THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC JENNINGS C.WISE THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/callofrepublicnaOOwiserich THE CALL of The REPUBLIC A National Army and Universal Military Service BY JENNINGS C.WISE author of "empire and armament," "the long arm of lee," etc. "JIffe thinkes it were meete that any one, be- fore he come to be a captayne, should have bene a soldiour." — Spenser. "Wherever thy Navy spreads her canvas wings, Homage to thee, and peace to all, she brings." — Waller. NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO. 681 FIFTH AVENUE Copyright, 1917, E. P. Button & Co. ^rinteb in tfje Qiniteb fttatnt of iStntdca PREFACE Not long ago, in the cover illustration of a great popular weekly, Uncle Sam was repre- sented holding in his hands a flint-lock musket and closely examining its ancient mechanism. The expression on his face was a puzzled one, for he seemed not only to be unfamiliar with the obsolete piece, but impatient with it. It seemed as if his mind had fully grasped the danger % of depending upon a weapon so thoroughly antiquated and inadequate to his pressing needs. The picture was a good one, and I could not but wonder if the cartoonist himself understood the fullness of its signifi- cance. This reflection led me on to further cog- itation and I determined to answer, in a very thorough way, the question that arose in my mind. That question was, not how shall he defend himself, but with what weapon will Uncle Sam henceforth oppose his foes? The observations that follow in this book comprise the answer. The author promises his readers that pacifism and pacific principles will ocroorii^ PREFACE not be dwelt upon. The most effective system of national military preparedness alone will be considered. Not long ago I visited Vicksbnrg and com- pleted a tour of the defensive lines of the city. East of the city there runs a semicircular ridge from the river on the North back to the river on the South — a great, natural rampart, along the crest of which was the Confederate position. Upon examining this line I saw that it was not the science of men alone that had defended Vicksburg, but that in the memorable siege Na- ture had played no small part, for the artillery of Grant was powerless against that massive work she had thrown up. And then I contem- plated how impotent even Nature was to-day to defend against the modern science of war, for I knew that the great guns of Europe could raze the rampart which she had thrown about Vicksburg almost as easily as they could de- stroy one erected by mortal hands. This thought led my mind to dwell upon other de- fensive works of Nature — those oceans that separate America from Europe and Asia which time has rendered as obsolete fox defense as the moats of medieval fortresses. **Only the law of change is changeless," I said to myself, and looking up, read in endur- vi PREFACE ing bronze over the portal of the superb monu- ment which the generous State of Illinois had erected to the memory of its soldiers, these words : **We have but little to do to preserve peace, happiness and prosperity at home, and the re- spect of the nations. Our experience ought to teach us the necessity of the first, our power secures the latter. — U. S. Grant." And here too there was change; Grant con- scientiously could not write those words to-day, for Nature has withdrawn her aid from us, and we have failed utterly to develop an artificial power capable of overcoming the resulting weakness of our position. We have failed to see the warning in Jeremiah: ** Arise, get up unto the wealthy nation, that dwelleth with- out care, saith the Lord, which have neither gates nor bars, which dwell alone. And their camels shall be a booty and the multitude of their cattle a spoil ... I will bring their ca- lamity from all sides. ' ' If this work shall contribute in some small measure, however little, to bring to the nation that vision without which our people will per- ish, it will not have been written in vain. J. C. W. vii FOEEWOED BY MAJOE GENEKAL LEONABD WOOD, XT. S. A. Colonel Jennings S. Wise is especially well qualified to present to the public tlie question of universal service both from the standpoint of a student of military history, in which field he has done much and most excellent work, and also from the standpoint of a trained and ex- perienced soldier. Colonel Wise is a graduate of Virginia Military Institute and for a long time was connected with that institution in vari- ous capacities. He has also had experience in the field. He has written extensively and very ably on military subjects and appreciates the danger and folly of further dependence for na- tional defense upon the haphazard system of the past, a system which has stamped itself upon our military policy and has resulted in great and unnecessary sacrifice of life arid treasure in our wars and military operations. He brings out very clearly the new conditions of organization, involving all the resources of a nation, which characterize modern prepared- FOREWORD ness, and presents in a most convincing manner the reasons for universal training and service. He makes clear the unwisdom and danger of further delay in meeting conditions which, whether they be fortunate or unfortunate, ex- ist and form a part of the great world life of the day, conditions which make war possible and at times inevitable for all nations who have convictions and a sense of right, nations whose people believe that at times it is better to break the peace than to break the faith. This condi- tion of possible war we must be prepared to meet and meet promptly if we wish to continue our existence as a nation. It is a book which all Americans can read with profit and one which, if heeded, will add much to national well being and security. Headquarters Eastern Department, Governor's Island, N. Y., March 7, 1917. CONTENTS FAQE The Call of the Republic 1 CHAPTER I. Intkoductory 5 II. The Ancient Medieval Military Sys- tems 16 III. Origin and Development of the Mod- ern National Army 25 IV. Military Service in Its Most Demo- cratic Form 35 V. The English Ideal of Voluntary Ser- vice 40 VI. The Inherited American Ideal ... 50 VII. The American Military System . . 64 VIII. The Ideal Military Institution . . 96 IX. The Fear op Militarism Unreason- able 120 Bibliography .•••,•.... 139 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC Awake freemen — awake! If not for self, for country's sake Let your unclouded eyes Penetrate the specious guise Of that false schism Adroitly styled Pacificism, Know ye the truth — The iron of the rudest State Can still decide the fate Of any realm That casts aside its mml and helm. While ruled the world hy Mars And his perpetual wars, No race may long secure release From strife, nor purchase peace. 2. Awake freemen — awake! Let not these shallow pratvngs shake 1 ^ •* -^^SE GALL X'P THE REPUBLIC Your faith in steel, or duU Tour sight with hope, or lull You into fatuous dreams. Still on earth is might The final arbiter of right. When all ahout are soum the dragon's teeth, Why tudne ye now the olive wreath? Awake freemen — awake! Your own security ye must make; Nor hope to ransom health With that unequaled wealth Ye haA)e amassed. Unless your gold is cast In finely tempered arms. And your youthful hrawn Is universally drawn Upon to wield them in the strife Of international Ufe, Awake freemen — awake! Fear not upon yourselves to take The burden of the Staters defense — In freedom find the recompense For ma/nhood's sacrifice. 2 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC Let every citizen a warrior he, And every soldier, free When trwined, remain a citizen: Give no man choice to shirk The nation's sternest work. The unvarying price Of peace is hlood and toil: In these for flag and home and soil Prepare the race to pay — As in the past — again to-day! 5. Awake freemen — aimike! With peace at stake And liberty, mil ye slumber On forever, unconscious under This spell of lies amd sloth f Go forth Like men. Abandon sordid ease! Gird on the sword, and seize Each in his hand a spear. Be every citizen a volunteer At heart. Do each his part. 6. Awake freeman — awake! The world's foundations quake! 3 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC When all is lost Too late to count the cost, Or then appease The insatiate maw Of war. 'Tis now the Uepuhlic calls In time of peace for strong-armed m^n. The need is great — no false alarms Are these. Ye are hut servile thralls Of ease Who fail to answer when The nation's trumpet sounds to arms! J. C. W. CHAPTEE I INTEODUCTOBY THE object of the author in writing this book was to place before his readers in simple and collected form, side by side, the facts connected with the development of the national army system which exists in all European countries, and those which explain the origin and persistence of the volunteer mercenary army system which is retained in the United States alone. A close analysis of those facts has been at- tempted whenever such a course would empha- size the unwarranted nature of the American prejudice against a peace army, and the illogi- cal retention by the American people of the mercenary system in the mistaken belief that universal compulsory service is an undemo- cratic institution. It has been attempted to show that such a system is not only highly (iemocratic in conception and in its practical 5 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC working, but that the cherislied volunteer mer- cenary system is undemocratic both in origin and effect. The claims asserted in favor of universal compulsory military service as the only proper basis of a truly national army may seem sub- ject to general condemnation on the ground that the more efficient an army, the more likely it is to be misused. This is a purely pacifist argu- ment with which this study has nothing to do. Commencing our study with the assumption that an army is necessary, our purpose is solely that of determining the best system for its or- ganization and maintenance. Because high- powered locomotives are given to derailment on occasions, we must not revert to the use of stage coaches and canal boats for transporta- tion purposes. Neither should we employ ob- solete and inefficient means for defense because the highly improbable prostitution of a popular military institution, adequate to our national needs, would be more harmful in its conse- quences than the abuse and misapplication of an inadequate system of defense. Where a national conviction rests upon a basis of ignorance and prejudice, it cannot prove very resistant to the undermining proc- 6 INTRODUCTORY ess of logic. Castles do not stand firmly upon foundations of sand. A false philosophy must crumble beneath the battering ram of truth, and it remains to the statesmen, publicists and schol- ars of America to direct their irresistible blows upon the popular prejudice of the American people which has become so firmly entrenched in their minds. Our military men have long since seen the light of truth. They have vainly sought to shed that light upon their fellow citizens. The very prejudice which they have sought to dis- sipate has itself been the principal obstacle to their success. Civilians are not receptive of advice from soldiers — ^their viewpoint is totally different from that of the military man. They will act upon the counsel of an editor or an orator, be he the veriest tyro in his knowledge, but not upon that of a faithful soldier in any matter which involves the popular interest. Thus have they frequently subjected themselves to the hard necessity of being constrained by force in crises to heed the superior wisdom of military men in military matters. It is as much the duty of statesmen to perfect their knowledge of the correct principles of national defense as it is that of military chief- 7 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC tains. The persistent neglect of tliis duty by the popular leaders of America is the reason for the lack of sympathy existing between the people and the army. The estrangement is due entirely to a lack of community of thought among their representatives. Our soldiers re- gard a knowledge of civics as part of their education — few of our so-called statesmen trouble themselves with a scientific solution of the problem of national defense. The latter prefer to accept their ancient Bill of Rights as the leading text of defensive science. Thus they fail to progress, and adhere rigidly to a false conclusion based on a correct principle. That principle is as true to-day as when enunci- ated by the English people in 1688 — the people must comprise their own defense. The infer- ence that when efficiently organized they con- stitute a threat to their own security is utterly false. The standing armies that were so justly feared by our British forefathers were not comprised of the body politic; they were not comprised of the national aggregates and im- bued with a nationalistic spirit of patriotism; they were constituted either by un-national mer- cenaries, or by citizens denationalized in inter- est under the mercenary system of their em- 8 INTRODUCTORY ployment. And then we must remember that the "andiseiplined citizens of to-day are in no sense comparable as soldiers with the miles or militiaman of early days when all men were trained in the nse of arms in the school of neces- sity, or were familiar with their use. The ancient militia very much more nearly ap- proached the organized soldiery in military ca- pacity than do the citizens of to-day. Formerly the difference between them was in no sense physical; the hard-working yokel was fre- quently superior in physical constitution to the indolent and luxurious man-at-arms. The dif- ference was solely one of organization from which disciplined action resulted. To-day the difference lies in a complete unfamiliarity on the part of the militiaman with arms, wood- craft, field conditions, and in his inferior physi- cal development as well. In view of the foregoing comparative analy- sis we should be better prepared to separate the wheat from the tares that have grown up in our political philosophy. As we pursue our study we shall see that the institution of a national army based on univer- sal compulsory military service accords well with the system of citizen soldiery favored by 9 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC the Bill of Rights, and that of the two — national and volunteer — the mercenary army which we now maintain in time of peace is the more closely related to the standing army condemned in that great popular writ. And the conclu- sion will not seem forced that in order to pre- serve the defense of the country to the citizens as their exclusive right under the constitution, it will be necessary to establish a true relation between the citizen soldiery of to-day and the militia of the eighteenth century. This, in view of the deterioration of civilians in mili- tary capacity, by reason of a complete revolu- tion in the social and economic conditions sur- rounding them, can only be accomplished by subjecting portions of them at a time to organ- ized training in time of peace. Government must do that which nature formerly did. The altered conditions necessitate a change of method in order to insure the old results. Gov- ernment can only render the universal liability to military service of American citizens effec- tive, by preparing them to meet their obliga- tions. When universal training is given the en- tire body of the freemen of a nation by annual drafts, in time of peace, not under the com- pulsion of national spirit, but under the com- 10 INTRODUCTORY pulsion of constitutional law, the system is that of universal compulsory service, and the re- sulting efficient and democratic army is known as a National Army — representative of the mili- tary institution in its noblest form. It is such an army that the United States must have. At this time, when all men's minds dwell upon the problem of insuring their national security, whether by defensive armaments or by the methods proposed by the pacifists, it is well to consider that system of defense which has been universally adopted as best, except by the United States. This is the system of compul- sory military service under which military ser- vice is justly deemed an obligatory right of the citizen or subject. Whether a man be regarded as the vassal of his sovereign, as in Russia, and other absolutist States, whether he be deemed a mere creature of the State or political atom, as in Germany and Austria-Hungary, or whether government is viewed as the agent of the people, as in the United States and other democracies, it is con^ ceded that in return for the allegiance and sup- port of the citizen or subject, the State owes him protection for his life and property, at home and abroad. The claim of his right to pursue 11 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC happiness may be denied — his right to protec- tion is always acceded. The idea was strik- ingly expressed by the great democrat, Cal- houn, when he declared that '* Government is Protection, ' ' a declaration couched in terms alike acceptable to Tzar and President, King and peasant, Pope and Puritan, the rich and the pauper, the learned and the ignorant. And here it may be said that no State, however lib- eral, however harsh its government may have been, has long survived when the principle, so aptly expressed by Calhoun, has failed to be regarded by those in power as a funda- mental concept of government. But while that principle has ever been firmly engrafted upon successful governments, what- ever their nature, the systems by which na- tional protection has been secured, have varied. Beginning with the ancient democratic con- cept that with manhood suffrage went hand in hand the manhood obligation of military ser- vice, the protective system degenerated into one which imposed no obligation upon the freeman, leaving the national defense to the ruler and his hireling soldiery, reenforced betimes by levies of unwilling conscripts from among his subjects. 