machine-gun fire, and the magazine-rifle fire, to kill or wound every man of the enemy before that enemy could get near enough to reach the ten thousand with their old smooth-bore muskets.
Every automatic gun and every quick-firing field-gun and every magazine shoulder-rifle puts in the hands of our soldiers the means of avoiding a corresponding sacrifice of their lives. Not only this, but every automatic gun that we make and furnish our troops enables one man to do the work of a hundred men; it enables a hundred men to remain at home engaged in peaceful pursuits while only one man has to go to the battle front and fight.
Then let us realize the fact that every automatic gun saves a hundred lives from jeopardy. Every magazine-rifle saves ten lives, and every quick-firing field-cannon saves easily a hundred lives.
This should make a strong appeal to the professional pacifists who pretend that they want to save life. Surely, if war cannot be prevented, and all history, and the present moment as well, prove that it cannot, then we should make it as merciful as possible, and fight it in a way that will cause as little sacrifice of life as possible.
In estimating the cost of war in human lives, we cannot count values that may be placed upon them by sentiments of humanity, but only such values as, when destroyed, make the losing nation economically so much the poorer.
According to I. S. Bloch, a new-born child of the farming class has a value of twenty-five dollars. At five years of age, he has a value of two hundred and fifty dollars; at ten years of age, he is worth about five hundred dollars; at fifteen, he is worth almost a thousand dollars; and at twenty, he is worth a little more than a thousand dollars. His maximum value is at twenty, and he begins to depreciate in value as he grows older, because of his shortened days of service.
Therefore, the average economic value of soldiers may, according to Mr. Bloch, be put at a thousand dollars.
According to David Starr Jordan, it costs about fifteen thousand dollars for each soldier killed in battle, so that, according to these two eminent peace advocates and peace propagandists, when the Germans slay, say, a thousand of the Allies, the loss to the Allies is the value of the thousand men, namely, a million dollars, and as it costs the Germans fifteen times as much to kill them as they are worth, the loss to the Germans is fifteen million dollars; so that the actual German loss is fifteen times as great as that of the Allies. But as the Allies are killing a good many Germans, they are generously sharing with the Germans a fair proportion of the cost of the war.
These figures are not far out of the way. The fact is that, in modern warfare, the actual loss of life for the numbers engaged is correspondingly less than it used to be, while the cost is correspondingly greater. In modern warfare, the loss of money is far greater than the loss of life. It is more the dollar than blood, that is now shed.
In ancient times, when men fought hand to hand in compact form, with short-sword, spear, and battle-axe, they used often to slay half the numbers engaged—easily ten times as many for the numbers engaged as are now slain. There are more than ten million Allies now under arms against more than seven million Germans and Austrians. These numbers have not as yet all been brought face to face with one another on the line of battle, owing to modern methods of warfare; but under old-time methods with old-time arms, they would have been at once brought into collision in two enormous armies. In ancient times, less mobilization could be effected in a year than can now be effected in a month, but when the collision came, the issue of the war was decided on one great field.
If these great European armies were armed with short-swords, spears, and battle-axes, as armies used to be, instead of with modern war weapons and enginery, they would, during the time they have been engaged, very likely have slain a third of their number—certainly ten times as many in proportion to the numbers engaged as have actually been killed in the present war.Even a tenth of their numbers would be a million and a half.
Never in all history have such vast numbers of men been drawn up in line of battle. Never have they been so scientifically armed, and, consequently, never have they, for the numbers engaged, killed so few.
Modern machine-guns and quick-firing guns, with bullets and shrapnel and canister, are so deadly that troops in mass form cannot live for a minute in front of them, but as opposing armies with modern war machinery line up at the present greater tactical distances, and throw out their men in long-extended battle-lines, and spread them over correspondingly wide areas, the fight becomes one largely of gun against gun, engine against engine, with the result that not nearly so many lives are lost as there would be if the fighting were done by hand, and hand to hand, in close order. The German siege guns smashed the forts of Liège and Namur from a distance of nine miles.
As nations are bound to fight, it is far more merciful that they should be armed to the teeth, but it is vastly more expensive. Can we not afford, however, to spend dollars instead of men to kill our enemies?
Therefore, even according to the facts and figures of those two eminent peace-men, I. S. Bloch and Dr. David Starr Jordan, the money losstoday is a concern fifteen times more serious to the economic welfare of a nation than is the loss in lives.
