Relative Numerical Strength of Field ArtilleryRelative Numerical Strength of Field Artillery
Let us picture a land fight:
Our aërial scouts inform us that the enemy is approaching, and that they have already mounted their long-range field artillery on a convenient ridge; also that they have placed their big howitzers on an adjoining lowland under the concealment of a wood, and that this formation is repeated in similar units from ridge to ridge and hill to hill over a front a hundred miles in length.
The enemy has also dug long lines of trenches far in advance of their artillery. The enemy's position is well beyond the range of our artillery. We are unable to reach the enemy's position with our guns, while the enemy, being provided with guns of much longer range, is able to storm our position along our entire front, and to throw shrapnel shell into the trenches filled with our men, which stretch along the lowland in front of our positions. We try to dig additional trenches to advance our front, but the men sent to do the work are very quickly killed by the shrapnel fire of the enemy.
We see with our field-glasses that the enemy has sent out detachments to advance the line of their trenches. We fire at them, and find that our shrapnel falls far short. The enemy, seeing this, advances and digs trenches close up to the limit of the range of our guns.
All at once, the enemy opens fire with shrapnel upon our entire line of trenches, and with shrapnel and howitzers upon all our fortified positions. We return the fire, but without any effect; the range of our guns being too short to reach the enemy. Many of our guns are quickly silenced. The perfect hurricane of shrapnel thrown upon our trenches has killed large numbers of our men and confounded the remainder.
The infantry of the enemy now advances pell-mell over the intervening space, still under cover of artillery fire. Field batteries of the enemy also advance rapidly and take up new positions.
Finding our positions untenable, our army retreats precipitately, taking with it a few remaining guns, and our men re-form their batteries on commanding positions to cover our retreat, but they are soon dislodged by the long-range guns of the enemy. Finally, our army takes up its stand far in the rear, forming a new battle-front, which has been previously fortified.
The enemy advances, repeats the previous tactics, forming a long battle-front on commanding positions just beyond the range of our guns, and again proceeds to dislodge us, and drive us back by their long-range gun-fire.
Our loss in men and guns has been enormous. The enemy, on the contrary, has lost no guns, and but few men.
It will be seen that the enemy can very easilyproceed in this manner into the interior, and conquer the whole country without suffering very much discomfiture, unless we have guns of as long or longer range than the enemy has, and as many of them, also as many skilled troops to operate them.
Most persons imagine that infantry, armed with the modern long-range magazine-rifles, can go into battle, and shoot large numbers of an enemy, and that, if the infantry is numerous and daring enough and brave enough, they will be able to whip the enemy without the support of field artillery. This is a grave error. An army of a million men, consisting entirely of infantry, armed with modern shoulder-arms, would be completely over-matched and easily defeated by an army of 25,000 men amply equipped with modern field artillery. The infantry would be wholly unable to get within musket-range, because they would all be destroyed by the shrapnel of the enemy before they could get near enough to fire a single effective shot.
A hundred thousand English, Germans, or Japanese, equipped with the longest and best modern field artillery, with plenty of ammunition and supply trains, air-scouts and engineer corps, could, in our present defenseless condition, march through this country as Xenophon's ten thousand marched through ancient Persia. They could cut their way through all opposition that we could offer. We have neither the infantry, nor the artillery, nor the cavalry, to oppose them, and the artillery we have is of so much shorter range that at no time could we get near enough to the enemy to reach him with our guns.
If war comes between us and any of the Great Powers, the splendid young men of the country—husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, lovers—will have to go to the front and meet the invaders.
If they go forward equipped with the necessary arms, ammunition, and enginery of war, and are well trained and well officered, then they will be able not only to hold their own against the invaders, with comparatively little loss of life, but also to repel and drive out the enemy and save our land from spoliation and our homes from despoliation.
If, on the other hand, they are to be sent forward without the necessary arms, ammunition, and enginery, and without training, and incompetently or incompletely officered, as the pacifist propagandists and other sentimentalists are advising and planning that they be sent, then they will go just like lambs to the slaughter.
The zone of fire in front of the enemy's trenches will be heaped high, acres wide and miles long, with their dead bodies; and writhing, groaning, shrieking, agonized forms of the wounded will crawl over and under the dead toward the hope of safety and mercy.
Into such a hell are the hyper-sentimental peacesophists planning to send those you most love, those to whom you most cling, and on whom you most depend; and you are aiding and abetting the crime if you believe the words of these false reasoners.
Every word you aim against necessary preparedness for war may, in the final reckoning, aim a gun at the heart of him whom you love more than all the world; and you might be able to say a word that would protect him with a gun.
That human attribute which, more than any other, distinguishes man from the brute, is imagination. Also, it is the attribute which, more than any other, differentiates the normal man from the criminal. If, in imagination, a would-be murderer could foresee the distorted face and the despairing agony of his dying victim, and could foresee the tear-streaming eyes of those mourning for him, he would, unless brazened against every feeling of pity, stay his hand. If those who, through their ignorance, false belief, or hypocrisy and desire for publicity, are planning to sacrifice the unimaginable thousands of our best young men in the bloody shambles of war, as an offering to false faith, vanity, or hypocrisy, could only foresee in imagination the long lines of manhood swept and annihilated by the withering fire of an enemy, without guns to return that fire, then possibly they might submerge personal limelight-lust for considerations of mercy.
If you believe them, and speak as they are speaking, and advise as they are advising, against adequate national defense, you should at once change your belief, and use your voice and every resource at your command in future to forefend this country and avert the great useless sacrifice.