12 INTRODUCTORY The period in which the mercenary and con- scriptive system was in vogue was a degenerate one, and of the prevailing degeneracy of the times, the system was itseK the best evidence. It could only have been generally tolerated un- der a careless regard for the national welfare, or by reason of a complete misconception of the nobility of personal service in defense of home and country. It is not necessary to accept the philosophy of Treitschke in toto in order to concede the accuracy of some of his conclusions. Espe- cially sound were his views on national de- fense. Wrote he : ** Under ordinary circumstances the right to bear arms must always be looked upon as the privilege of a free man. It was only during the last period of the Roman Empire that the system of keeping mercenaries was adopted. And, as mercenary troops consisted, except for their officers, of the lowest dregs of society, the idea soon became prevalent that military service was a disgrace, and the free citizen be- gan to show himself anxious not to take part in it. This conception of the mercenary system has gone on perpetuating itself through the 13 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC ages, and its after effects have been strik- ingly demonstrated even in our own day. Our century has been called on to witness, in the formation of the national and civil guards, the most immoral and unreasonable de- velopments of which the military system is capable. The citizens imagined themselves too good to bear arms against the enemies of their country, but they were not averse to playing as soldiers at home, and even to being able to defend their purse if it should happen to be in danger. ' ' Treitschke's strictures are always harsh, and often, as in this instance, only too true, for the release of the able-bodied citizen in peace time from his inherent obligation to his State and his weaker fellows, by the substitution of a permanent mercenary force for the citizen soldiery, has invariably tended to lower his re- spect for his military obligations and, there- fore, to render him less willing to make a sacri- fice for his country when his services are im- peratively needed. From being regarded as a privilege, the right of bearing arms soon be- comes, under the vicious mercenary system, a burden upon the citizen. By that system his 14 INTRODUCTORY patriotism is deadened — his love of country is weakened along with his good right arm. And so writes Treitschke: **The right to bear arms will ever remain the honorary privilege of the free man. All noble minds have more or less recognized the truth that *The God who created iron did not wish men to be thralls.' And it is the task of all reasonable political systems to keep this idea in honor." 15 CHAPTER n THE ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MILITARY SYSTEMS THE development of the system of com- pulsory military service in Europe must be traced from its origin among the democratic peoples of ancient times. In tracing the history of the system one must be forcefully impressed by the fact that its roots were bedded in the soil of democracy and that it has ever been re- garded in Europe as a distinctly popular insti- tution as opposed to the mercenary system of service. One must also be struck by the fact that in countries with an autocratic form of government, universal compulsory military ser- vice has been regarded as a popular institution, and that in England and America, which coun- tries have ever boasted a comparatively free government, the institution of a national army has been deemed to be the instrument of au- tocracy. In Egypt, whence came no small measure of 16 MEDIEVAL MILITARY SYSTEMS the culture of ancient Europe, military service was conferred as a privilege upon a certain class, and a property qualification was imposed upon every man intrusted with the defense of his country. Even the common soldier must possess not less than six acres of land, which served for the support of his family, and which were free from taxation. In Greece the soldiers were also chiefly free citize*ns, who were early trained to arms and, after attaining a prescribed age, were subject to actual service in war. Those who had reached the age of forty were released from service, except in cases of very urgent danger. Some were also wholly or temporarily exempted on account of their office or employment. Originally the warriors maintained themselves, and every free citizen deemed it a dishonor to serve for pay. But the tendency of the soldiers to claim the right of pillage led to the system of stated remuneration. Rome admitted no soldiers to her army un- der seventeen years of age, and all men be- tween seventeen and forty-five years were en- rolled among the class of younger men, and were held liable to service, while those over forty-five were ranked among the elder men 17 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC and exempted from military duty. The legal term of service varied among the arms from ten to sixteen years. In protracted wars four years were sometimes added to the customary term, and under the Emperors twenty years of service was required. Enrolled citizens for- feited their property and liberty for failure to respond to the call to arms. Persons without property were not enrolled as soldiers, for, hav- ing nothing to lose, they were accounted devoid of patriotism. As all soldiers were Eoman citizens and free born, military service was held in high esteem, and soldiers were accorded peculiar rights and privileges. Until about 400 B. C. soldiers received no pay. From that time on pay was given and gradually increased. The prevailing conceptions of military ser- vice in Egypt, Greece and Rome were distinctly democratic. Nowhere is to be found a sugges- tion of the idea that military service is degrad- ing and beneath the dignity of a freeman, or to be shunned by the citizen. The ancients jeal- ously prized their military institutions as pecu- liarly worthy of the citizens ' favor and respect. They saw in the military service of their coun- try an exemplification of patriotism — a mani- festation of civic sincerity by personal sacrifice 18 MEDIEVAL MILITARY SYSTEMS on the part of the citizens, and not content with an oath of loyalty alone as a qualification for this service, they debarred from the honor of participating therein all those whose material interests were not such as to comprise an as- surance of faithful discharge of duty. To a Roman or to a Greek, it would have seemed inconceivable that enlightened men could surrender the national defense to those who might volunteer from selfish motives, or worse, merely to earn a livelihood. Military service was associated in their minds with the ideal of the higher duty of man, and to preserve that ideal they took care to see that it was not debased by entrusting its preservation to public hirelings. This was a conception of military service that vanished with many other enlight- ened ideas upon the advent of that dark age which spread its impenetrable gloom over the unformed peoples of Northern and Central Europe and obscured for centuries the culture of the southern races. The invasions of the Barbarians destroyed the noble military ideals of Rome; organized national military systems disappeared in Europe. For many centuries armies had no other basis than that of feudal constitution. 19 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC The feudal system compelled Sovereigns to rely upon temporary assemblages of men, un- trained, undisciplined, and wholly lacking in coordination. The Crusades did much to de- velop the idea of cooperation between small military units combined for common action, and in these great military enterprises may be found the origin of larger permanent armed forces than had been employed before. Under the feudal system Sovereigns were completely at the mercy of their vassal lords. In order to free themselves from this uncer- tain dependence, as soon as their means war- ranted it they began to constitute their own armed forces. To accomplish this they were compelled to resort to the mercenary system under which volunteers in their service received compensation. To facilitate the raising of armies sovereigns were obliged to employ agents, usually officers of credit and renown, who, having been engaged in the military pro- fession from early life, were acquainted with many men able to aid them and willing to share their fortunes. Each of these had their clients, and regiments were furnished by them under contract and competition. Such a sys- tem could not have flourished had the fighting 20 MEDIEVAL MILITARY SYSTEMS men of the day not been desperately poor and willing to shed their blood in quest of a happier lot than befell them in civil life. The motive of these mercenaries was not the purpose of fulfilling a duty toward their Sovereign, of de- fending their country and gaining the glorious reward of public esteem. Soldiers and cap- tains alike craved riches and served with no other reward in view. The system was a de- generating one, and the purely mercenary in- stincts of the hired soldiery made them danger- ous to employer and enemy alike, for with them it was simply a question of where lay the best pay. They would fight bravely until paid not to do so! Small wonder that the dregs of society were arrayed beneath the banners of contending sovereigns as the last resort for their subsistence, and that civilians came to re- gard professional soldiers with contempt. The invention of gun powder brought about a complete revolution in the military system of Europe. The art of war now became a science ; the skillful and not the merely brave man was henceforth to win the victories. But it took long practice to make men skillful with fire arms, and warfare could be waged successfully only by experienced troops. Even in peace, 21 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC therefore, it became necessary for sovereigns to maintain standing armies. About the middle of the fourteenth century Okran, son and successor of Othman, the founder of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, or- ganized a special corps of picked troops known as janizaries and composed largely of Chris- tians. This corps was greatly improved by Amurath I. about 1360, and increased in strength to 12,000 men. It soon became the bul- wark of the Empire, and, like the Eoman Pre- torians and Russian Streltsi, a dictatorial power. It was a body of warriors notable for their efficiency, and this efficiency was seen of all to be not alone due to the fierce character of its members but to organization and training as well. The first organization of a standing army in Europe was effected by Charles VII. of France, in 1445, and he was supported in his costly en- terprise by the towns and provinces. The soldiers were mercenaries, but had the virtue of being permanently employed in time of peace, not only for training but as national police. Commerce began to prosper in France under the orderly reign which ensued, traveling be- came safe, and the merchant and husbandman 22 MEDIEVAL MILITARY SYSTEMS could thenceforth attend securely to their busi- ness without fear of being robbed of their goods, horses, and cattle by predatory bands. From this return to civilization dates the de- cline of chivalry. The large body of regular, disciplined troops which Charles VII. main- tained when there was scarcely a single com- pany permanently under arms elsewhere, gave France such superiority over her neighbors that in self-defense they were obliged to follow her example. Henceforth, in Europe, standing armies of regularly employed and trained troops became the general order of the day. The Swiss mercenaries were in great demand among the rulers of Europe during the middle ages, because of their superior military quali- ties, and were to be found in the standing armies of almost every State. The increasing popu- larity of the regular mercenary system when reduced to order soon caused voluntary patri- otic service to cease altogether except in Eng- land, and it was only there that the old practice of calling out quotas of unskilled fighting men was adhered to. .The mercenary was, there- fore, in a sense, the liberator of the masses from enforced military service, except in time 23 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC of serious war. In their freedom the people tasted the sweets of peaceful pursuits and for a while were well satisfied to pay for the sup- port of the military professional. 24 CHAPTER ni ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN NATIONAL ARMY SATISFACTION with the purely mercenary system was short lived. In peace it was not without its advantages as the foreign hire- lings proved fairly efficient as national police. The objections to a standing army of foreign soldiery for a while seemed to be counterbal- anced by the advantage to the people accruing from their own release from military service. But as dependence upon such troops became more general in war as well as in peace, dis- trust of them spread rapidly. The danger of intrusting the safety of the State to foreign mercenaries, reinforced by the lowest caste of national society, became apparent to all men, and this perception induced a reaction of sen- timent. It was the sentiment inducing this reaction that inspired Bacon in the composition of his 25 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC famous essay on war in which he wrote: ** Walled towns, stored arsenals and armories, goodly races of horse, chariots of war, ele- phants, ordnance, artillery, and the like; all this is but a sheep in a lion's skin, except the breed and disposition of the people be stout and warlike." And then he added: ** There- fore, let any prince or State think soberly of his forces, except his militia of natives be of good and valiant soldiers. And let princes on the other side, that have subjects of martial disposition, know their own strength, unless they be otherwise wanting unto themselves. As for mercenary forces, which is the help in this case, all examples shew that whatsoever estate or prince doth rest upon them, he may spread his feathers for a time, but will mew them soon after." The advice of Bacon was sound, and no doubt did much to confirm the English people in their prejudices against the mercenary armies of Europe and in their faith in their ancient militia institution. Its force was also perceived in Europe where the subsequent development was strikingly different, however, from that in Britain. England, we shall see, rigidly adhered to the 26 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMY ancient system of the untrained Saxon fyrd, under which system all men were compelled to render military service at call. In Europe the conception that all men were liable for military service also prevailed, but a new development set in leading to a trained standing army based on compulsory service with exemptions to cer- tain classes or upon certain conditions. Sweden was the first country in Europe that built up a regular, and at the same time a strictly national, military organization. The small standing armies had hitherto been purely mercenary and had served in peace as a gen- darmerie or species of guard of honor to the King. In case of war additional troops had to be raised by conscription, or under a rude militia system, by voluntary or press gang en- listments, or by the purchase of more mercen- aries. As early as the sixteenth century the Vasa kings of Sweden laid the foundation of a na- tional regular army, and it remained for Gus- tavus Adolphus to perfect it. It consisted of a given number of regular troops, raised, paid, fed and equipped by the State, and back of these stood a militia kept up by the people. The regulars of men constantly with the colors 27 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC / were intended for wars outside the national ter- ritory ; the militia for the defense of the father- land. The regulars were kept at full strength by drafts from the militia. Service was based as in ancient Egypt on land tenure, and all able- bodied males from fifteen years up were liable thereto. Gustavus introduced the novel method of assigning to each soldier a certain parcel of land sufficient for his support and equipment. After Sweden, France was the first country, under the leadership of Louvois, the great war minister of Louis XIV., to found a permanent national force. Then followed Brandenburg under the Great Elector, in turn followed by the other States of Europe. After this revolution in the military systems of Europe all the men with the colors were not disbanded at the close of any given war. Before the close of the seventeenth century the people of Europe had virtually reshoul- dered the obligation of military service in time of peace. In practice, however, the peace armies were largely composed of volunteers, and the people were more or less free to serve with the colors, or follow peaceful pursuits as they saw fit. Economic and social conditions, rather than 28 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMY laws, compelled an increasing number of them to seek military service in time of peace. Le- gal compulsion was not necessary, nor was uni- versal service rigidly enforced in time of war, though all were liable. The military system of Frederick the Great more nearly approached universal compulsory service than any before the French Revolu- tion. But Frederick's system was very differ- ent from that of modern Prussia, and plainly less defensible than the modern voluntary sys- tem. It is only where compulsion strikes all alike, and where exemptions do not discrimi- nate between social castes that the system is justifiable — otherwise it is chargeable with an injustice from which the voluntary system is free. That war should be a citizen's chosen profession and means of livelihood, may not be desirable, but no one but the individual soldier can be injured by mercenary service, and so long as the mercenary soldier enters no service but that of his own country, he devotes himself to a worthy career. Conscription with caste exemptions, on the other hand, is glaringly un- just and oppressive; not only are these ex- emptions themselves unjust, but so long as they exist it is impossible to put upon any high 29 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC ground the constrained service of those who are non-exempt. It is a mockery to speak of the exalted duty of defending one's country where this duty is not made universal, or where those who do not wish to pay in blood may sat- isfy their personal obligation to the State with money. Under such a system compulsory ser- vice is a shocking tyranny similar to the levy- ing of the taille upon the wretched lower classes of old France. It was never enforced in a country unaccustomed to despotism until adopted in the United States in 1863 under the Federal Military Draft Law. Moreover, when the exemptions extend to whole classes, or are purchased with money, those who are com- pelled to serve will be required to remain with the colors a longer time than if service were uni- versal. By serving many years soldiers ac- quire the character of a professional caste and become distinguished in thought and conduct from the rest of the community, even though they did not enter the army originally by choice, or to make it their profession. The army of Frederick was raised in large part by conscription; but large classes of per- sons, as well as whole towns and districts, were exempted. In the main the citizen class was 30 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMY exempt, while the peasantry were subject to compulsory service and were too poor to pur- chase exemption. So great was the demand for men, and so scanty the supply, that a term of service extending over twenty years was neces- sary. What could have been more