It is a very strange paradox indeed that the professional peace-propagandists, who claim to be actuated mainly by considerations of humanity, should advocate disarmament and the inevitable reversion to the old and more deadly arms and methods of warfare, on account of the greater expensiveness of warfare conducted with modern scientific arms and methods.
By doing away with our present highly scientific and very expensive war enginery and fighting methods, the nations would be able, in a war like the present, to kill one another at very much less cost. They would then be able to kill ten times as many in a given time, while the cost would be only a small fraction of the present cost.
It is a matter of solemn certainty that the quick-firing gun is the most beneficent implement of mercy that has ever been invented, and every peace advocate in the world and every lover of his kind should appreciate this fact and use his influence in favor of armaments which serve to make war expensive, and tend both to prevent war, and to save life when war comes.
Let us for a moment suppose that the great European Powers had disarmed fifteen years ago when the Czar of Russia broached the subject to them. What would have been the result? Thiswar would have come just the same, and probably much sooner; and it would have been ten-fold more bloody, even had the nations flung themselves upon one another armed with scythes, carving-knives, wood-axes, and common tools of trade, or even had they fought, as the simple cave men did, with clubs and stones.
Love of home and country—patriotism—on the one hand, and race hatred on the other, are far more potent in the human heart than any lately created sentiments of international brotherhood and humanity. Before this war came, it was a common preachment of the peace-men and a common belief of the multitude, that many socialists, members of brotherhoods of labor and other opponents of war, would refuse to fight, and if drafted would shoot down their officers from the rear. But nothing of this kind has happened. When this war broke out, socialist, labor unionist, and preacher of international brotherhood joined with their militant fellow-countrymen in singing the "Marseillaise," "Wacht am Rhein," "Britannia Rules the Waves," and rushed to arms and to war, and are now fighting like demons, shoulder to shoulder with the imperialist and the war lord.
In order that we may be made as right-seeking as possible, God has ordained the trials of strife and hardship which force us to get busy, and thereby develop our usefulness. Human duty may be expressed in the following terms: The bestpreparation for the attainment of success in life is the acquisition of a thorough realization of the fact that no one deserves more from the world than he earns out of it, and that the bigness or littleness of any one is exactly proportionate to his use to the world, and that, consequently, actual self-service is impossible except indirectly through world-service.
Whatever may be done in the service of an individual to help him attain success and find comfort, or to lessen his discomfort, may not be best for the general good, because individual welfare must, in the end of things, be subservient to the general welfare.
It sometimes becomes perfectly right and proper that individual life should be sacrificed for national life, but never national life for individual life. The nation has, however, its obligations to the individual, and obligations as exacting as those of the individual to the nation. If a nation does not exercise due and reasonable diligence to safeguard its people against war and does not provide itself with the necessary trained men and machinery to forefend war, then the obligation of the individual to the nation in the event of war is just so much lessened. The leading of an untrained and ill-armed, improvised citizen soldiery against an army of trained veterans, with all of the equipment of modern warfare, results in useless, senseless slaughter.
If a nation does not prepare itself to demand and enforce respectful treatment of its citizens in foreign countries, then its citizens should have no patriotism, for they are like men and women without a country. But when a nation is armed with guns, and armed with the purpose to defend its citizens, wherever they may be, to the last man and last pinch of gunpowder, and is so adequately prepared with labor-saving, life-saving machinery that in the event of war the minimum of human sacrifice shall be made, then it is the duty of every man to place himself unreservedly at the service of his country.
If the people of this country could be roused to a realization of what invasion means, there would be no longer heard any senseless prating about an unarmed peace, but the whole people would rise in their might and demand adequate armaments and an adequate army and navy, and the senseless peace fanatics would be burned in effigy.
We have for half a century listened with confidence to the assurance that we are so splendidly isolated by broad seas that we need not fear invasion.
Our inadequate Navy is today the only bulwark against invasion, for modern means of transportation over seas have reduced the ocean to a ferry.
Both England and Germany have navies superior to our own, and would be able to destroy our Navy, and land on our unfortified shores ahundred thousand men in less than two weeks—half the time that would be required for us to mobilize our little Army of thirty thousand men.
Japan is not so far away as she used to be. She has been rapidly narrowing the Pacific, and she could land a quarter of a million men on the Pacific coast in less than a month, much quicker than we could get our thirty thousand regulars there to receive them.
We are no longer splendidly isolated from other nations. We are isolated only from ourselves, and we are truly splendidly isolated in that particular.