Come, young lady reader, let us, in imagination, stand together on the firing-line: Those regiments lining up are from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts. They are forming for a charge. It is the only way. Those shells, bursting among them with such deadly effect, are shrapnel from the quick-firing guns of the enemy placed just over the crest of yonder distant ridge; and those huge plunging projectiles, which throw up great inverted cones of earth, with fragments of men, are from the enemy's big howitzers, located under cover of the wood that fringes the horizon.
If we only had the necessary quick-firing field-guns and shrapnel ammunition, and the necessary field howitzers, we might dislodge or silence those deadly batteries of the enemy. At any rate, we should be able to engage them efficiently and cover the charge of our troops. We should also be able to storm that line of trenches, to the discomfiture of the enemy hidden there in vast numbers, and thus to prepare for the onset of our men. But we have neither the guns nor the ammunition.
See—the order is given. Onward they go.Watch them, the brave fellows! Why does the front line lie down so suddenly, with a few left standing? My friend, they are not lying down; they are dead. But they are not all killed, a large number of them are wounded. They are torn in every inconceivable, horrible manner of mutilation. And look!—the other lines go down, too; some lying still, others writhing on the ground. One of those poor devils, with hands clenched in the grass and gnawing the earth, is your brother!
See—a huge howitzer shell explodes right among them. The young man whom you were to marry on his return from the war was standing on the verge of the crater when the explosion came, and he is now lying there, with both eyes blown out by the awful blast and hanging on his cheeks. There are visions of you in the blasted eyes, and there are thoughts of you in the dazed brain, and his dying breath is a whisper of your name.
Will you continue to think thoughts and speak words which may drive him to that awful death?
The picture is horrible. That of the blasted eyes is revolting. True, and for this reason it may not come within the artistic, as outlined in the philosophy of Longinus; but it is not my purpose here to be artistic. My very purpose is to visualize the horrible, because the only way for the people of this country to prevent this on-coming horror is to make the necessary military preparations for national defense.
But, young lady, this is not the end of the dreadful picture: Let us look into your home. The awful news comes—our men are beaten with enormous slaughter; father, brother, sweetheart—all your home's defenders—are dead. The invaders who have murdered them are in the street outside. There comes a summons at the door. A certain number of the enemy have been billeted to your house, and you must play the genial hostess. Though they get drunk, and ill-treat you beyond the power of words to tell, there remains no remedy. Your dear ones, who were your natural defenders, have been sacrificed on the altar of false faith in defenselessness as a deterrent of war.
Letter From General Leonard Wood
Governor's Island, N. Y.,February 6th, 1915.
Dear Mr. Maxim:
I am very glad indeed to learn of your interest in military preparedness. The subject is one which is of vital importance to the American people. We do not want to establish militarism in this country in the sense of creating a privileged military class, dominating the civil element, receiving especial recognition, and exercising perhaps an undue influence upon the administration of national affairs, but we do want to build up in every boy a realization of the fact that he is an integral part of the nation, and that he has a military as well as a civic responsibility. All this can be done without creating a spirit of militarism or of aggressiveness. Take Switzerland as an example. Here we have a country where every boy and young man who is physically sound receives, largely as a part of his school work, military training to the extent necessary to make him an efficient soldier. This is a policy which ought tobe followed with our youth. It is not enough that a man should be willing to be a soldier. He should also be so prepared as to be an efficient one. This can only be accomplished through training. Switzerland and Australia have shown that this can be done through the public-school system, and with a resulting vast improvement in public morals and the quality of citizenship. The criminal rate in Switzerland is only a small fraction of ours. Respect for the law and constituted authorities, the flag of the country, and a high sense of patriotism are evident on all sides, and yet there is practically no standing army.
We have here a patriotic people, living not with arms in their hands, or with a large standing army, but trained, equipped, and ready to efficiently and promptly defend the rights of their country. This I believe is the ideal we should strive for. We need a standing army big enough for the peace work of the day, i.e., the garrisoning of our foreign possessions, the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Panama, the little garrisons in Porto Rico and Alaska, and a force in the continental United States adequate for the peace needs of the nation.
We must never again trust ourselves to the emergencies of a great war without proper preparation. If we do we shall meet with an overwhelming disaster. Preparedness is really an insurance for peace, and not an influence for war.
To send our men untrained into war to meet equally good men, well trained and disciplined, was once described by Light Horse Harry Lee, of Revolutionary fame, as murder. Perhaps this is too strong, but it certainly is a gross disregard of human life.
Very truly yours,Leonard Wood.
Mr. Hudson Maxim,698 St. Mark's Ave.,Brooklyn, N. Y.
The facts given in this chapter have been gathered from many authoritative sources. It would be very comforting if these facts were known only to the American people, but unfortunately they are already known to the military authorities of all the other nations. Other nations are all very well aware of our unpreparedness; therefore, I am giving out no national secrets. English, German, French, Russian, and Japanese navy and military experts know exactly the men and equipment we possess.
It is the American people only who are not aware of the truth about our unpreparedness. This ignorance is largely due to the beguilers who have set the face of a great mass of our people against armaments, and have made them turn deaf ears to every voice that tries to rouse them to their danger.
Our ship of state has been drifting down stream like a raft. The only reason the raft has not been wrecked lies in the fact that we have been fortunate enough to have a pretty clear stream to ourselves all the while, with no breakers and no cataracts in sight. But there are breakers and rapids and cataracts down stream, and we are at last nearing them rapidly.
Even as long ago as 1880, General Emory Upton spoke thus prophetically:
"In time of war the civilian as much as the soldier is responsible for defeat and disaster. Battles are not lost alone on the field; they may be lost beneath the Dome of the Capitol, they may be lost in the Cabinet, or they may be lost in the private office of the Secretary of War. Wherever they may be lost, it is the people who suffer and the soldiers who die, with the knowledge and the conviction that our military policy is a crime against life, a crime against property, and a crime against liberty. The author has availed himself of his privilege as a citizen to expose to our people a system which, if not abandoned, may sooner or later prove fatal. The time when some one should do this has arrived."