tyrannical than to seize upon the peasant and subject him to twenty years of brutal discipline in order that he might defend his more fortunate fellows and a country in which he was enslaved to their luxury? He owed little to his country, less to those who enjoyed the comforts of a peaceful life and immunity from the risks of war at his expense. Such a system, it is evident, rested upon ignorance and terrorism. No class of people who claimed the fundamental rights of freemen could be subjected to such a system. Those who to-day would tolerate such an abuse of their manhood would not possess the spirit requisite for good soldiers. The early Prus- sian system was weakest precisely where the French and modern system of Prussia is strong- est, that is, on the moral side of universal obli- gation. If Gustavus, Louvois, or Frederick ever dreamed of a universal conscription, notwith- 31 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC standing the fact that all men in Sweden, France, and Prussia were in theory liable to service, they probably dismissed the idea from their minds as hopelessly impracticable; nor did Frederick, even in the extremity of the Seven Years' War, seriously consider a levee en masse. There was no real patriotism in Prussia during Frederick's time, no sense of the value of national independence, and a sys- tem of universal service is only possible where national spirit is exceptionally strong. It remained for the Democrats of France to reestablish the ancient Republican system of universal compulsory service. Emperors and kings had relied upon imperfect military sys- tems, under which, at best, the full strength of a nation could not be mobilized. Eepublican France retaught the world that citizens owed their flag the full measure of their support, and that they could be made to serve in the ranks under a properly administered system of na- tional conscription. The Directory which succeeded the Conven- tion in 1798 keenly felt the necessity of more effective preparation for war with the national enemies. Its armies had become mere beg- garly skeletons and the best regiments were en- 32 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMY gaged in the Egyptian and Syrian Campaigns. Requisitions failed to furnish the needed re- cruits and it was seen that the old revolutionary law under which troops had been raised was inadequate to the pressing needs of the State. Appealing direct to the military experts for new proposals for the recruiting of the army, General Jourdan presented a plan under which all able-bodied men between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, without distinction as to their social conditions, might be subjected to military service. Jourdan 's plan was adopted, and the famous Conscription Act was passed forthwith. The new conscription system of the Directory was far less harsh than the old system of re- quisitions. It effected one entire generation, and by arranging the military population into five classes it permitted the calling out suc- cessively of the required number of men, leav- ing a chance of drawing lots and obtaining sub- stitutes. This system has practically been fol- lowed in France to this day. It was appropri- ately revolutionary at the time of its adoption ; it was far more democratic than the preexist- ing systems. It completely revolutionized the various European military systems, for it proved so entirely satisfactory and efficacious 33 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC that its adoption in principle was enforced npon all other States, liberal and autocratic alike. A strict and unwavering adherence by France to the system of Jourdan has seemingly saved the third French Republic. Its adoption has also no doubt preserved the democratic institu- tions of Great Britain as well — if not the free institutions of the whole world for the time be- ing. 34 CHAPTER IV MILITARY SERVICE IN ITS MOST DEMOCRATIC FORM AMONG the advantages of a monarchial form of government over a government of democratic character, is commonly included its superior capacity for war, in defense as well as offense. Yet, Eepublican France, un- der the national conscriptive system which she adopted in 1798, successfully resisted the combined assaults of every monarchy in Eu- rope until conscription had drawn to the col- ors her last able-bodied man, and no others remained to defend the Republic. Fate willed it that the French should succumb to the very institution which they themselves created — ^mili- tary conscription in the hands of Prussia. This is not fancy but fact, for who shall deny that Bluecher and Gneisenau determined the down- fall of Buonaparte in 1815 through the medium of Prussia's regenerated power which was thrown in the balance of the Emperor's fate! 35 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC And who shall deny that the French hope of world dominion was cast down in the nineteenth century by the regenerated military power of Europe through conscription, as has been that of the HohenzoUern a century later by conscrip- tion in Great Britain ? So pregnant with power has been the exten- sion of the system of national conscription, originated by the French and perfected by the Prussians, that this great defensive institution should be fully traced in its development and analyzed in its effects. Grustavus made all able-bodied men effec- tively available for military service. The French Republic compelled all men of certain classes actually to serve with the colors. But it was in Prussia that the opportunity presented itself of realizing what elsewhere would have seemed a mere pedantic chimera — the complete revival of the citizen armies of antiquity. There, as nowhere else, conditions were ripe for the reestablishment of a national army in its best form, for the Prussian mind had be- come gradually familiar with conscription and was in 1806 prepared by adversity to endure a just application of the principle of universal service. MILITARY SERVICE IN DEMOCRATIC FORM To Gerhard Johann David Von Scharnhorst belongs the credit for devising the machinery to operate the new system. This remarkable soldier was born in Hanover in 1755. Entering the military service of his native State, he be- came a teacher in the artillery school of Han- over about 1780 and in that capacity found op- portunity to devote himself to research and re- flection. His assiduous studies were inter- rupted when he was called upon to serve in the Campaigns in Flanders from 1793 to 1795, but in 1801 he was appointed director of the mili- tary school of Prussia, and later served through the disastrous Prussian Campaigns of 1806-7. After the crushing defeat of Prussia by Napo- leon, Scharnhorst, with the rank of general, was placed at the head of the War Department and made president of the commission charged with the reorganization of the Prussian army. Working in harmony with Stein, Hardenberg, Gneisenau, and other regenerators of Prussia's fallen power, he did much to restore the for- tunes of his adopted country, devising, among other things, the modern system of universal compulsory military service. Scharnhorst possessed the genius requisite not alone for great thoughts but for the execu- 37 THE CALL OP THE REPUBLIC tion of his ideas. He had that mastery of means and detail which is seldom found in con- junction with large political conceptions, but, which when it does exist, adapts ideas to the practical working of a State, instead of allow- ing them to die a melodious death in the ora- tory of petty politicians. In spite of the popu- lar ridicule which Scharnhorst 's conception of a citizen army subjected him to, in spite of the adverse criticism which his plan elicited from many of his professional contemporaries, he persevered and gradually won over such men as Stein, Hardenberg, Yorck, and Gneisenau to the loyal and successful support of his revolutionary proposals. Such was the dis- trust of and bigoted opposition to the system proposed by Scharnhorst that universal ser- vice was not actually enforced until after his death, but he laid down the principles and pre- pared the way for its final adoption. The enrollment of foreigners in the Prussian Army was abolished, the corporal punishments of Frederick limited to flagrant cases of indis- cipline, promotion for merit was established, and military administration organized and sim- plified. The organization of the Landwehr and Landsturm was begun, and so promptly 38 MILITARY SERVICE IN DEMOCRATIC FORM effective became the new system that a State whose army had failed utterly at Jena was able to play an important role, by means of its reorganized army under Bluecher and Gneise- nau, in the overthrow of Napoleon in 1815, within two years after Scharnhorst's death. 39 CHAPTER V THE ENGLISH H>EAL OF VOLUNTARY SEBVICE IT is, as we have seen, a notable fact that national armies, composed of the entire body of citizens, had their origin among ancient democratic peoples who feared to entrust the safety of their free institutions to the hands of any but the citizens. And yet to-day the mercenary system remains in effect in but one country in the civilized world, and that coun- try is the greatest democracy of all times. It is natural that we should here inquire as to the reason for this anomaly. In order to arrive at a full understanding of the causes underly- ing the American attitude it is necessary to re- view the history of British military institutions. In a previous work the writer endeavored to explain this anomaly by tracing the origin and growth of a racial prejudice among the Anglo- Saxons against standing armies.* It will now * Empire and Armament. 40 ENGLISH IDEAL OF VOLUNTARY SERVICE be attempted to show more fully tliat tlie seed of this prejudice was sown in a soil peculiar to England by reason of the social conditions of that insulated State. The right to bear arms was inherent in the English people ; in fact, under the earliest laws they were compelled to bear arms in the militia or localized military forces. The British Militia system originated in the Anglo-Saxon fyrd and in the warlike features of the posse comMatus. Alfred the Great is supposed to have created the fyrd^ later called militia from the Latin miles, meaning a soldier. Under the old English institution of villein socage land-rents were paid by body service in the fyrdy the able-bodied men of each family bearing arms in numbers proportionate to the land held by the family. The country was or- ganized into earldoms, hundreds, tillings (ten tillings making the hundred), and families. The earls, thanes, and inferior dignitaries of State were entitled to certain military service from the villeins or serfs attached to the land, as well as the king, so that the really necessary military burden was multiplied many times. The common people, comprised of the freemen and villeins, willing enough to respond for ser- 41 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC vice when danger actually tkreatened them, chafed under the system in time of peace, and regarded military service at such a time as an evil and unnecessary interference with their civil pursuits. The thanes, however, had no real interest in the private pursuits of their people. So long as they received their due they were satisfied. Hence, there existed a very natural conflict between a class devoted to civil pursuits and a ruling caste which main- tained its dignity at the expense of that class. Military service in time of peace was the bone of contention. Thus did the common people of England acquire at an early day a racial prej- udice against peace armies or what are now called standing armies. After the decisive defeat of Harold at Hast- ings in 1066, the old Saxon institution of the fyrd ceased to exist officially. A new system of laws was imposed upon the people, and that system, known as the feudal system of the Nor- man conquerors, embodied a military institu- tion far more oppressive to the common people than had been the system of villein socage. They became, in fact, no more, than slaves of a military order, and for long the oppressed Sax- ons struggled to keep alive the fyrd as the pref- 42 ENGLISH IDEAL OF VOLUNTARY SERVICE erable of two evils. An institution, whicli had itself been unpopular, the people now cherished in their memory. In contrast with the new order it seemed decidedly liberal and compara- tively free from the objections of the feudal system. The representatives of the new mili- tary institution were soldiers from birth; and being the oppressors of a vassal people, they brought disrepute upon the military profession in the minds of the lower classes. Most of the fighting in which the common people of England were called upon to engage during the Middle Ages was distinctly intra- national or internal in character, and even when a king summoned his military chieftains to assemble their feudatories for a war against the so-called national enemy, the cause of conflict was, more often than not, one in which the people had little real interest ; it was at best an unpopular cause. The military vassals were primarily plain civilians — their welfare lay in peace. The military service they were called upon to render their feudal lords became a bur- den by reason of its frequency, and the utter lack of personal interest among the fighting men in the petty quarrels of their leaders. There was nothing in such service to appeal to 43 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC the patriotism of the people — only hardships rewarded them for their service. But the Brit- ish subject was required to pay his rent with his ** sword and buckler/' and when the land-, lord called for the use of the vassaPs good right arm, with a curse and a groan the plow was left in the furrow. It was not long before the feudal system re- acted upon those who benefited most from it. The feudal barons, who, in their petty, internal struggles, laid such a heavy burden upon their vassals, were in turn required with increasing frequency to support their king in war. The same complaint which the people made against the barons, the barons now began to make against the king. So long as military service was restricted to their own selfish ends, well and good, but they strenuously resisted the de- mands of the overlord. Objecting as they did at an early day to being led out of the King- dom, it was King John's insistence upon for- eign service that led to Runnymede. Feudalism, so inseparably associated with military power in the minds of the people, was in its very nature destructive of human liberty. The possession of military power by irrespon- sible barons was an incitement to its use by 44 ENGLISH IDEAL OF VOLUNTARY SERVICE them in the settlement of private feuds; the imperfect subjection of vassals, only slightly less powerful than their lords, led to frequent resistance on their part; and the absence of a strong central government, resulting from the delegation of sovereign rights, diminished the power of the nominal ruler to such an extent that general order could not be maintained. The feudal castle was no more nor less than an armory — a seat of military power — and though held in the name of the king, it was a base of operations to despoil and tyrannize over the surrounding country. The banner that floated from its embattled walls embodied no hope or aspiration of the lowly who watched it from their squalid huts — to them it was but the sym- bol of oppression. The flag they were called upon to serve aroused no lofty sentiments in their breasts, nor was the chieftain's standard in any sense emblematic of that protection in token of which a national flag is now designed. With the advent of the thirteenth century new institutions began to evolve and found them- selves everywhere repressed by feudalism. Town life, trade, commerce, and a well-to-do middle class grew up with the increase of popu- lation, and gradually, with the aid of the urban 45 ^THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC classes, the feudal order was overthrown and the old Saxon institution of the militia was re- established in improved form. Indeed, the fyrd played no small part in the success of the Mng in reducing the feudal barons to submission to law and order ; and for that reason the militia system was more highly prized than ever by the people. Although Henry VI. did, in 1449, employ a small mercenary force of Italian and German — ^^Brabazon'' — soldiers, with which to suppress Jack Cade, the distrust of a standing army of mercenaries was deep-rooted in the British soul. Released from military oppression the British people, cherishing their inherited prej- udices against the old order, resolved never more to countenance military domination. Dis- taste for permanent military service in every form became traditional with the race. For three centuries the militia was the sole reliance of England for defense. Removed by the isolation of the realm from the maelstrom of continuous inter-state strife in central Eu- rope, the wars of the Continent had no tend- ency to evolve in England a greater measure of central military power than the militia system afforded. In order that they might contend 46 ENGLISH IDEAL OF VOLUNTARY SERVICE more successfully with their neighbors, and in as much as centralized power was essential to the existence of their States, the people of Europe submitted more or less willingly to the process of military centralization. But in Eng- land, where frequent encroachments from the outside did not intervene to compel the sur- render of individual liberties in the common de- fense, the democratic spirit prevailed. Indeed, not only were the very causes which led the people of the Continent to accept military rule almost entirely absent, but in England the people, arguing from their old experiences, be- lieved that the centralization of military power could mean for them only a compulsory sur- render, without compensatory advantages, of self-government. Consequently they retained all military power in themselves and relied upon the ancient militia system rather than upon a trained and permanent army at the beck and call of a ruler or caste. The repugnance of the English people for a standing army is apparent in a long line of con- stitutional decisions and statutes of the Eealm. There are many early statutes protesting against the laws of the Forest, and prohibiting martial law. 47 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC James I., autocratic and imperious by na- ture, ignored the traditional sentiments of his people, and undertook to buttress his usurpa- tions of authority by the organization of trained bands of soldiery. Martial law was reestab- lished by him, and with the aid of their mer- cenary troops he and his son, Charles I., sub- jected their subjects to many military oppres- sions. The Petition of Eights forcefully sets forth the protests of the English people against the tyrannical abuses of the Stuarts. The Eng- lishmen viewed with alarm the establishment of a standing army in their midst and were quick to attribute thereto the evils of which they com- plained. Again did a standing army appear to them to be the inevitable instrument of tyranny. And so they wrote into their Constitutional Bill of Eights (A. D. 1689) the following signifi- cant clause : **That the raising or keeping a standing army, within the Kingdome in time of peace, un- less it be with the consent of Parleament, is against the law.