RENDERING A GREAT PUBLIC SERVICE
December 20, 1917
Senator Chamberlain has rendered a public service by presenting the bill to provide universal obligatory military training for all the young men of the Nation. Senator Wadsworth has rendered a public service by pushing the senatorial investigation of our lamentable military unpreparedness. Congressman Medill McCormick has rendered a public service by showing that we have heavily burdened our war-worn ally, France, by demanding from her the guns which it was inexcusable in us not previously to have built.
These three services all hang together. Senator Chamberlain’s proposal is to supplant selective conscription after war has begun by universal service, which would probably mean the avoidance of war altogether. It was grave misfortune that at the outset of this war we did not call for a million volunteers and at the same time put all the young men between nineteen and twenty-two into the trainingcamps. There has been some very gross favoritism in granting exemption and, moreover, the men between twenty-two and thirty-one include a high percentage of married men and of others who ought not to go to war at present. This unwise, wasteful, and inefficient system should not be patched up. The Nation sorely needs, both as a war measure and as a permanent policy, the immediate introduction of universal military training and service for all our young men as proposed above.
Senator Wadsworth and Representative McCormick are in straightforward fashion showing the inevitable results of the policy of unpreparedness which we have followed for three and a half years, and which the Administration, through Secretary Baker, now actually advocates as our permanent policy. Senator Wadsworth has shown, beyond possibility of anything except willful misrepresentation, that he has no partisan purpose whatever and that the investigation is designed solely to rouse the Government and the public to greater efforts in speeding up the war. The Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate is showing no partisanship. They realize that we cannot win the war merely by announcing programmes. They realize that we have a long road to travel and that we have made a slow start. They wish to help the Administration, and in order to do this it is imperative to tell the truth.
Some of the fault for the present situation is due to the shortcomings of individuals during the last ten months, but the major part is due to our failureas a Nation to embark on the policy of preparedness three and a half years ago. Nine tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. Now our people must brace themselves to face unpleasant truths. There is not the slightest reason for discouragement. If we choose, we can, through our governmental representatives, quickly remedy the defects and then exert with decisive effect our tremendous latent powers. But we need to know the truth and then to act with instant and resolute efficiency and with single-minded patriotism.