In 1912, Admiral Kane said: "They told me in London, 'You are living in a fool's paradise.Some day you will wake up with a fight on your hands, and you won't be ready for it.'"
Not only must the United States solve the great problem of shaping a military policy that will enable us to establish an adequate force for national defense in time of war, to build up and man our Navy, construct and man coast fortifications, and enlist, arm, and train an adequate army, but also there must be faced the far more difficult problem of enlisting the co-operation of the American people in the enterprise.
The fathers of our country, believing that a large standing Army would be a menace to the liberties of the people, ordained that our Army, in time of peace, should not exceed twenty-five thousand. Since then, Congress has several times raised the limit until we now may have an Army, in time of peace, of not more than a hundred thousand men. As a matter of fact, we have a regular Army of 93,016, both staff and line.
As this Army has to be spread out over our entire continental and outlying possessions, the sight of an American soldier of our regular Army is about as rare an occurrence as the sight of a sea-serpent.
Within the actual limits of our forty-eight states we have but 48,428 regular troops. Of these 17,947 must be kept in our coast fortifications, even as a pretense of garrisoning them. This leaves only 30,481 mobile troops, including engineers, cavalry, infantry, and field artillery. We have a militia on paper numbering 127,000, men and officers. Only 60,000 of these, however, are in readiness for service.
Therefore, we have in the United States to-day a regular Army of 48,000, and 60,000 militia ready for duty, or 108,000 men and officers altogether. In time of war not a man of our militia could well be spared for military service to repel an invader, for in such troublesome times they would all be needed for police duty to maintain order and obedience throughout the country.
General Wood recently told us that it would take a month to mobilize even our little Army of thirty thousand men.
Out of the 127,000 officers and men of the militia which we have on paper, only 60,000 being available, and only 30,000 of our regulars being available, we could place on the firing-line only 90,000 men and officers, and there would be no reserves.
When Napoleon, the world's greatest military captain, went into battle, he always kept a large and powerful force in reserve, to give confidence to those on the firing-line, and to save the day in case of a reverse, and possibly to turn defeat into victory, and at the worst to cover a retreat, and save the army from rout. This same need exists with us for a large national reserve of well-armed and well-trained men, ready to be called from civil life to refill the depleted ranks of an army at the front.
Number of Officers and Enlisted Men of United States Regular ArmyNumber of Officers and Enlisted Men of United States Regular Army
Our regular Army is, in men and guns, but a mere nucleus of what we ought to have, and of what we must have to save this country from defeat and abject humiliation should war come.
Not only this—the artillery we have is without adequate field organization. It would take at least four months to train additional personnel in order to get our field artillery ready for duty. It would take us four times as long, therefore, to get our own artillery on the firing-line, ready for battle, on either our eastern or western seaboard, as it would for an enemy to get its artillery there.
It is we ourselves who are handicapped by isolation, not the enemy—isolation not of space, but of time.
If it be true that God fights on the side that is the best equipped with artillery, God could not be expected to fight on the side of our militia.
Our militia at the present time has only sixty-five organized batteries, with four guns each. It is absolutely imperative that we should have seventy-nine additional batteries, with six guns each, even moderately to complete our equipment in field artillery. Think of it! Our militia has less than half the number of field batteries necessary for battle.
It is also worthy of mention that these batteries are without ammunition trains, and without officers or men for the new organization, and we have not the necessary horses to draw the batteries we already have.
Our militia is entirely without siege artillery, while neither our militia nor our regular Army is equipped with field mortars or howitzers of the larger calibers now used abroad, which have been so terribly effective in the present war.
Not only are foreign nations far ahead of us in actual existing war strength in men and guns, but also they have each an efficient system whereby their present equipment may be rapidly expanded. We have no such system.
Our Fatal Isolation
Never yet have we perceived the important truth that in this age of war machinery, requiring months and years to create, isolation by time is an equivalent to isolation by distance. Our own isolation in the matter of the time required for us to raise and train armies and equip them with shoulder-rifles, automatic guns, quick-firing cannon, siege howitzers, ammunition supply trains, and to build, man, and equip with guns, battleships, battle-cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, submarines, and, no less important, to equip flying machines with trained aviators, would be a far more serious handicap to us than our isolation by the seas would be to our enemies.
TheScientific American, February 6, 1915, says:
"We could not supply the men for the necessary field-artillery organization for four months, or the ammunition trains and ammunition for a year and a half, and not a gun is yet made or appropriated for, for the volunteers. The militia is short in cavalry and requires over fifty additional troops of cavalry to provide the divisional cavalry alone. There is an alarming absence of auxiliary troops. Most of the militia cavalry is poorly mounted, much of it practically without mounts, and, with the exception of a few special organizations, has had little or no field training. It needs months of hard work in camp. Engineers, signal and medical troops of the militia are as a rule insufficient in number, deficient in organization, equipment, and reserve supplies, and very many of them are far below their prescribed strength and without available personnel to fill them up."