*' The English Bill of Eights was a national writ embodying the experience and the fears of a race of free, liberty-loving men. The pro- test it promulgated was on the lip of every 48 ENGLISH IDEAL OF VOLUNTARY SERVICE Briton and has ever remained a warning to the would-be usurpers of British popular in- stitutions, among which voluntary military service was for long cherished as a democratic ideal. The misconception as to the democratic nature of that ideal has at last been overcome — though not without a bitter struggle. 4A CHAPTER VI THE INHEKITED AMERICAN IDEAL A GREAT migration to the new world oc- curred in tlie seventeenth century, and British subjects brought with them their laws, their customs, and their prejudices to America. The subordination of the military to the civil power was quite as much a cardinal principle in the British Colonies as it was at home. Win- throp relates that when, during the Antinomian excitement, it was proposed to incorporate a military organization, the magistrates of Bos- ton reflected on the example of the Pretorian Band among the Romans and recalled the Templars of Europe. They thought *'how dan- gerous it might be to erect a standing authority of military men, which might easily in time overthrow the civil power," and resolved to *'stop it betimes.'' * The anxiety of the Colonists was ill-founded, * Winthrop, I., 305. 50 THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL for the industrial forces in colonial society so greatly outweighed the military as to effectu- ally remove the peril that was feared. It is true that all men in the Colonies were soldiers of necessity in their struggles with the hostile aborigines, and service in the militia at call was compulsory, but the compulsion was that which the Colonists imposed upon themselves in the interest of personal self-defense. They never dreamed of vesting with power a mili- tary institution beyond their immediate control. There were few real soldiers among them. A number who had received training in the European armies ventured to the Colonies with the first settlers, but their successors and the great body of their contemJ)oraries never gained any military experience save that which came from desultory Indian fighting or from an occasional muster. Officers and privates alike were civilians; they had been husband- men, artisans or small traders at home, for the most part, drawn from the very stratum of society in which the prejudice against pro- fessional soldiery was the quickest. In the Colonies there was no opportunity for the development of a military caste or spirit. Indian warfare at best entailed only an oc- 51 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC casional scout, march, or brief campaign. Time for training and service was necessarily taken, at considerable cost, from peaceful oc- cupations which, if they were to yield even a modest livelihood, demanded strenuous applica- tion and effort. Says Osgood: ** Families were large, resources were smalL Population was sparsely distributed. The home was often located in places where danger lurked, and where the presence of the grown men of the household was imperatively needed for protection. Fields must be planted and harvests gathered at the proper time, or the community would immediately suffer want. Under these conditions it was impossible for the Colonists to do more than organize a mili- tia system, which in a more or less crude way would meet the need for defense. Military law, like all other law, emanated directly or indi- rectly from the General Court. The commit- tees and administrative boards which controlled and directed the equipment of soldiers and di- rected their movements consisted in most cases of the same men who guided the affairs of the colony in civil relations. The officers were in 52 THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL many cases elected by the men — their neigh- bors — ^whom they commanded, and in all cases they derived their authority from an elective body. Under these conditions, combined with the limited resources both of the soldier and of the colonial treasury from which his wages were paid, and with the fact that the Com- missariat played a very subordinate part in the outfitting of a force, explain why it was that the military arrangements of the Colonies were crude, and their soldiery was unfit for long periods of active service. ' ' * The system thus outlined sufficed for the Colonists, and its adequacy to their needs only confirmed them in their inherited prejudices against a more permanent and efficient mili- tary system. It is true that the early militia system was based on the principle of the assize of arms, which implied the general obligation of all adult males to possess arms, and, with certain exceptions, to cooperate in the work of defense. But the obligation partook not so much of the nature of a cherished privilege as * The American Colonies in the 17th Century, Osgood, Vol. I., pp. 497, 498. Also see Bruce 's Institutional History of Vir- ginia m the 17th Century. 53 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC an unavoidable burden. In this duty, as in the payment of taxes, the distinction between the freeman and the non-freeman almost wholly disappeared. There was nothing in the system suggestive of universal service as a matter of cherished right among freemen. The conditions were such, indeed, that serv- ice in the common defense was more often than not rendered at the expense of the security of the individual soldiers' homes and property. The militia system of the Colonies, like the feudal system, had no attractions for the com- mon man. It could only have intensified the Colonists' dislike for all things military, and for military organization and discipline in par- ticular. These men and their sons established the customs of the incipient American States; their grandsons won with their blood the inde- pendence of those States and drafted their or- ganic laws. Into those laws passed the preju- dices of British men with the hatred of military service firmly imbedded in their souls. Wrote George Mason, of Virginia, into the Bill of Rights of the first Constitution adopted by an American State, nineteen days before the inde- pendence of the United Colonies was declared; 54 THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL '^That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free State; that standing armies in time of peace should be avoided as dangerous to liberty ; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power." Can it be doubted that Mason had before his eyes the English Bill of Rights when he under- took to draft the instrument which should em- body for all time the constitutional guarantees of British-born freemen? Thus was reflected that undying prejudice of Britons against the maintenance of armies in time of peace, only to be emphasized anew by Jefferson, who in his last message to Congress declared : ^'For a people who are free and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed mili- tia is their best defense." But all British-speaking men were not de- luded by their prejudices in favor of the obso- lete militia system. Wrote John Dryden in satirical vein of the adored citizen soldiery : 55 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC **And now in fields the rude militia swarms, Mouths without hands, maintain 'd at vast expense, Li peace a charge, in war a weak defence ; Stout once a month they march, a blustering band. And ever but in times of need at hand." In these lines Dryden but voiced the later experience of Washington with militia — the ex- perience of every man who has ever been called upon to command such troops. Wrote Washington to Congress : **To place any dependence upon militia is assuredly resting upon a broken staff.'' And referring in the same letter to the atti- tude of the people of the Colonies towards trained troops, he added ; **The jealousy of a standing army, and the evils to be apprehended from one, are remote, and, in my judgment, situated and circum- stanced as we are, not at all to be dreaded ; but the consequences of wanting one, according to my ideas, formed from the present view of things, is certain and inevitable ruin. For if I was called upon to decide upon oath whether the militia had been most serviceable or hurt- ful, upon the whole I should subscribe to the latter view. ' ' 56 THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL Washington was a wiser man than Mason or Jefferson, nor did prejudice blind his eyes and cause Mm to adopt as justifiable under changed conditions the inherited convictions of English- men. Mason and Jefferson looked only at the English Bill of Rights of 1689, and saw there the ancient inhibition against trained soldiery. They accepted it as a fact that soldiers are in- herently dangerous. Their conclusions were not based on any confirmatory experience, but were guided solely by the views of men living under an ancient order. "Washington thought for himself, and distinguished in his own mind between the hireling mercenaries of a despot, who gave rise to the inhibition in the English Bill of Rights, and a trained army composed of citizens, created and governed by the repre- sentatives of a free people. He saw no logical analogy between the two, or between the abuses of the feudal system of ancient England and the conditions likely to obtain in a modern Re- public. Mason and Jefferson failed to per- ceive that the character of the individuals com- prising a standing army might affect its charac- ter and its tendencies. Washington well un- derstood that the mere fact of adequate train- ing to enable citizens to defend themselves 57 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC against their enemies would not of itself cause them to attempt to usurp their own liberties! Mason and Jefferson were unwilling to credit their fellow citizens with that patriotism and love of country which as orators they so fre- quently sought to arouse and invoke for the common defense. Their mental processes on this point were strangely awry, as were the con- clusions of those whom they inlfluenced in their rigid and unreasoning prejudices against sol- diers who, in America, must needs possess a common interest with their fellow citizens. Mason and Jefferson are in no sense respon- sible, as we have seen, for those prejudices. Their views were but representative of those entertained by ordinary British minds of their times. In the constitution of Massachusetts, written in 1780, we read that in time of peace armies are dangerous to liberty. To such a sad plight did adherence to the old militia ideal bring the United States in 1814 that compulsory military service was then proposed as the only means of successfully con- tending with Great Britain. The framers of the proposed law had in mind the efficient new military system of Europe and saw in it, as Scharnhorst had done in Prussia, the hope of 58 THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL their country. But the American Democracy, led by Webster, tore asunder the wise proposal and characterized compulsory military service as illegal and unconstitutional, even declaring it to be the right of the States to prevent by force the execution of such a law. This mis- taken attitude on the part of one so powerful as Webster only confirmed the American view and caused the ancient prejudice to grip the people with renewed firmness. They paid no heed to Clay, who, with fine disregard of Ameri- can prejudice, retorted in answer to those who feared to create an adequate army, that he had no fear of a standing army even in peace, much less in war, and that he did not believe a stand- ing army of 25,000 men, even if corrupted by ambitious leaders, would be a threat to the free- dom of the Republic. And then they read with approval, in 1835, Tocqueville's primer of democracy in which the author declared that ** after all, and in spite of all precautions, a large army and a democratic people will always be a source of great danger; the most effectual means of diminishing that danger would be to reduce the army. . . .'' Yet, these same people had been compelled to resort to conscription in two wars, actually 59 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC paying the enforced conscripts for serving their country under a rigid compulsion ! They seem- ingly continued to repose their faith in a vol- untary system which had failed in every crisis to provide the necessary troops for the na- tional defense. Population had increased greatly before the outbreak of the Mexican War. So few troops were required in that war — about 100,000 — that the voluntary mercenary system was not over- taxed. The fact that 73,500 volunteers re- sponded to the call of the President seemed to establish beyond a doubt the efficacy of the old system. *^The events of these few months af- ford a gratifying proof,'' declared President Polk, *^that our country can, under any emer- gency, confidently rely for the maintenance of her honor and the defense of her rights on an effective force ready at all times voluntarily to relinquish the comforts of home for the perils and privations of camp. ' ' And to this he added that the ready response proved *Hhat our peo- ple love their institutions and are ever ready to defend and protect them.'' But what would this same President have had to say on this point two decades later? During the war between the States two dis- 60 THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL tinct sections of the American people were ar- rayed against each other in a life and death struggle for existence — such a struggle as has always brought a great majority of fighting men to the colors. Conditions are such in in- ternecine wars that men are under the strongest moral compulsion to take up arms. Yet, with a total population of approximately thirty-five miUion people, it required a combination of the voluntary mercenary, the conscriptive, and the bounty systems to bring three million men to the colors, of which number one million were furnished by the South with a military popula- tion of seven million whites. Thus, in the South one-seventh, and in the North less than one-twelfth of the population was in arms dur- ing the whole four years of the war, and never, perhaps, more than half this proportion during any given year. Conscription had to be adopted by the Confederate States in April, 1862, or at the close of the first year of the war, and in the Spring of 1863 by the Federal Government. In the United States proper, then, it became necessary to resort not only to a system of drafting, stoutly maintained by many authorities to have been unconstitutional in its unjust discriminations in favor of the 61 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC rich who were allowed to purchase their exemp- tion from service, but the law was most un- democratic in nature and repugnant to every principle of free government. There were many good and honest citizens in the Union and Confederate armies. This class did not suffice, however, for the national defense in the case of either belligerent. The humili- ating spectacle was presented to the world of peoples loudly partisan in the espousal of democracy being compelled to impress by force their fellow citizens into the armies of their republics and pay them for an enforced service which in Europe was, and is, more or less freely rendered from a patriotic motive alone. The devotion, the loyalty, and the heroic deeds of American volunteers, comprise many fine chapters of American History. But there are many dark pages from which we would fain avert our eyes, which recount the selfishness, the disloyalty, the unpatriotic attitude of an- other and larger class of American citizens in the three greatest wars of the Republic. We may justly doubt if a great crisis would find that class more willing than heretofore to re- spond to the nation's call. Has the increased ease, the muscular relaxation, the diminishing 62 THE INHERITED AMERICAN IDEAL homogeneity of the nation, made it easier for these men to surrender the luxuries of seden- tary life and manfully assume the burden of the soldier in the hour of his country's need? In answering this question we must not con- sider the spirit which would animate the for- ward, the strong of heart, those who would comprise the first million recruits, untrained but willing; the question is — ^Will the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth mil- lion harken to the bugle call of the EepublicI 63 CHAPTER Vn THE AMEBICAN MIUTABY SYSTEM WHILE all able-bodied citizens of America are liable, under the organic law of the United States, for military service in the mili- tia, universal liability to military service is a mere legal fiction, and there is no obligation upon the citizens to receive military training. The constitutional provision for universal ser- vice has never been even partially enforced. The American system is purely a voluntary mercenary one in practice, whatever it may be in theory. Nor is citizenship a requisite quali- fication for service. The system is based on the utterly fallacious conception that a citizen of a Republic, or a volunteer of foreign birth, should be engaged under private contract and paid on a scale relatively commensurate with the earn- ing capacity of the average citizen of the vol- unteer class in private life ; in other words that he who elects to serve in defense of his country 64 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM should be rewarded by the government for so doing. To the national mind there appears no incongruity in the practice of allowing the citi- zen to determine the extent of his own obliga- tion to the Republic and in his being paid by his fellow citizens for defending his own rights. The national obtuseness on this point would be inexplicable did we not know that the mer- cenary system had its origin at a time when a more or less complete lack of community of interest existed between government and gov- erned, sovereign and subjects. We have seen that under the Constitution all citizens of a specified age are liable to mili- tary service. Are we to assume that the defi- nite provisions of the Constitution are mean- ingless ? To understand the intent of any law one must consider carefully the circumstances attending its enactment. When the Constitution was drafted a large proportion of our citizens were fitted by the life they led to become capable soldiers with comparatively little actual train- ing. Their struggle with nature hardened their bodies and familiarized them with woodcraft and firearms. Most of them were horsemen, and great numbers of our Colonists were actu- 65 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC ally frontiersmen and, therefore, soldiers by nature. Organization and leadership alone were lacking to convert these men into a formidable military force. The framers of the Constitu- tion, therefore, and the State Legislatures, felt that a small standing army which would serve as a nucleus for a sudden expansion of the na- tional forces, was sufficient to the needs of the country, isolated as it was from hostile neigh- bors. They believed that time would always be available in case of danger in which to develop the militia, or citizens, into soldiers. The State troops, or semi-organized militia, retained by the several Colonies when they be- came States of the Union, were but an expres- sion of State sovereignty. There was really no such thing in 1787 as an American people in the present sense. On the contrary there were thirteen peoples, each intensely jealous of the political power of the other twelve. State troops were maintained because it was thought prudent by the States that some force should stand behind their individual Govern- ments, as a protection to the sovereign rights of those Governments against aggression from a foreign enemy, the central Government, or any other State government, as the case might 66 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM be. State troops were, in the highest sense of the words, but the expression of State sov- ereignty. To-day they are a relic of the past. They are superfluous as well as illogical, and far less efficient, and more expensive for in- terior police purposes than State constabula- ries. Great changes have occurred in the quality of the citizen soldiery authorized in the Con- stitution, as well as in the early political condi- tions which justified the maintenance of State troops. That degree of training and fitness for instant military service which nature for- merly conferred upon the citizens of the United States is, under present conditions, almost wholly lacking. In order, therefore, to make the citizenry of the Nation relatively as com- petent for national defense as it was at the time the Constitution was adopted, it is incum- bent upon the central Government to supply by artificial methods that which nature formerly provided. If this be not done, the Constitu- tional provisions become meaningless and of no effect. It was never contemplated by the framers of the Constitution that changed con- ditions should be allowed to reduce their scheme of national defense to a state of ineffectiveness. 