The other nations are isolated only by such time and difficulty as they would have to encounter in order to bring veteran troops to our shores, with all the necessary equipment of war, and, as we have seen, this is an isolation of less than a month, while we are isolated by unpreparedness by at least fifty months, for it would take more than four years, if we should start now, to raise, equip, and train an army that would compare in numbers, equipment, and training with the army that any one of the Great Powers could place upon our shores in a month.
In a recent interview, Secretary of War Garrison said:
"If tomorrow any first-class military power should attack the United States in force andshould succeed in getting her warships and soldier-laden transports past our fleet, landed out of range of our coast defenses, once fairly ashore she could pulverize our small regular army and punish us to a humiliating degree, if not actually make us sue for peace, before we could raise and train a volunteer army adequate to cope with the invaders. In other words, at present our navy is our only considerable bulwark against invasion. Even such part of our militia as we could depend on and the available regular army would make an extremely small force, our army being in size only a local police force, well trained and highly efficient indeed, but in numbers little more than twice the size of the police force of New York City—that is, not large enough for our great country even as a mere police force."
Let us, for argument's sake, assume for a moment that we were to be invaded with an army of only a hundred thousand men, trained, equipped, and supplied with the supreme adequacy with which the troops of the other Great Powers are trained, equipped, and supplied.
The enemy would line up in a battle-front three times as long as our little thirty thousand could be stretched with equal powers of concentration, or if our thirty thousand were to be stretched out a hundred miles we should be at least three times as weak as the enemy at any pointof attack, even were our thirty thousand to be as well equipped and as well supplied as the troops of the enemy. But we should be without the requisite field artillery, and the artillery that we should have would be without the requisite training. We should be without the needed cavalry, and our cavalry would be without proper organization and experience. We should be without ammunition trains, and very short of ammunition. Our troops, hustled together, and rushed to the front for the first time to face a real enemy, would be unprepared to behave like an army, and, what is very important, they would have no hope of success.
Despair would be in the heart of every man. Both officers and men would know that there were no ready resources, no reserves and reserve supplies behind them, and no adequate arrangements for providing any. Every man of the thirty thousand would know that he was being sacrificed in atonement for national blundering, just as at Balaklava the noble Six Hundred were by a blunder sacrificed in the charge of the Light Brigade.
Preponderance of Gun-fire
It is strange how little the law of battles is understood by most persons. Most persons imagine that in a fight between our Navy and another navy, or between our Army and the army ofan enemy, although the enemy might have the advantage in the number of ships and in the size and range of guns, the advantage would be immaterial and one which might be balanced by the superiority of our personnel, and that, although we might be somewhat short of the required field batteries and ammunition, the superior fighting qualities of our men would render them more than a match for the enemy, even in the face of superior gun-fire.
It does not appear to have been fully recognized even by the advocates of better equipment for the American Army, how vitally important is length of range in field artillery.
In the Boer War, the British field batteries found themselves at great disadvantage in face of the longer French guns of the Boer batteries.
In the present European war, the great long-range German howitzers, pummeling forts into heaps of scrap, and their plunging fire blowing great craters along the battle-front, spread terror in the ranks of the Allies, similar to the terror that the Romans felt when the fierce Gothic giants slid down the Alps into the vineyards of Italy. But the long-range French field-artillery soon restored confidence, for it was found that the French field batteries could outrange the German batteries.
We need field-guns of longer range. We needfield-guns that shall not only equal in range those now in use in Europe, but also we need guns of even longer range. We should have field-guns of a range sufficient to command sky-line from opposing sky-line. Here is an opportunity for the vaunted American genius to assert itself.
It is necessary that the facts as they actually are should be recognized and appreciated.
Victory in a naval battle today depends absolutely upon the weight of the broadsides and the speed of the vessels, which enables them to manœuvre and choose positions of advantage with respect to the enemy; while victory or defeat in a land fight depends upon the weight of gun-fire, which can be directed against the positions of an enemy.
The actual number of infantry engaged is of secondary importance. It is artillery that is of supreme importance. Should we be involved, our field artillery must pave the way with the dead bodies of the enemy before our infantry can advance. Also, the batteries of the enemy must be silenced by our own batteries before they, with their gun-fire, shall be able to silence ours. Other things being equal, therefore, it is the number of field batteries that, more than anything else, turns the tide of battle for defeat or victory. If the enemy's guns have a longer range than ours, then they will be able to silence our batteries while far beyond the range of our guns. They will be able to destroy our artillery, while we should not be able even to injure theirs.