The following is quoted from a statement made before a Congressional committee in 1912, by General William Crozier, Chief of Ordnance of the United States Army, and one of the ablest officers that the Army has ever had:
"So far as transporting troops is concerned, the sea as a highway is not an obstacle, but afacility. It is very much easier to get any number of troops across the Atlantic Ocean than it would be to get the same number over anything like the same distance on land. Marine transportation is the very best kind you can have; the easiest, least expensive, and most expeditious, if you are considering large bodies of troops and large amounts of material. The fuel charge for transportation in good tramp steamers does not amount to one two-hundred-and-fiftieth part of a cent per ton per mile. The sea is a splendid means of transportation. The distance is only ten days for a vessel of very moderate speed, and you can carry a thousand men on a vessel of 3,000 tons' capacity without any trouble at all. There are any number of vessels to be had, and there is no resistance on this side against a well-equipped force of a hundred thousand men."
Shortage of Officers
We have in our regular Army to-day about 4,572 officers. The number of English officers killed, wounded, and missing during the first six months of the European war was, in round numbers, 5,000, a little more than the total number of our officers.
It has been estimated by the most able authorities, among them the editor of theScientific American, whom I quote, that: "In case of invasion wewould need 380,000 stationary volunteer coast-guard troops to guard the approaches to our cities and coast-defense works." We should also require an additional 500,000 men at the very least. To be rational, we should have a mobile army of a million men. In this enormous country a standing army of a million men would, comparatively speaking, be small. It would still be one-fifth the size of the German army, one-tenth the size of the Russian army, and it would be less than the available Japanese army. Surely this great Republic can afford to maintain a standing army equal to that of Japan!
The number of officers we have at the present time would, of course, be practically lost in our proposed mobile army of a million men. Radical and immediate measures should at once be taken to increase tenfold the officer-making capacity of West Point. Also, any private in the ranks should, by meritorious conduct manifesting military promise, be open to promotion to West Point, to complete his education there. This would be a tremendous stimulus and encouragement to the rank and file.
The burglar who has begun to plan to rob a house and has commenced inspection of the locality to keep tab on the movement of the police in the vicinity, has already declared war on that house. The bank-raider who has begun to spy on the cashier of a bank and the nocturnal habits ofthe people of the town, and has equipped himself with the kit of tools and the explosives to breach the vault where the cash lies, has already declared war on that bank.
In this same sense, and to this same extent, there is more than one nation that has already declared war on the United States. Their spies have been working among us for years, and they have the kit of tools and the explosives all ready to breach our Navy and our coast fortifications.
Our lack of field-guns for our artillery and our lack of ammunition are very clearly put in theScientific Americanof February 13, 1915:
"We have in the hands of troops, or stored, 634 completed guns. We have under manufacture or contract, 226. These guns will probably not be completed for at least a year and a half. In other words, the number of completed guns is a little less than half the total number deemed necessary for the field force of 500,000 men, and provides no guns whatever for the coastguard troops or new volunteer organizations which will be required in addition to the 500,000 field force. Of ammunition, we have, made and under contract, approximately 30 per cent. for the entire project of guns (1,292). Half of this is under manufacture or contract, so that there is not more than 15 per cent. actually completed. For the guns on hand and under manufacture we have, of ammunitionon hand and under manufacture, about 41 per cent.; actually on hand, approximately, 20.5 per cent. For the guns actually made (634) we have 27 per cent. of the ammunition necessary. For the guns now in the hands of the regular army and militia we have about 44 per cent. of the ammunition necessary. It should be remembered, however, that the guns in the hands of the regular army and militia at the present time are less than half the guns required for these forces when properly equipped with guns, even under our scheme for the assignment of guns and ammunition, which is in both instances far lower than in any of the great armies today, and the present war has indicated, in the case of one great power at least, that the consumption of ammunition has exceeded twice their maximum estimates, and that the proportion of artillery will, in future, be increased.
"At the rate of even last year's appropriations, which were the largest made for field-artillery guns and ammunition, it will take between eight and nine years to complete our present modest estimate for guns and ammunition, and the necessary equipment in the way of ammunition trains and other accessories."
Strength of Regular Armies on Peace FootingStrength of Regular Armies on Peace Footing
We are told in the Report of the Chief of Ordnance, 1914, that no permanent ammunition trains have been provided.
The following figures give the personnel of ourregular Army, and of our militia. They are taken from the Report of Major-General Wotherspoon, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, for the period from April 22, 1914, to November 14, 1914:
Actual strength of the United States Army, exclusive of Philippine scouts:
Officers 4,572Men 88,444Authorized strength:Officers 4,726Men 95,977Hence, shortage:Officers 154Men 7,533
Of total enlisted strength, 22.50 per cent., including recruits and recruiting parties, belong to the non-combatant and non-effective class, and are not with the colors; 19.45 per cent. are in that branch whose special function is coast-defense.
Mobile army (engineers, cavalry, field artillery, and infantry) is 58.05 per cent. of actual strength, and comprises:
Officers 2,738Men 51,344
Omitting cooks, musicians, scouts, etc., mobile strength is:
Officers 2,738Men 45,968
Mobile strength in continental United States:
Enlisted men 30,481
Ammunition:
We need 11,790,850 artillery rounds.We have on handand being manufactured 580,000 " "We need 646,000,000 rifle cartridges.We have on handand being manufactured 241,000,000 " "
We need a supply of 9-1/2, 12-1/2, and 16-1/2 howitzers.
We have only thirty-two 6-inch howitzers and smaller pieces, none larger.
Militia:
Total enlisted men, 119,087, of which only 52.56 per cent. have had any rifle practice, and only 33.43 per cent. have qualified as second-class marksmen or better.
From the Report of the Chief of Staff for the year ending June 30, 1914, we learn that out of our 120,000 militiamen, 23,000 failed to present themselves for the annual inspection; 31,000 absented themselves from the annual encampment; and 44,000 never appeared on the rifle range from one year's end to the other.
Congressman Gardner tells us, further, that 60 per cent. of our militia were unable, in 1913, to qualify even as third-class marksmen, and that half of that 60 per cent. (30 per cent.) did not even try to qualify.