67 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC Had they contemplated an inhibition against the actual training of the militia upon which the country was to rely, a system of training under which nature could be supplemented by science, most assuredly they would have em- bodied that restriction in the Constitution, or in the law of the land. Indeed, the circum- stances contemporaneous with the adoption of the Constitution seem to indicate that it is the present duty of the Federal Government to transform the citizenry of the Nation into a militia relatively as efficient in a military sense as it was in 1787, and to render our citizens relatively as efficient, the modem demands of military science must be thoroughly considered. Under the Constitution itself, the organic law of the land, there is no lack whatever of au- thority for the establishment of universal com- pulsory military service, unless the word mili- tia, as used therein, be construed to mean citi- zens incapable through lack of natural ability and training to do that demanded of them. Surely if these citizens are required by the Con- stitution to serve in the defense of their coun- try, it was expected by the- framers of that highly logical instrument that they would be capable of doing so. That they are not now 68 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM capable of defending their conntry against the superior skill of foreign armies, and the highly- developed military power of other States, will become apparent to any thinking man who in- telligently examines the facts. Nor can we safely rely npon a mercenary system of de- fense to make up for the military inefficiency of our citizen soldiery. The mercenary system was born of an age antecedent to the birth of nationalism, of a pe- riod in which there were peoples who acknowl- edged common rulers, but who asserted small claim to an ultimate sovereignty in themselves. The State was a poorly defined institution, and so shadowy was its form that title of popular right in the State hardly suggested itself to the loosely knit body of the people. Under such circumstances it was natural that military service should have been regarded more in the light of service to the Sovereign than as an ob- ligatory duty to themselves through the State or body politic. A claim, justly recognized, un- der the conditions obtaining when it was first asserted, has become invalid under altered cir- cumstances. All enlightened peoples have per- ceived this fact except the Americans, and they alone have failed to grasp the truth simply be- THE CALL OP THE REPUBLIC cause their govemment has not yet been called upon to render a degree of protection greater than it is capable of doing without the full strength of the Nation behind it. When States developed to that stage in which a true reciprocity between government and na- tionals came into being, a community of inter- est between the two was perceived to exist. The people rendered allegiance to the State be- cause the State was better able to protect them by its governmental agencies than they were ca- pable of defending themselves by individual action. It was a firmer allegiance to the State that made the State more able to protect its nationals. It was an increased community of interest among a people, gathered together un- der natural or artificial conditions, that caused them to render their collective allegiance for the common good. Gradually there was sub- scribed a contract between rulers and subjects, and however fervently the former may have de- nied the fact that such a compact existed, na- ture had witnessed the agreement and set her seal thereupon. At first the king regarded his subjects as slaves without interest in his estate. He pro- vided for the protection of his private estate 70 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM by summoning his slaves to its defense. To en- hance their interest in his personal affairs he rewarded them by a greater measure of per- sonal liberty, then by land grants, and finally by pecuniary remuneration. In time the free- men's attachment to the land which had been given him became so firm that, with his in- creased sense of liberty, he disputed over its title with his king. The king was after all not a divine being and his subjects had become numerous ; therefore, the king yielded under a compromise settlement in which he consented that the freeman should enjoy a joint right with him in the land in consideration of their prom- ised support and allegiance in defending the joint estate. If this theory of State and citizen be logical and correct, how can a people to-day who hold their national estate in fee simple, admitting no joint ownership therein with a ruler, justify a mercenary system of military service for de- fense? If upon the government of a Republic there rests the obligation of protecting the life and property of the citizen nationals, does not the duty of fulfilling that obligation rest wholly upon the ultimate sovereign of the State? And 71 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC who is the ultimate sovereign of a Republic but the body politic or the people? The cold logic of the foregoing analysis is recognized by the Constitution of the United States in that provision which makes all able- bodied men liable to military service. It has been completely ignored by the Government erected on the foundation of that Constitution, and the persistent neglect has been winked at by the people because, first, for many years they were blinded by a traditional prejudice, now happily outlived, and second, because to-day their moral and physical muscles have become flabby from disuse, or because their luxury and wealth would be disturbed by the performance of the inconvenient duty of defending them- selves! Why trouble to defend themselves in this democratic age, as did the Egyptians, the Romans, and the Greeks, when mercenaries of foreign blood may be hired like the Brabazon and Swiss soldiers of the dark ages to bear the burden of defense ! Story, Curtis, Burgess, and other conamenta- tors on the Constitution have done much to ha- bituate the American mind to the idea of a standing army, but there are those, even in our day, who with the political outlook of a parish 72 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM beadle, have offset with oratorical bluster and nonsensities the intelligent teaching of our le- gal scholars. It was but recently that Senator Teller profaned the senatorial temple with the monstrous caution that 'Hhe fighting force of a republic is the great body of the people, and not a paid soldiery called regulars. You must rely upon the people and not upon an army. An army is a vain delusion. It may to-day be for you; it may be against you to-morrow." Thus did this statesman of medieval thought aid in misleading the unthinking. Fully two centuries behind the times, he resorted to ancient rather than modem experience to sub- stantiate his glib assertions. Where, let us in- quire, can Senator Teller, or any one else, point to an example in American history to bear out his views? Did he not know that regular troops under Washington, himself a military dictator, established the liberties of America? Did he not know that regular troops saved the Republic at Bull Run, and that they have since served the nation with unequaled faithfulness? The American people profess to cherish their constitutional liberties — amendment of their Constitution has ordinarily been accomplished with great difficulty and in certain instances 73 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC only by the shedding of mnch blood. But in one great particular the Constitution has been silently amended by a gradual decay in the re- gard of the people for the democratic institu- tion of compulsory militia service. Such ser- vice has never been enforced, nor even de- manded by the Government, and regular troops alone have defended the country in time of peace. Indeed, the constitutional militia of the States has but recently been converted under the Hay Bill into an inadequate and semi-pro- fessional army, only partially trained it is true, but rewarded for its service by mercenary pay. Without the virtues of the militia which it was designed by the framers of the Constitution to be, with all the weaknesses of an ill-organized and untrained standing army, and subject to all the defects of the mercenary system, it now ex- ists as a monument to the popular liberties that have been sacrificed to political misconception and prejudice. It is neither a wholly national army nor a force belonging wholly to the States ; it is not a regular or standing army be- cause it is irregular and impermanent ; it is not militia, nor is it professional in character. One thing only it seems to be — ^mercenary — ^paid for its services by the State on an extravagant 74 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM scale of equality with trained, regular troops. The so-called American militia system has been developed to a stage of imperfection in which it can only serve to victimize the patriotic volun- teers who serve under it by rendering them hopelessly inefficient as a military force, and to victimize the innocent people who have been misled into reposing their confidence in it. And here it should be remarked that it is not the militiaman of America that is at fault. He has been subjected too long to the most unjust criticism. These same men become efficient in the regular army. They themselves are in no sense inherently lacking in soldierly qualities. It is the system nnder which they serve that renders them hopelessly inefficient until con- verted by long service into a standing army. The people of America owe their militiamen the highest respect for their self-sacrificing service under the most adverse conditions — conditions well calculated to demoralize seasoned and experienced troops. But they should loathe and repudiate the system that prevents these loyal citizens from serving their country to the best of the ability that is in them. Let us tol- erate no more criticism of our citizen soldiers, for they are but the vicarious sacrifice to ig- 75 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC norance and prejudice. The specious argument that untrained American citizens performed prodigies of valor in the war between the States is easily disposed of. They did perform valor- ous deeds but they only became efficient sol- diers in a school of bitter experience. The un- trained citizen soldiers of the North were called upon to combat the untrained citizen soldiers of the South. Both became regular, trained sol- diers while fighting against troops of their own quality. In the cruel process of training which they underwent more of the splendid volunteers were sacrificed to military ignorance, far re- moved from the conflict, than perished in bat- tle. The history of that great struggle is not a justification but an unanswerable condemnation of the American military system. The school teachers and anti-army people of America should read General Emory Upton's epitome of the military policy of the United States, the former in order that they may instruct aright American youth who are now steeped in the sentimental prevarications of school histories, the latter to the end of personal information concerning a subject requiring some slight knowledge on the part of those who would render the national defense even more precari- 76 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM ous than at present, and both for an enlarge- ment of the popular understanding of our na- tional military problems. In America there is a very practical objec- tion to the voluntary system in addition to the general objections which have already been cited. Under the American system profes- sional learning and professional training are al- most wholly confined to the very small volun- teer army. Behind that army stands no avail- able trained force for instant service. Conse- quently, in the event of a great emergency re- quiring so small an army to bear the first shock of war, the casualties would be confined to the trained ofiicers and men to whom the country must look for the rapid organization and train- ing of the militia and the national volunteers. This is what actually occurred in the case of Great Britain in 1914, and the British army was many times larger than is the American army. In the course of three months a great propor- tion of the trained British officers and men were wiped out by reason of the overwhelming and unreasonable burden that was thrown upon them. Any system that thus feeds away the military seed corn of a nation is uneconomical and foolhardy. 77 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC It will hardly be denied that any war of seri- ous proportions in which the United States might become involved, would necessitate the calling into the field of a million men. Mr. Bryan asserts that that number of volunteers would respond in a trice. Assuming that this is possible, and that the first line or regular troops were not immediately involved, either the regular army would be seriously crippled by withdrawing the requisite number of trained general, field, and staff officers from the first line for the proper organization and training of the untutored volunteers, or the latter would have to flounder about hopelessly in the school of bitter experience, at great expense to them- selves and the nation, in blood and time. Con- ditions of warfare have so changed as to neces- sitate the mobilization of nations rather than small armies, and a limited peace army no longer possesses the expansive power necessary to mold and absorb the citizen volunteers upon the advent of war. But this is not all. In the organized militia of the United States is found in time of peace a large proportion of the citizens who possess natural taste combined with proper qualifica- tions for military service. Being the first 78 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM available reserve for tlie standing army, these men would naturally be rusbed into the first line of defense and thus be compelled to share in the abnormal losses always incident to the outbreak, whether from casualties in a quick succession of violent conflicts, physical break- down due to abnormal exertion, or disease. Thus would be sacrificed those who, next to the professional soldiers, are best fit to constitute the commissioned personnel of the second line or volunteers. Inadequate and incomplete as their militia training may have been, the men who comprise the better militia regiments are more efficient than troops with no training at all, and among the forward, the loyal, the en- thusiastic militiamen is always to be found material capable of high development. The ex- isting system simply ignores these possibilities ; it is lavishly extravagant in its wastefulness of the nation's resources of officers and men. The modern social science has never been applied by American statesmen to the problem of national defense — the most vital of all social problems, for upon an effective and successful system of defense the happiness and welfare of a national society depend. The view of the extreme Pacifists or Disarma- 79 THE CALL OF THE EEPUBLIC mentists that an army is a useless thing and uneconomic in its nature may be correct. One thing is certain : an army actually in existence, and maintained at vast expense, is even more uneconomic if inefficient than when highly pro- ficient. So long as the military institution seems warranted in the eyes of government it would seem desirable, even to the disarmamen- tists, to maintain it upon the most economical basis, both from the material and social stand- points. There is no social justification or sound economic reason for the military institution of the United States as presently constituted. It is a social and economic anomaly only explica- ble by a complete lack of scientific consideration on the part of statesmen of the national prob- lem of defense, coupled with the unreasoning prejudices of the people which cause them to ignore the counsel of military men who under- stand that problem in the light of modern science. To the recent military legislation there are many objections from a purely military stand- point. It is not