BEING BRAYED IN A MORTAR
December 18, 1917
President Wilson speaks in military matters through his Secretary of War. The sole importance of the Secretary of War’s report comes from its being the official declaration of the President. I discuss it as such.
According to the reports in the New York World, the Secretary of War states that “he does not favor universal military training as a permanent policy.”Mr.Wilson’s secretary, therefore, takes what is in effect the position ofMr.Bryan, which was picturesquely phrased as being that a million men can atneed spring to arms overnight. The Administration’s attitude is less picturesquely expressed, but it is precisely as futile and as unspeakably mischievous from a standpoint of permanent national interest. Moreover, it is taken at the very time when the disastrous effect of the Administration’s policy of complete unpreparedness is being shown by the admissions of General Crozier on the first day of the congressional investigation.Mr.Baker’s report,Mr.Bryan’s theory, and the things already shown by the congressional investigation dovetail into one another. They stand in the relation of cause and effect. The Administration now officially and complacently announces that the policy which at this very moment has proved disastrous is to be persevered in for the future, therefore assumes complete responsibility for every blunder and delay, and for all the misconduct, and announces that these blunders and delays and all this misconduct have taught us nothing, and that we are to amble onward in the same futile path until disaster overtakes.Mr.Wilson’s Administration officially declares that we shall persist in our own folly until we are brayed in the mortar of dreadful calamity.
If the Administration frankly and manfully acknowledged its evil errors in the past and championed a policy which would prevent the repetition of these errors in the future, I would think only of the future and not of the past, but now it is necessary to emphasize the past in order to avoid disaster in the future.
We are in the eleventh month since Germany went to war with us. We have not yet built an aeroplane fit to match the speedy battle planes of our foes. We have not built a heavy field gun; on the contrary, we have had to draw on burdened friends to give us artillery. In the training camps of the national army the artillery regiments still have about ten wooden guns for every old field piece, and they have none of the modern guns they are to use in the war. There are rifles only for every third or fourth man. Until ten months had elapsed there was no target practice save for a few specially selected units. The troops still have only wooden machine guns and the trench mortars they themselves improvise.
Until ten months had elapsed they lacked even the necessary warm clothing. They have endured entirely needless suffering and hardship. Our troops in France have received thousands of coffins, but an insufficient number of shoes. At this moment not more than one tenth of our soldiers, taken altogether, are fit to go to battle. Nine tenths of our gallant and fine-spirited men are still without the training, arms, and equipment that would permit them to meet any trained foes. After ten months of war and the expenditure of huge sums of money, we are still absolutely unable to defend ourselves and owe our own safety only to the fleets and armies of our war-worn allies.
This condition is due solely and entirely to the policy of unpreparedness to which the Administrationadhered for two and one half years when even the blind ought to have read the lesson of the great war. The Administration now announces that we are not to alter this policy and that we are to continue the do-nothing policy of refusing to help. If the American people follow the lead thus given them, they will be guilty of criminal folly.