For years prior to the breaking out of the great European conflict, Lord Roberts pleaded with the English people, and prayed that they might hear his appeal to prepare for war with Germany. Like a voice crying in the wilderness, he called the British nation to arms. His voice was not heeded, and the nation did not arm.
The voice of Lord Roberts sounded harshly on the ears of sensitive English officialdom. Lord Haldane, to emphasize his attitude, disbanded 80,000 British troops at the very moment when England should have enlisted and begun to train 800,000. Also, he threatened to abolish Lord Roberts' pension if he did not keep quiet. The grand old soldier was spared by a kind Providence to stand on the firing-line when the great war came which he had foreseen, and there he saw thousands of his country's dead who had fallen from failure to regard his timely warning.
We have a Lord Roberts, too. There is a grand old American soldier who for years has appealed to us to fly to arms with all speed in preparation against war. He has even greater reason than Lord Roberts had, because our danger is many times greater than was England's danger. We are practically defenseless, while England was not.
I quote the following from the American Lord Roberts, General Leonard Wood:
"... We have neither guns nor ammunition sufficient to give any general commanding an army in the field any assurance of success if attacked by an army of equal size which is supplied with its proper quota of field-artillery.
"The fire of modern field-artillery is so deadly that troops cannot advance over terrain swept by these guns without prohibitive losses. It is therefore necessary to neutralize the fire of hostile guns before our troops can advance, and the only way to neutralize the fire of this hostile field-artillery is by field-artillery guns, for troops armed with the small arms are as effectual against this fire until they arrive at about 2,000 yards from it as though they were armed with knives. This field-artillery material and ammunition cannot be quickly obtained. In fact, the Chief of Ordnanceestimates that almost one year would be required to supply the field-artillery guns needed with one field army of a little less than 70,000 men. No war within the past 45 years has lasted for one year, so that after war is declared it would probably be over before we could manufacture an appreciable number of guns; and the same applies to ammunition.
"The Ordnance Department states that by running night and day with three shifts Frankford Arsenal could turn out about 1,600 rounds of ammunition per day, and that if private manufacturers were given orders to run under war conditions they could begin deliveries of ammunition in from three to four months, and after getting under way could turn out about 100,000 or 200,000 rounds per month for two or three months, and after a total time of six months the production would perhaps equal 250,000 rounds per month. The best estimates indicate that at the end of the first six months not to exceed 350,000 rounds could be procured from all sources, including the Government plant. After this six months there would be no particular difficulty in securing ammunition as rapidly as might be needed.
"... It is my belief that ... unless private manufacturers are now encouraged to manufacture ammunition for our guns after war is declared, they will not be in any condition to do sountil after the war is finished, and the supply of ammunition during the war will be limited to what the arsenals can turn out. At present this is about 1,600 rounds per day, running three shifts, and this ammunition, under ordinary battle conditions, could be fired by eight guns in one day of battle. If guns are not supplied on the battlefield with the ammunition which they can be reasonably expected to use, they are not efficient, and when a gun has exhausted the ammunition supplied it becomes as perfectly useless as junk; in fact, it is worse than junk, for it must be protected by other troops.
"In the Russo-Japanese War the Russians expended during the war, exclusive of the action around Port Arthur, 954,000 rounds.
"At Mukden in nine days they expended 250,000 rounds.
"One battery of eight guns at Mukden fired 11,159 rounds, or 1,395 rounds per gun.
"At Liaoyang eight Russian guns fired in three hours 2,500 rounds, or 312 per gun.
"During August 30 and 31 the First and Third Siberians, with 16 batteries of 8 guns each, fired 108,000 rounds, or 844 rounds per gun.
"At Schaho, in a four-days' fight, the artillery of the First Infantry Division—48 guns—fired 602 rounds per gun.
"At this same battle in 45 minutes, 20 minutes of which were not occupied by firing, 42 guns fired8,000 rounds, or 190 rounds per gun in 25 minutes of actual firing.
"The War Department believes, after extended study, that in case of war with a first-class power an army of 500,000 men will be needed to give this country any chance of success against invasion, and that this force will be needed at once. To make it efficient it must be given its proper quota of field-artillery. To do this this artillery must be on hand, for it cannot be supplied after war is started. A municipality might as well talk about buying its fire-hose after the conflagration has started. A fire department without its proper equipment is worthless, irrespective of the number of men it has; and so would be your armies, unless you provide in peace the material which will make them effective in war."—Statement of facts by Major-General Leonard Wood, Hearings on Fortifications Bill, Dec. 9, 1913.
Is Congress To Blame?
The blame for our undefended condition is generally attributed to Congress. It is true enough that the main blame rests with Congress, but it must be remembered also that Congress represents the will of the people.
Every Congressman goes to Washington in the interest of his constituents. He goes there to dicker for them and to swap votes with other Congressmen in exchanging Congressional concession for Congressional concession. His constituents want a post-office in their district, or a river deepened, or widened, or want a navy yard in their state, and he is ready to vote for similar concessions to all other Congressmen who will vote for the concessions his constituents require. Every Congressman is mindful of the fact, and every time he returns home he is reminded of the fact that he has not been sent to Congress for his health, but for the health of his constituents, and if he hopes to be returned, he must see to it that he gets what they have sent him after.
They have not sent him there to support an appropriation bill for a larger army or a larger navy. The people are imbued with the belief that the country as a whole is big enough and prosperous enough to be safe. They know little or nothing, and care less, about national defenses. No calamity has ever come upon us for lack of defenses. Why should they worry? Also, they have been assured from the pulpit and the Chautauqua and by circulars sent out by the peace societies that we not only do not need more defenses, but, on the contrary, we do not need those we have; and they are asked to write personal letters to their Congressmen urging them to vote against any appropriations to increase our national defenses.