designed here to encroach upon the province of the technical authorities, but it should be pointed out that the Hay Bill pro- vides for the establishment of the organized 80 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM militia on the basis of population, making of it a territorial force. The result is that where the population is densest the militia will be most numerous, a condition which has no regard for the strategic necessities of defense. It so hap- pens that the country is most subject to land- invasion where population is very thin; there- fore, in quarters where it is strategically most vulnerable it will be the most poorly defended. Congress has failed so far to distinguish be- tween the potential military strength of the nation, which is very great, and its actual strength. It has failed to perceive the great truth enunciated by the philosopher. Bacon, that ** number itself, in armies, importeth not much. ' ' It is the strength in being that counts — the actually developed power. An army of vast size, as a whole, is nothing more than a series of small forces, if broken up and distrib- uted in fractions incapable of being concen- trated for joint action. The power of the Amer- ican army must be gauged by the number of trained troops that can be united promptly at a given point. On paper the regular army of the United States to-day numbers about 100,- 000 men ; its actual military strength is that of about forty thousand men at the most, includ- 81 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC ing the best equipped and trained militia troops, for a greater number could not be in- stantly assembled at any one point. The problem with which the people of the United States must deal is one of statics. Our untrained and partly trained fighting men may be likened to potential energy; our small regu- lar or standing army to kinetic or developed, moving energy. Time is required to transform potential into kinetic energy. Formerly the sur- rounding seas, through the barrier to invasion which they interposed, insured the necessary time for the transformation ; to-day those same seas, instead of being a protection, afford a means of rapid and secret transportation to our shores. Few peoples would assume to engage in war with the United States, or with China, if the whole potential strength of either of these were fully developed. No Power fears China, and almost any great Power could inflict tre- mendous losses upon the United States — for de- fense contemplates force in being, not poten- tial force, and the time requisite to the trans- formation is exactly what an enemy would not allow a country of such unlimited undeveloped resources. In the United States there exists a peculiar 82 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM need for a national army. So diverse are the race elements, the sectional interests, and the local traditions of the people inhabiting the land, that some great common interest is nec- essary to fuse the conglomerate mass into an American people with a truly national spirit — the same in New England, the South, the Mid- dle West, and on the Pacific Coast. Every stu- dent of political science tells us that the ten- dency of the Congressional system of our Gov- ernment is to make the representatives of the people local in their attachments. It is for this reason that statesmen in the broad, national sense are so rarely found in our political life; our system simply does not develop them as does the Parliamentary system under which a political leader is the representative of all the people without regard to their narrow, sec- tional interests. The ^^Pork-barrel," which seems to play so large a part in our national politics, is the logi- cal result of the narrow representative system on which Congress is based. Some great, coun- teracting influence would seem to be desirable in order to impress upon the people of all sec- tions the fact that the Federal Government is entitled to a common service on their part in re- 83 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC turn for the bounty which it yields so liberally. Some great institution is necessary to the life of the Nation which will federalize the spirit of our people, and no institution suggests itself that is so eminently adapted to this purpose as a national army in which Federal service is compulsory. Who can doubt that the devotion of two or three years of their lives to the na- tional cause would generate in the breasts of our citizens a deeper and a higher affection and respect for the flag which demanded of them the common sacrifice? Who can doubt that out of the common sacrifice of American citizens would grow an enlarged community of national interest among them? The results suggested are obtainable by means of a large national army. They can never flow from a small standing army, nor from a localized militia, however perfectly trained the latter may be. The very idea that military ser- vice is local in its obligation would subvert the fundamental advantages of national service which have already been outlined. There has been much written and said during the past few years about national defense. As yet little has been said to the people themselves concerning the ideal system of national de- 84 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM fense. It would seem as if those who knew, feared to speak prematurely, and have, through a mistaken caution, withheld what was in their minds. But the time has come when it is not only politic to speak out the truth, but when it is the duty of public men so to do. Let them no longer fear the organized, political influence of the National Guard. The militia has been completely disillusioned. They have paid the price of knowledge in experience, and a very bitter experience at that. They have learned from the recent mobilization of the so-called National Guard, the utter futility of depending for national defense, the real purpose of a * * Na- tional Guard, ' ' upon troops that must be trained and equipped after the national danger arises. They now know that no system of defense is efficient or adequate to our needs that neces- sarily contemplates the creation of a defensive force on the instant ; that defense does not con- template potential strength, but actual devel- oped strength. They see that for an army to possess the latter it must be in being prepared in advance. They have learned that the old militia system is utterly vicious, and they be- lieve that they are merely the victims of a vi- cious system which renders inefficient in large 85 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC measure the fine material composing the mili- tia. They know that the men of the militia are inefficient, not for any reason inherent in them- selves, but simply because of the system which makes it impossible for them to obtain efficiency. We have unbounded admiration and respect for the splendid patriotism of our militiamen who have abandoned their personal obligations without thought of themselves. We should loathe and detest the system which reduces the sacrifices of these superb young men to noth- ing more nor less than economic waste. Un- der a proper system there would be no such waste. Is it unreasonable to contend that any system which causes * ' seed com to be fed to cattle ' ' is wasteful? The militia is composed of young men, capable in many cases of becoming com- missioned officers for the discipline and training of a national army. Assume that our militia is thrown into a serious campaign. Before a national army could be recruited the proper material for its officers would have been use- lessly consumed as enlisted men in the militia. Thus, the national army would be deprived of the best material now in the country for its offi- 86 THE AMERICAN MIJjITARY SYSTEM cers, namely, the young men who comprise the better militia organizations to-day. We have seen how wasteful is the present militia system of the partly trained personnel — of those to whom the country must needs look for officers for its volunteers in event of war. The defect already discussed is a glaring one. But in the existing military institution there is a far more serious fault which seems all the more apparent when we contemplate the vast numbers of modern armies. There may be many persons who doubt the probability of this country being drawn into a war. Even these will hardly deny that, should the nation become involved in hostilities with a great power, a million men would be called to the colors as a minimum. The nation has had it impressed upon it how long it would take to mobilize, equip, and train such a force. The old belief that thirty days would suffice for the purpose has, fortunately, been dispelled, yet, while our volunteers were being assembled the small regular army, including as it does prac- tically all the trained officers and men of the na- tion, would be required to bear the distressing burden of defending the country. Whence would come the skilled leaders and trained organizers 87 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC for the volunteers? Either the regular army would have to be drained of officers, and thereby rendered inefficient, or the volunteers would be committed, as they have been with such direful results in the past, to the ignorance of officers who would be themselves but novices in the game of war. In either case the defensive abil- ity of the country would be very weak, for the finest corps of trained officers could not be ex- pected to produce trained soldiers in the time that a strong enemy would allow them. It is not an exaggeration to say that if all the offi- cers in the present regular establishment were withdrawn from it and assigned to the task of training one million volunteers, those troops would be incapable of efficient service in sixty days. And suppose this were done? What would become of the first line of defense? So essential to the security of the country is the regular army that it must, in event of war, be maintained in the highest possible state of efficiency. Its organization simply must not be destroyed by drafting large numbers of offi- cers from it. They must remain with our only trained troops and bear the disproportionate burden that would fall upon them. And this 88 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM conclusion brings us to the consideration of another serious question. Losses in the early stages of a war are al- ways excessive for many reasons. The best trained troops have much to learn from experi- ence of actual service in war. The excessive losses which would result from the first con- flicts, even assuming that our arms were suc- cessful, would not be distributed proportion- ately among the officers and men of the first line and the various reserves, as they are in Europe where armies are at once expanded under the national army system. Our reserve forces, comprised only of untrained volunteers and partially trained militia, would not be able to engage in the first conflicts. Thus, the losses that would fall upon us would be restricted al- most entirely to our few trained troops, and in a twinkling we would lose a large part of the only experienced officers in the country. This is but one of the many weaknesses of a system that contemplates the utilization of a small trained army for the first line of defense ; a sys- tem which not only sacrifices the trained sol- diery of the country, but robs the untrained vol- unteers of the skilled leadership of officers trained in time of peace. 89 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC The principles of economy must be applied to the problem of national defense just as they are applied to industrial enterprises. No cap- tain of industry would assume to operate a vast industrial enterprise on so wasteful a basis, wasteful both in men and material, as the one at the foundation of our system of national de- fense. A national army alone can afford the requisite expansive ability for our first line or highly trained troops — it alone will conserve to the nation the military skill and the experi- ence which is acquired by it in time of peace. Compulsory universal military service^ with liberal exemptions for educational purposes at schools and colleges where military training is given, and in the case of dependencies and phys- ical unfitness, is the only honest, fair, and eco- nomical system, of defense, and withal it is the only real democratic system. It is coming, and coming soon. Demos cries aloud for it, here, in the only country of importance in the world where it has not been adopted. The men who are now being sacrificed in the militia are going to see that it does come. Meantime they are going to do their duty to the best of their ability, and it will be done by them as well as possible 90 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM for them to do it under the circumstances — and not one whit better. The mistake is very commonly made that a national army based on manhood service is an autocratic institution. As a matter of fact, the conception that with manhood suffrage goes hand in hand the obligation of manhood service, is, we have seen, a purely democratic one. A standing army, in the old sense, is an instru- ment of autocratic origin, and is far more dan- gerous to the liberties of a people, through its misuse by a ruler or governing class, than is a national army composed of the youthful citizens of the country who owe their allegiance to the body politic rather than to its chief executive and pay-master. Our press and public men have a rare oppor- tunity to render their country a service. A full and fair presentation of the facts of the present system will disclose its complete inadequacy. Nor will the thinking militiaman misconstrue such a policy as an attack upon them, for they know full well the essential limitations of the National Guard — they have had these limita- tions demonstrated to them in a very forceful way. The proposed continental army is but a make- 91 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC shift — impracticable and visionary. The mili- tia was right in opposing it, but the militia sys- tem is equally inadequate, for it is based upon population. In other words, the sections of the country where population is most dense will have the most militia. And yet those sec- tions most exposed to land-attack are thinnest in population, and, therefore, the most vulner- able under the present system, when they should be the most strongly defended. At one time it was thought to be prudent to maintain state troops to safeguard State rights against centralized power. The very act of turning over the State troops to the Federal Grovernment for training and exclusive use is an admission by the people that the old system is obsolete and unnecessary. If, therefore, the Federal Government is to control our forces ab- solutely and is responsible for the national de- fense, it should have full authority to measure up to its responsibilities. It can never do that under the present hybrid system of employing State troops that are not really State troops, and Federal troops that are national in name only. The tenacity with which the American people now cling to the mercenary system, even sub- 92 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM sidizing their ancient, popular militia institu- tion, because neither citizens nor foreigners in sufficient numbers will longer serve the country without pay, is evidence of the dire need of im- mediate reform. Let us trust that for the pres- ent, and until the American people abandon their fatuous course — their valorous ignorance — that a danger as great as that which has of late threatened to destroy the democracies of Europe, will not more successfully imperil the destiny of America. The national mind should be prepared to accept that bitter truth which Britain has been forced to acknowledge. A belief in and the recognition of actual danger must come before the old prejudices will be abandoned, for in spite of the oft-expressed wisdom of Washington, w^ho, from his experi- ence, was able to plead in good faith for a better defense than untrained militia affords, and who endeavored in vain to convince his countrymen that their fears of trained soldiery were ill- founded, in spite of the fervent pleas of Hamil- ton, and Jay, and Adams, and Clay, the Ameri- can people have clung tenaciously to their old, inherited British prejudices, which the British themselves have been compelled to cast aside at last — ^but not until a bitter penance had been 93 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC paid by them for their blind adherence to an obsolete principle. Is it too mnch to say that the American peo- ple, unless they profit by the experiences of all other nations — all — now that Great Britain has adopted compulsory military service — wiU pay the price that their mireasoning prejudices threaten to exact ? Washington, the creator of our liberties, the founder of our State, the father of our nation, warned his people in solemn words against their blind reliance upon the voluntary system of defense. Said he: *' Regular troops alone are equal to the ex- igencies 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 neces- sary to resist a regular force. The firmness for the real business of fighting is only to be attained by a constant course of discipline and service. ' * I have never yet been a witness to a single instance that can justify a different opinion, and it is most earnestly to be wished that the liberties of America may no longer be trusted, .94 THE AMERICAN MILITARY SYSTEM in a material degree, to so precarious a de- fense. ' ' The warning of Washington is clearly before his country. It is in the power of the American people to obey his counsel. Let the citizens of America, and not its foreign population, pro- vide the national defense. Let them bring into being that national army based on compulsory service which the constitution provides for. Let them train this army under the democratic Eu- ropean system by calling the junior citizens to the colors in time of peace, thus providing the regular troops which Washington pleaded for, without in any way abolishing the constitutional militia system. Washington did not demand a mercenary army — only a trained army. Nor did he condemn a citizen army, but only an un- trained one. Let us harken to the words of the great Pa- triot Father as they come to us across the gulf of time that separates the first revolution of American thought from that through which the nation soon must pass. 95 CHAPTER VIII THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION THE reader has already been introduced to some of the arguments for and against universal compulsory military service. It is well, however, in concluding this study to ex- amine the nature, working and effects of this enlightened system. A citizen army is commonly understood to be what in America is called militia, a military force composed of citizens who in theory are under compulsion to serve, or who in practice are allowed by the State to devote part of the leisure their occupations afford them to mili- tary exercises, so as to be able when their coun- try calls to take the field as soldiers. When society was primitive and all men were soldiers in the sense that their muscles were hard and weapons were familiar to them from early youth, the militia system was adequate. Not the least reason for its effectiveness was the 96 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION fact that no other more efficient system existed. But when war became a scientific profession citizen soldiers, or warriors who devoted their leisure only to military training, found them- selves utterly unable to cope with regularly maintained troops. **It is well known,'' says Seeley, ^*how empty is the commonplace of rhetoric which represents their untutored patriotism as more than a match for trained skill. Scharnhorst, the originator of the modern system, was under no such de- lusion. He well knew that a citizen army com- posed of young peasants and young tradesmen or mechanics, would not prove a better match for the trained conscripts of Napoleon than were the old Prussian soldiers, unless that army was as thoroughly trained as a professional army." But how is it possible for the whole manhood of a nation to be made into professional sol- diers? How is it possible to give to every indi- vidual, not merely some little practice in han- dling arms, but a complete physical and mili- tary training as well? How is it possible to impart discipline to an entire race and make every individual think, and feel, and act as a part of the great corporate whole. This was 97 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC the problem presented to Scharnhorst, and it was one which had never, perhaps, in any coun- try been seriously considered before his time. A citizen-soldier, in the old sense of the word, was no great burden on the Government. Called out only occasionally, he practically supported himself, and imposed no overwhelming expense upon the State while in its service. But pro- fessional soldiers must be supported, for they abandon all other pursuits for the military vo- cation. The modem citizen or national army does not, therefore, resemble a militia, but a standing army, in the demand it makes upon the yearly budget of the State. Nevertheless, there is a great difference between a national army and that of America in respect to its cost. In the latter army service is engaged under a vol- untary contract ; rate of pay is based on an en- tirely different principle from that which dic- tates the amount of compensation for a na- tional conscript. In the citizen-army the pay of soldiers is merely the amount necessary for their support, and may be lowered according to the circumstance of the social and economic conditions prevailing in the State, whereas the pay of voluntary soldiers is the amount that will 98 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION induce the necessary number of men to aban- don civil vocations. But what becomes of industry and agricul- ture with all men in the military service? The training necessary to form a professional soldier does not require him to be withdrawn from civil pursuits forever, but only for a given time, and this time need not be very long if the training is intensive. It, comprises but a brief period of a man's lifetime. The essential thing is that it be given continuously until the citizen becomes a soldier in habit of thought and dis- ciplined action for the remainder of his life, and is thus prepared to reassume the duties of a skilled professional at his country's call. Only a brief annual rehearsal is necessary to pre- serve this skill when once acquired. This being so, the young man who has not yet acquired the full responsibilities of life is the one taken for a continuous period of training, passing on to the reserve when his military habits are formed. In the reserve he is subject only to a brief annual training in peace time, but he is liable to be called to the colors instantly to swell the active ranks in an emergency. And then there is the second reserve, or Landwehr, and the third reserve, or Landsturm, to which 99 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC the soldiers are attached as they progress in age, subject to call successively as the exigen- cies may require. Under such a system all men must be at one time the equivalent in eflficiency of the professional soldier, and when released from active service with the colors they re- main in the army until past the serviceable age, retaining a degree of proficiency varying in- versely as their length of service. Thus, the whole manhood of the State is kept in the mili- tary service and rendered instantly available as soldiers with the minimum of expense and at the least possible inconvenience to and inter- ference with the private vocations of the citi- zens. And here we should remark that this system obviates the necessity of depending upon vol- untary service. Armies are too large to-day for a State to have to depend upon voluntary enlistment. There are no longer multitudes of men, as formerly, to whom military service is a last resort for subsistence ; public order, which everywhere reigns, has greatly diminished this class, and few men worth having enter a volun- teer army nowadays with the thought of pecu- niary gain foremost in their minds. The devel- opment of industry has provided employment 100 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION for all who can and, will work; education lias reduced the number of social skulkers ; and vol- unteers in time of peace are only to be had to- day by persuasive and disgusting advertising propaganda, which is a reflection on the nation that tolerates it, or by reason of some peculiar taste for a military life among those who volun- teer. Obligatory service is, therefore, the only effective means of securing the defense of the State, and this being so, the tax of blood has come to be regarded in all enlightened countries but one, as a burden to be equally distributed among all the citizens. The spirit of armies has been greatly modi- fied by the general introduction of the conscrip- tive system in Europe, and notwithstanding the predictions of those who first opposed it in al- most every country, that spirit has been en- nobled. It is impossible to compare an army composed of young men nurtured in a spirit of order and obedience with one in which a mi- nority only is animated by the love of country and the majority is drawn from the lower strata of life. How much better is the public secured, and how much more elevated is the spirit of the army bound to be, when the national de- fense is confided to those who regard military 101 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC service as a high and important civic duty. **The young man who is designated by lot, peaceable in his habits, may leave his family with grief ; but the warlike spirit, so natural to man, soon animates him; he then cherishes noble thoughts ; he becomes greater in his own eyes; he is faithful, devoted, and finds in the good opinion of his officers and of his compan- ions the reward of his sacrifice, his labors, and his dangers." * Plausible efforts have always been made by American demagogues and the popular idols of the people to maintain the voluntary system in the affections of their constituents, adducing much sentimental twaddle in evidence of its highly democratic nature and its peculiar fit- ness for a free people. But the real advantages of a system which tends to fill the ranks with fighting men only, and entrusts a nation ^s vital interests to hands which may or may not be worthy, according to the social unrest and eco- nomic pressure of society, are inconsiderable in comparison with the benefits of national con- scription. By this assertion is meant no reflec- tion upon the magnificent volunteer regular * Marmont. 102 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION troops that have so far sufficed to police our borders and dominions. The inherent right which every society pos- sesses to personal service from its members is undoubted. It is recognized in all enlightened political constitutions, including that of the United States. Since an army is instituted for the maintenance of the highest welfare of the State, the obligation to military service is the most just and the most important of all those which are the consequences of social compact. The system of obligatory service being the only one compatible with the present state of civilization, let us now examine into the con- siderations by which its practical working should be regulated for the greatest benefit both of the American people and the American State. The age at which young men are to be called upon to serve should be fixed at that period when they may be supposed to be possessed of abundant physical strength to sustain the fa- tigues of training — and possible war. This age is almost universally fixed at twenty or there- abouts; to require earlier service from them would halt their education, impair their health, and fill the hospitals rather than the ranks. The next point to be determined is the dura- 103 THE CALL OP THE REPUBLIC tion of service. This involves two conflicting interests : that of the army, which would keep the conscript long enough to make him the equal of the best trained foreign soldiers ; that of the people, who would abridge as much as possible the term of service with the colors. The ele- ments of compromise are usually contained in the following considerations : Firstly, they con- sult the military spirit of the nation; the cus- tomary and prescribed training which the aver- age young man undergoes in school, their phys- ical and intellectual aptitudes, and conse- quently their fitness for and congeniahty to military instruction. Secondly, deducting the time required for instruction in each of the three arms, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, the duration of service is then fixed in such manner that the State may have, for a certain length of time, the benefit of their proficiency, reserving the power of calling upon them, as well quali- fied soldiers, at least a year longer than the actual period, requisite for instruction. In America service with the colors for a term of two years would be, under all the circumstances, not too long. Thirdly, the training and instruc- tion of the conscripts should also have a view to their welfare after leaving the colors, and they 104 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION should return to civil life young enough to create for themselves a favorable position in competition with their fellows, and secure an independent future. The third consideration relates to the number of men annually to be called to the colors for training. This must vary with the condition of the country and the requirements of the mo- ment. The policy governing the annual draft should be highly elastic. When industrial con- ditions impose heavy demands upon the ranks of labor, the military ranks should respond, but when unemployment is extensive, as it always is in periods of industrial depression, the surplus workers should be absorbed by the army. Such a flexibility of the drafting system would solve many social problems and minimize hindrance to the solution of the economic problems of the country. No violently sudden and demoraliz- ing fluctuations would probably occur. Assume that the size of the national army is fixed at 500,000 men, and service with the colors at two years. The annual draft would be only about 200,000, approximately, a number little larger than that now proposed to be drawn from the ranks of industry for the regular army. Volun- tary enlistment would supply the remaining 105 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC 50,000 men. No one will seriously argue that the economic conditions of the country would be disturbed by so small a draft. The fourth question refers to the mode of raising the annual contingent or yearly class of recruits. When the number has been deter- mined, it should be apportioned among the States according to the population of the last census, and by the States among the counties and towns on a similar basis. The most demo- cratic way of determining the selection of the individual recruits is by lot, for official choice is too much subject to local abuses. Eeasonable exemption, not by class, or from social considerations, however, is essential to any practical and well-ordered system of con- scription. Exemptions are of two kinds, the first in the interest of the State, the second in the interest of the individual citizens and their families. The State must decline young men who have not the size, strength, or ability to bear arms, or who are morally unfit for the mili- tary service. The families are entitled to re- tain among them such men as are necessary for the support of aged and infirm parents, and also those whose brothers are already in the army, or have been killed or mutilated in combat. A 106 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION family which has furnished a soldier who has been killed in the service of his country, or which has one of its members in training, has manifestly made a liberal contribution to the common welfare. Young men who desire to enter professions which are essential to society and confer a public benefit upon the State, such as the priesthood, public instruction, etc., should be given a dispensation which differs from exemption in as much as the latter is final and the former conditional, expiring with the reason for which it was given. All young men who enter schools where military training and instruction is given should receive dispensa- tion and be enrolled under proper conditions as officers of the second reserve upon the comple- tion of their educational course. Voluntary enlistment on the part of those exempted with pay should be allowed, and also substitution, so controlled as to prevent the pos- sibility of abuses creeping in. Every man should have the right to serve one year without re- ward, on condition of equipping and maintain- ing himself at his own charge during his ser- vice, and joining the second reserve upon his discharge. The expense thus saved would be sufficient to provide for the voluntary enlist- 107 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC ment pay of others. The voluntary class, com- posed of seasoned and tested professional sol- diers, would furnish the experienced non-com- missioned officers requisite for the discipline of the conscripts. After two years with the colors the conscripts should pass into the reserve and for five years remain liable to be recalled to the colors, and receive practical training in their old regiments for a month each year. The service of the reservist would extend to his twenty-seventh year. The average citizen has not acquired the full responsibilities of life before that age. At twenty-seven the soldier should pass on to the second reserve for a service of seven years with only occasional training, and at thirty-four into the third reserve, subject to no training, and at forty-five be finally discharged from the army. A standing army of 500,000 men would be in- stantly increased to about 1,500,000 well-trained men, all under twenty-seven years of age, by calling the first reserve to the colors, and by summoning the second reserve, to about 2,800,- 000, while the entire national army would total not less than 4,000,000 men, all of whom had 108 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION served with the colors and become trained sol- diers. Statisticians claim that there are 15,- 000,000 or more men in the United States of military age, all of whom are liable for military service under the Constitution. The national army which has been outlined would, in time of peace, require the service of but one man in every thirty, and in time of war with the whole army in service, but one man in every four, a proportion considerably smaller than that which the army of the United Kingdom bears to its male population at the present time. We have considered the military advantages of a national army. Let us now review the social advantages to the State of such an army. The possession of a powerful and well-disci- plined army is of great social benefit to a State, for it provides a popular school, not only for training soldiers but for cultivating in the body politic manly virtues in an age when business and pleasure often cause higher ideals to be forgotten. The system of universal service never proves repugnant to normal men. It is the normal man and not the ^^ Quakers'' of life that social institutions must be adapted to. The system we have outlined provides an outlet for 109 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC the abnormal citizen with just grounds for ex- oneration from service. It also provides a great training school for the industrial apprentices of the nation. True, it does not train them in the work of industry, but it does prepare their minds and their bodies for a better competition in the strife of life. It is a distinct moralizer of men and, therefore, confers upon them a lasting benefit. John Stuart Mill said that until the indus- trial workers performed their functions in the same orderly way in which soldiers were ac- customed to labor, industry would never be moralized. Universal military service disci- plines the future industrial workers of a nation and imparts to them habits of obedience, promptitude, and thoroughness, thus render- ing them more competent, responsible, and faithful in the discharge of life's duties. The permanent acquisition of such virtues by train- ing in the formative period of manhood more than counterbalances the loss of time from labor incurred while serving with the colors, nor is any individual placed at a greater dis- advantage than his competitor since the civil careers of all are postponed alike. Where the disadvantages of all men in society are equal, 110 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION there is really no relative advantage gained by some over others among them. If one will but visit the section of a great city where the working classes are wont to find their recreation on a Sunday afternoon, and examine carefully the crowds of young men to be seen there, loitering about, and then visit an army post and examine men of the same class but recently become soldiers, many social ad- vantages of military training will occur to his mind. His conclusions will appear to be irre- sistible. The erect bodies, the alert step, the bright eyes, the clear skin, and the full mus- cular development of the trained soldier may with infinite benefit to the nation be given to the ill-nourished and haggard-featured labor- ing classes of America in their youth by uni- versal compulsory military service, along with the better habits of mind and body which have been enumerated. Physical, like mental devel- opment remains with men throughout their lives — both are assets to the men of the strug- gling lower classes, which they themselves can- not acquire unaided. For them military ser- vice would afford the opportunities which healthy living conditions and college athletics afford the sons of the more fortunate. Ill THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC But of all the social benefits to be had from universal military service the fostering of the spirit of democracy is, perhaps, the most valued. The writer once witnessed the meeting of a French soldier-duke in America with a veteran chasseur employed as a stable groom. As the old soldier led out a mount for the duke, who was his master's guest, the latter addressed him in the democratic manner common to French superior officers. At once the servant's attitude became that of respectful appreciation and in the rapid conversation which ensued it was not difficult to detect the influence of a common service in the army of the great Re- public. There was no easy familiarity, no sug- gestion of social equality, but the mental atti- tude of these two men — nobleman and peasant — was that of two citizens with equal respect, one for the other. This is but one instance, striking as it was, of many similar ones that compel those who have studied the effects of universal service to believe that the national army is an effective antidote to the undemo- cratic spirit engendered by social castes, which inevitably arise in unmilit^ry as well as mili- tary, free as well as autocratic, democratic as well as aristocratic societies. 