I am not arguing for a large standing army,but merely for an adequate army—an army big enough to intercept an invading army that might be landed on our shores in the event of our Navy being destroyed or evaded.
The American people are imbued with the idea that a large standing army is a menace to liberty. Whatever justification there may be for this attitude, it is certain that, if we are to yield to this point of view, and get along with a comparatively small effective army, it is absolutely indispensable that we should have a navy certainly as powerful as any in the world, with the single possible exception of that of England. All arguments that may be made against a large standing army become arguments in favor of a very large navy.
In view of the comparative weakness of our present Navy, we need an effective army of at least a million men. If, however, our Navy were to be brought to first rank and the Swiss system of military training in public schools were to be adopted, we could get along with a much smaller army. By the adoption of such a system, we should soon have a very large trained reserve force in civil life, which could be drawn upon in case of need. Assuming the adequacy of our Navy and coast fortifications, General Wood believes that, if the Swiss system of military training in public schools were to be adopted, we could get along very well with a standing army of from 200,000 to 225,000 men.
A navy, however large, could not, by any possible stretch of the imagination, be termed a menace to our liberties, and, as ex-Secretary Meyer has said, we are rich enough to match dollars for national defense with any other nation in the world.
It is common belief that military training and service in preparation for national defense menace democratic institutions.
In the days of her greatest virility and military prowess, Rome was a republic. But we must not conclude, because a country is governed by a congress and a president elected by the people, that all its institutions are more free or less autocratic than the institutions of a limited monarchy, or even an absolute monarchy.
We, in the United States, often pass laws that are so arbitrary, unprecedented, unwarranted, and confiscatory, as to make absolutism wince. The cities of Germany are governed so wisely and so well that could we have that system transplanted here, it would be almost worth our while to invite German conquest of the country.
No man's patriotism rises higher than his realization of the need that his country has for him. None of us likes our taxes any too well. Nevertheless, they bring home to us a better realization of the interdependence of the government and the individual.
We love those for whom we make sacrifices, and those to whom we give favors. Benjamin Franklin desiring the favorable regard of a prominent person, made it opportune for that eminent person to do Franklin a favor.
Conscription, like that enforced in Germany, makes good citizens. It implants in them a sense of duty and obligation to the government, and creates a greater respect for ruling power and for law and order.
In this country, the ideas of the average individual concerning his obligations to the government and the government's obligations to him are vague and crude to the last degree. Conscription would largely remedy this by teaching duty to the government.
The government has exactly the same right to levy on the individual for military service as it has to tax him for anything else. Just as the government has the right to tax the individual for financial support of the government, so it has the right to tax the individual for military support of the government. Conscription makes the government and the individual partners for the common welfare. Few persons in this country consider themselves partners of the government.
In ancient Sparta, all individuals were the property of the government; all children were owned by the state. Consequently, the people owned the state, and the state owned the people. It is proper that the state and the individual should own each other, insomuch as their interests are mutual,just the same as husband and wife own each other.
Perhaps the best system of preparing the youth and young men of a country for military service is that practised in Switzerland. Switzerland is a typical democracy, and yet no country in the world has a more universal and efficient system of military training for its youth and young men.
After the conclusion of the war of 1870, Germany, guided by the iron will of Bismarck, divulged to Switzerland that the mailed fist had an itching palm for Swiss territory. Immediately an army of a hundred thousand Swiss mobilized on the frontier. They were the best-armed, the best-trained, and altogether the most efficient soldiers in Europe. Every man of them could shoot to kill. They were the flower of the mountains. Bismarck concluded that the game was not worth the candle. If Switzerland had not been armed to the teeth and ready, that country to-day would be a part of Germany.
The Swiss have not the remotest idea of making an aggressive move on any neighboring country, but they hold themselves in perfect readiness to see to it that no other nation can find it profitable to make an aggressive move on Switzerland.
Switzerland makes her military training a part of her school system. The chubby, rosy-cheeked little Swiss boys are taught to play soldier with wooden imitation guns, and as they grow, thetraining later becomes more comprehensive, more exacting, more scientific, until, finally, the young men find real guns in their hands, find themselves commanded by, and receiving instructions from, real officers, and they are taught to shoot. When their school training is over, their military training and term of military service also are over. They are ready for civil life, but, too, they are ready at any moment for the call of their country from civil life to shoulder rifle and knapsack and go to the front.
This is the system that we should adopt in our country. It places no burden upon the schoolboy or the young man; on the contrary, it is a source of keen enjoyment, like any other manly game. The beneficial psychological effect is simple: The youth is taught obedience, his powers of perception are quickened, his alertness increased, his physique greatly strengthened, his health benefited, and his personal habits governed by laws of temperance and hygiene, with the result that his efficiency for usefulness in all the business and affairs of civil life afterward is greatly enhanced. Thus, in Switzerland, the earning power of the population is increased out of all proportion to the cost for the training and maintenance of the entire army.
Mr. Richard Stockton, Jr., in his book, "Peace Insurance," ably expresses the value of military training, as follows:
"Military training has an important value entirely apart from its actual military value. This is conclusively proven in the numerous military schools of the United States. The majority of these schools disclaim any attempt to train soldiers, but include military training merely to make better citizens. They find that the man trained militarily learns obedience, promptness, cleanliness, orderliness, coolness, and secures that priceless asset known as executive ability—the ability to make others obey. Such schools form a stronger character and make better men.
"If this is true in a military school, it must be equally so with similar training received elsewhere. If thousands of parents pay from $500 to $1,500 per year to secure this training for their boys, surely there is some gain to the nation in the men who receive this training in the army. The fact is too well attested by educators throughout the world to admit of serious questioning."
It is possible that German militarism, by becoming absolutism, has grown from servant to master in Germany. However this may be, one thing is certain, that German progress in the industrial arts and sciences, in municipal and general government economics, has made the German people more efficient and potential per capita than the people of any other country on earth. Consequently, we must admit either that the Germansare inherently superior intellectually to the people of other nations, or that they have acquired their present economic superiority by reason of some procedure which they have followed, and with which other nations have not kept pace.
The natural assumption is that militarism is responsible for the German culture of efficiency. It is not an unreasonable conclusion, in view of the evidence, that German militarism is the greatest school of economics that the world has ever seen.
"Look at the accomplished rise of Japan; think of the possible national awakening of China; and then judge of the vast problems of the Pacific. Only those Powers who have great navies will be listened to with respect when the future of the Pacific comes to be solved."Kaiser Wilhelm II.
"Look at the accomplished rise of Japan; think of the possible national awakening of China; and then judge of the vast problems of the Pacific. Only those Powers who have great navies will be listened to with respect when the future of the Pacific comes to be solved."
Kaiser Wilhelm II.
A famous English philosopher once took his son to the House of Parliament, and said to him, "Now, my boy, I want you to witness with what ignorance and irrationality we are governed."
Were that same philosopher and his son to witness some of our American legislative proceedings, he would find still greater ignorance and inconsistency for the edification of his son.
The fathers of our country thought it necessary to the security of our government that all naval and military authority should be subordinate to the civil authority. Congress is able absolutely to dominate the Army and Navy. The Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy are generally civilian politicians. It certainly does seem inconsistent to take a man out of civil life, who, very likely, may be wholly ignorant of naval andmilitary matters, and, through preconceived prejudice, unalterably opposed to actual naval and military needs, and place him in a position seriously to interfere with the work of the officers who have been educated at government expense at West Point and Annapolis.
The Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of the Navy ought not to be changed, regardless of merit, or the lack of it, every time we change a President. Those important offices should be lifted out of politics. A man's political qualifications for an office usually depend not a whit upon his being suited to the office by his ability to perform the duties of the office, but simply upon what he has done for the party to earn the appointment.
There is a huge difference between political merit and official merit. Political merit relates entirely to party service, and may constitute demerit when squared with the generally accepted moral code and standard of human behavior. A Secretary of the Army or a Secretary of the Navy may, by previous training, ignorance, effeminacy, or, even worse, by pacific bias, be entirely unsuited to such a position and entirely incapable of broadly perceiving militant duty.
Such changing of our war and naval secretaries is as harmful as it would be to change the head of a hospital every month, with the same disregard of qualifications derived from previous education, training, and experience. Evidently, it would be disastrous to place in supreme command of a hospital first an allopath, then change him a month later for a homeopath, replace the homeopath with an osteopath, followed by a Christian Science healer, then a spiritualistic clairvoyant, finally a Hindoo swami. Such a rotation of hospital heads would hit the patients pretty hard.
When, however, we get a Secretary of the Navy of the caliber of Theodore Roosevelt, or of ex-Secretary Meyer, then the Navy profits by having a civilian for its head, because such men as these, who are natural judges and masters of men, are able to make use of the greater knowledge and experience of those under them, and they have the additional advantage of beingen rapportwith the civilian's point of view, while from the fact that they are civilians, they escape the unreasoning prejudice of the anti-militarists, who believe that all naval and military men are actuated by ulterior motives and self-interest when trying to get Congressional support for the Army and Navy.
A man who, through study and experience, has become a specialist in a certain line of work, is better qualified to do work in that line and to know its needs than is a person who has had no such knowledge and no such experience. In legal matters, we go to a lawyer to get advice, and we generally take it, and pay for it. There is anold saw that he who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client.
The American Congress is composed almost entirely of civilians, who are qualified neither by study nor experience to pass judgment on the needs of our Army and Navy. They are as unable correctly to diagnose the condition of our Navy and to prescribe rational remedies as a pastry cook would be to diagnose and operate for appendicitis, or to prescribe for the treatment of pneumonia.
It is hard to understand how there could be any one in the country unable to perceive this patent truth—that a person educated and trained to a thing all his life ought to know more about that thing than a person who has had no such training and no such experience.
Yet the officers of the Army and Navy are not permitted to give public expression to their views on naval and military needs.
I quote from the New YorkTimesthe following remarks on a significant incident:
"Washington, Feb. 17, 1915.—Secretary Garrison to-day instructed Brigadier-General Scott, chief of staff of the army, to call upon Captain William Mitchell, of the general staff, to explain published remarks attributed to him on the unpreparedness of the United States for war.
"Captain Mitchell was quoted as having saidthat 'it would take the United States about three years to put an army of one million trained men in the field, and in that time an enemy could take and hold our American seaboards.'
"Secretary Garrison said he considered such utterances, if made in public at present, injudicious and improper."
When a hunter goes out with a gun after game, he does not consider it good sport to shoot a four-footed beast or flying fowl without first giving the victim a chance for its life, and an opportunity to give the alarm to its fellows; yet our army and navy men, under the present gag rule, are not given a sportsman's chance to escape being shot, through our national unpreparedness, or even to give a cry of warning to their fellows. Even the murderer is given a chance to present his case before being executed, but the American soldier is not afforded any such opportunity.
Our Congress allows itself to be dominated by impossible pacific ideas, and consequently neglects to take the necessary sane precautions to safeguard the country against war, or even to avert disaster in case of war, and yet, when there arises acasus belli, Congress feels no moral compunction against declaring war and sending its ill-equipped, thin-ranked, ill-provided Army to the front to face inescapable death.
If the troops run out of ammunition on thefiring-line, they cannot retire, but must keep their line unbroken, even though they are all killed.
At the battle of Spottsylvania Court House, in the Civil War, the regiment in which my brother Leander served was caught in exactly this position. They had been drawn up to defend a baggage train. They held their places, and loaded and fired until their ammunition was exhausted; and still they held their places under a rain of bullets from the enemy, until reënforcements came. Of that company, which went into the fight a hundred strong, eighty-four were killed, among them my brother.
In war, the lives of a few hundred, or even a few thousand soldiers, count for nothing, if the position they are holding has a greater strategic value than their lives. When food runs short, it sometimes becomes strategically a good bargain to sacrifice the lives of a thousand men in a forage raid to bring in a thousand sheep. In such a case, a sheep is worth more than a man, because the sheep can be eaten, and the man cannot.
There are some things in this world that we are able to know are absolutely wrong. Of these, nothing is surer than that it is wrong to forbid our army and navy officers the public expression of their opinions, which would give the country the benefit of their knowledge and experience. Not only this, but it is a great injustice to the officers of the Army and the Navy, for, if warcomes, it is they who will have to stand on the firing-line—not the individuals of civilian officialdom.
When, in the near future, our fleet is sent to intercept the on-coming superior fleet of an enemy, those officers who must stand on the bridge and at their posts on the decks—and go down with their ships—are the very men now gagged by civilian red tape.
If they could speak, and tell you and me and all of us the truth and the naked truth, then very likely their lives could be saved, and the sacrifice of their ships and their crews avoided.
If the actual truth about our defenselessness were generally appreciated, our whole people, as Antony said of the stones of Rome, "would rise and mutiny" against the legislative and bureaucratic officialdom and the fanatical peace propaganda that are teaching the people ignorance and folly while muting the tongues of those who should speak.
A nation is but a composite individual. Just as the male head of the family, being the natural protector of the family, has, in all ages, needed strong arms for the defense of the family, so, in all ages, have nations needed strong arms for national defense. These are the army and the navy. When army and navy are weak, then the nation, regardless of other elements of prowess, is correspondingly weak, and, more than that, thenation that is not safeguarded by a strong army and a strong navy is a poor nation, regardless of its resources and visible wealth. For the value of wealth and resources is very largely dependent upon their security—upon the power of the army and navy to defend or guarantee the title to them.
That man is not a rich man, the title to whose property is questionable and likely at any time successfully to be disputed. The value of wealth depends entirely upon the ability of its possessor to control and utilize it, which includes the ability to defend his title to it.
The same thing holds true with a nation. The value of its wealth depends entirely upon its ability to control and utilize it, subject absolutely to ability to defend it.
You and I, reader, may count ourselves worth a certain sum. But if our property is not so safeguarded as to ensure our continued possession and benefit of it, and to ensure to our children and our children's children the possession and benefit of it, then we are by no means so rich as we should be were our title guaranteed by adequate national defenses.
We are at once the richest country in the world, and, in proportion to our wealth, the poorest; for, in proportion to our wealth, we are the most defenseless. By consequence, we are without guaranty of title to our property, and we may at any time be robbed of it.
An adequate army and an adequate navy are the only possible means by which American titles to property can be guaranteed.
Just as it is worth all it costs, and more, for owners of real estate to have the title to their property guaranteed by a title-guarantee company, and just as the property is by such guaranty enhanced in value more than the cost of the guaranty, so the guaranty of title to American property dependent upon an adequate army and navy is worth far more than the entire cost of them, by virtue of enhanced values.
When a nation, like the United States, has become a World Power, with outlying possessions in distant seas and within the spheres of influence of other powerful nations, it assumes obligations just in proportion to the hazards involved in the maintenance of title. Also, when a nation, like the United States, has a world-compassing commerce, its obligations are just as large as its commerce, and its need of a navy adequate to defend its commerce is, for that purpose alone, exactly as great as its need of the commerce. But, in addition to this great need, there is the still greater need of a navy of such magnitude and potentiality as effectually to safeguard the country against invasion.
Although we should have an army of sufficient size and possessed of so efficient equipment as ultimately to repel invasion, still the cost in life andtreasure for repulsion and expulsion would exceed many times the cost of the warships and naval equipment necessary to prevent invasion.
The American people are not all agreed that we should have a navy. There is a very large percentage of the population who believe that we ought not to have any at all. But there is one ground, I think, for common agreement: Admiral Austin M. Knight, President of the Naval War College, one of the best-informed and ablest officers in the Navy, as well as one of the most scholarly men in the country, says:
"If we are to have a navy it should be as efficient as it can possibly be made. And everybody who knows anything about the Navy knows that this is not its present condition."
I shall quote further from a recent speech of Admiral Knight:
"There is much about the Navy which is splendidly efficient. But as a whole it is far less efficient than it can and ought to be. Our ships are fine. Our officers are capable, industrious, and ambitious. Our enlisted men are the equals of those in other navies. But efficient ships and officers and men do not alone make an efficient navy. They must be welded into an efficient whole by a unity of organization and administration and purpose which coördinates their capabilities and directs their efforts towards a common end, wisely selected and very clearly seen. Here is the first point at which we are lacking. We are lacking also in that harmonious composition of the fleet which is needed to give to every element of it the support that it needs from other elements, to make up a symmetrical and well-balanced whole. And we are lacking to a marked degree in absolutely essential facilities for the care and preservation of our ships, especially in the matter of dry-docks.