112 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION Universal military service not only creates among those subjected to it a camaraderie while in the service, but it creates a keener sympathy between the conscripts representing various social strata which is enduring. It impresses the sons of luxury with the sterling qualities of those with whom intimate contact in civil life might never have been had without it. It teaches the humbler citizens to understand and appreciate the good qualities of those under whom in later life they must earn their bread. It is the great leveller of strong men, the dif- fuser of common sympathies, inculcates the sense of a common purpose among all citizens, and is the generator of a sterner love of coun- try than the flabby patriotism imbibed from school books and oratory. Those who have served their flag in the ranks are more apt to cherish a higher respect for that flag and all that it means, because of the sacrifice they have made for it, than those for whom it is a mere sentiment, and the ideals which are impressed upon them are transmitted upon their retire- ment to the civil walks of life to the people at large, both young and old. The recent mobilization of the militia has demonstrated the injustice of the voluntary sys- 113 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC tern in this country. Many young men sacrificed their business and professional careers in order to respond to the call of the State. The State can never reimburse many of them for their losses. Some of them assumed too great a bur- den. The excessive patriotism of these men was but exploited for the benefit of their fel- low citizens who remained at home. Why, let us enquire, should Smith be allowed to sacri- fice himself for his Country? Does the Coun- try demand that any citizen should sacrifice himself! And why should Smith, who hap- pened to be in the militia, be called upon to serve while Jones, his partner, or his friend, or his fellow citizen, remains at home and grows rich? Why should this woman's son be called to die in the trenches, and that woman's son be allowed to avoid all danger at his own discre- tion? These questions may at first seem to involve a personal issue between Smith and Jones, and their mothers. But they go deeper than that. They involve the most fundamental principles of the social democracy and the economic com- petence of the State. No citizen should be allowed to make the de- cision as to whether or not he should render 114 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION that service in arms whidi his own and the se- curity of his fellow citizens may or may not re- quire. Nor should he be burdened with the ne- cessity of making that decision. Every citizen is under a peculiar social and economic obligation to his State, as well as under a military obligation. The last may bet- ter be served, in many cases, by not taking up arms than by so doing, and the Government is the proper authority to determine who should and who should not serve in the ranks. Many men are so constituted that patriotic fervor clouds their judgment. Enthusiasm for service leads others to ignore their social obli- gations. And no man who is really fit to serve his country in the ranks would willingly remain at his lathe, or other industrial task, in prefer- ence to shouldering a musket. It is no more right to allow a man to abandon his dependent family for patriotic or other reasons than it is to permit an indispensable mechanic to crip- ple the machinery of war by enlisting. And so the State itself should say who shall and who shall not serve with the colors. This is a de- cision which should not be left to the citizens themselves as individuals. When a mechanic, and one upon whom the ob- 115 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC ligations of supporting those who otherwise would become a charge upon the State, are de- nied the privilege of serving with the colors by the State itself, they are relieved from the odium among their fellows of voluntarily avoid- ing military service. This is only just. Those who are called upon to serve go to the front with a lighter heart than if they were consumed with the doubts that beset every man who elects of his own will to abandon his family and his civil pursuits. Those who remain at home do so with the satisfaction of a full knowledge that they could not serve if they would, until called upon by the State. These principles are well illustrated by the recent experiences of Great Britain where so- cial chaos has at last given way to a systematic, rational system under which the man-power of the nation has been organized in accordance with the existing social, economic, and strictly military necessities. Woe to the State that does not now recognize the fact that war must be waged at home as well as on the firing line — in the marts of commerce and in the industrial centers as well as on the sea and in the trenches — for war is no longer a conflict be- tween armies composed of a surplus of men, 116 THE IDEAL MII/ITARY INSTITUTION but is one between whole peoples, men, women and children, of all classes and conditions. The social benefits flowing from universal military service are not detected in the case of small armies. The number of men passing through the ranks and back into civil life is too small to make its impress upon the whole peo- ple. The ex-soldier is notable in many ways, but he is more notable than potent in his in- fluence upon the civil community. The full ad- vantage of military training can only be had for the race through the medium of universal com- pulsory service in a national army. The bene- fits, both social and economic, outweigh the cost in money of such an army many, many times, as has been proved in every country in Europe. Compulsory military service is too commonly misconceived to be a distinctly social institu- tion. It is that and more. A national army is bound up with the economic welfare of the na- tion supporting it. As said by Mill, it is the moralizer of industry. No higher duty rests upon our political leaders and our press to-day than that of educating the people of America in the democratic principles of compulsory ser- vice, and up to the need of a national army 117 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC which would actually release the workers of to- day from an unjust burden. It should be shown them that not they themselves but the rising generation would assume the physical burden of national defense under a proper system of military service. In large measure it would be the young men, or the apprentices of life, who would shoulder the muskets of defense. Men with the full responsibilities of life would not be subjected to the present hardships of vol- untary military service — a service in which pa- triotism and individual sacrifices are capitalized for the benefit of the whole people, worthy and unworthy alike. The American people will sooner or later be compelled to adopt the European system; whether before or after an ordeal such as that through which the British Empire is passing, remains to be seen. May they harken, before it is too late, to the words of Washington. May they respond now to the call of the Republic — to the words of the great patriot of an ancient democracy whose appeal translates itself for us — Yet, Americans, yet is there time! And there is one manner in which you may retain 118 THE IDEAL MILITARY INSTITUTION your greatness, or dying, fall worthy of your past at Yorktown and New Orleans. . . . Go yourselves, every man of you, and stand in the ranks; and either a victory beyond all victories in its glory awaits you, or falling, you shall fall greatly and worthy of your past I U9 CHAPTER IX FEAE OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE IN concluding our consideration of the insti- tution of universal compulsory military service it is well to call attention to the ill- founded objection to extensive military training which has become so popular among the masses. The fear of ** militarism'' has seized upon the national mind with a tenacity bom of igno- rance. As a matter of fact few people have analyzed the meaning of this dread militarism which they have come to fear. Vague though the thing may be, it seems none the less terrify- ing to their imagination, for whatever else it may be, all agree that it is undemocratic in na- ture. In his annual message to Congress in Decem- ber, 1914, Mr. Wilson, a student of history and politics, and as such an acknowledged authority, displayed a complete misconception of the meaning and nature of militarism. He had not, 120 FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE up to that time, devoted much thought to mat- ters military, and nowhere in his politico-his- torical writings had he attempted to survey military institutions in their bearing upon the national and imperial developments of the last two centuries. Indeed, he had thought to set them wholly apart from the political life of peoples. To him the military potentiality of a people was but a thing of the spirit which, quickened by patriotic impulse could be sud- denly called upon to yield up a physical power hitherto non-existent. That which might be ultimately called upon as a last resort to save the cherished institutions of the State, was to be discouraged and suppressed in advance of the crucial hour of its need. Small wonder, then, that if the President himself, in whose knowledge of the past the people reposed their confidence, could stand upon the threshold of an uncertain future and profess to see no cause for alarm, that the people were reassured in their weakness and confirmed in their distrust of the so-called militarism which he had con- fused with universal preparedness for defense. Of the two evils of militarism and military un- preparedness, they preferred the latter, believ- 121 THE CALL OP THE REPUBLIC ing as they did that militarism is an essential concomitant of developed military power. Militarism, like pacifism, is a much misunder- stood term. Pacifism has come to embrace all the impotent nostrums of those who desire the end of armed conflict, as well as rational means for the reduction of the evil of war. The propaganda of true pacifism, consisting of enlightenment coupled with ethical effort, is undoubtedly competent to eliminate war on trivial grounds, and war as a pastime for am- bitious rulers. Propaganda directed to the es- tablishment of universal and perpetual peace, and the neglect of armament, is not true pacifism, however, but the reverse, for it tends to delude the over-credulous into believing that the cosmic process, that essential friction of life out of which all progress is born, may be set aside. When so deceived a national society is but reduced to a more impotent state in the cruel and inexorable struggle for survival — ^the peo- ple become sheep without a shepherd. Sunk for a while in bovine content, they not only lose all desire to contend, but all ability to do so however imperative a great effort and a great sacrifice on their part may become. It is then that, weak in flesh and fat of heart, their moral 122 FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE belligereney dies. It was Aristotle wlio pro- foundly remarked that a race wMcli cannot quit itself like a man in war can achieve no great thing in peace. It was also Aristotle who bit- terly said, *'The slave knows no leisure, and the State which sets peace above war is in the condition of the slave. ' ' He did not mean that the slave is perpetually at work, or that war is the sole duty of a great State, as thought by Machiavelli, and Frederick the Great, and Nietzsche, but he did believe that as the soul destined to slavery is incapable even in leisure of the contemplations of the soul destined to freedom, so to the nation which shirks its moral obligations to humanity and shrinks from the sacrifice, the greatness that belongs to a righteous peace can never come. Courage Plato defines as *Hhe knowledge of the things that a man should fear and that he should not fear, ' ' and in a state, a city, or an empire cour- age consists in the unfaltering pursuit of its being's end against all odds, when once that end is manifest. The race that submits to be baulked in the will to pursue a glorious and a righteous destiny but brings down upon itself its own doom. May a race not cherish right- 123 THE CALL OF THE EEPUBLIC eons peace and yet preserve its will and its power to wage righteous war? So mucli for the abuses of the term pacifism, and for the fallacies of the so-called pacifism, compounded as it is of illogical, unnatural, and unchristian theories, masquerading in a spe- cious guise. The popular and wide-spread misconception of the meaning of militarism is the logical re- sult of the illogic of false pacifism. Military power has been confused with the abuses of that power until all things military have come to be embraced in the popular mind within the meaning of militarism. How thoughtless and unreasoning is the more or less general use of the term militarism, I have endeavored to show in another work. {Empire and Armament, G. P. Putnam's, 1916.) Suffice it to say here that militarism is purely a mental state, and that it is merely evidenced by the physical con- dition which is erroneously regarded as the thing itself. That physical condition is in no sense conclusive of the mental state of militar- ism. Militarism is that political state of mind which confuses government with power main- tained by force, and which, in order to attain 124 FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE tlie maximum power for government, commits it to the hands of a warrior caste, which rules for the aggrandizement of the state rather than for the collective interest of the individuals comprising it. Militarism is in a sense, Mach- iavellism, and only exists where the military caste is possessed of undue prominence and precedence in the conduct of national affairs. Thus it is possible to have militarism with a small army, as in certain Latin- American coun- tries of the opera-bouffe type, as well as with a large army, as in Germany and Austria. But the size of an army, and the proportion of trained citizens, and their relative degree of military efficiency, have no essential connection with militarism. A larger proportion of the French people than of the German people was trained with the colors prior to 1914. This was necessarily so in as much as the armies of these two nations were nearly equal in size though the population of France was one third smaller than that of Germany. Military service was more nearly universal in Switzerland than in any other country. Yet militarism did not ex- ist either in Switzerland or France. Nor does the amount of national expenditure on the military institution in any way deter- 125 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC mine militarism. The individual financial mili- tary burden of the people of the United States in 1915 was $4.60, whereas the average indi- vidual burden of the German people for the preceding thirteen years was but $3.70 Based on the individual financial military burden alone in the year 1911, for instance, the Powers would have stood in the scale of militarism as fol- lows : 1. Great Britain, 2. France, 3. Germany, 4. United States, 5. Russia. Do we not know that with respect to the actual political importance of the military caste in these countries, the rating should be very dif- ferent? Men point to the petty tyrannies of military upstarts over civilians in Germany, and cry, ** Behold what awaits you from conscription!'' Such arguments have precisely the same value as the arguments against a republican form of government because of the excesses of the French Revolution. We might as well con- demn all free institutions because of Tammany Hall, as condenm compulsory service because of 126 FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE its abuses in other countries. Why not also point to the Pretorians of Rome, or to the Otto- man Janizaries? Their cases are just as rele- vant as the case of Germany. Why not appeal to them as long as we have ignored the present facts of Switzerland, and France, and the neces- sities of Great Britain? But when we recall the Pretorians are we also to forget the Athens of Plato and Sophocles — that glorious military state in which art and culture and citizen- soldiers flourished side by side? If it be argued that militarism, embodied in the German military institutions, brought upon the world the dreadful calamity of the war of 1914, 1 need but reply that universal compulsory military service alone enabled the mother state to survive the storm of that war, and that the vast conscript armies of Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy, are being utilized to-day, not to sustain but to overthrow militarism! The fear of militarism in the United States is ill-founded. All institutions are transfigured by the ideals which call them into being. It is not the mere differences in the constitutional articles under which the American and the Ger- man states are confederated that differentiate 127 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC those unions — ^it is their respective ideals of human freedom. Pursuing the thought of another, I might say- that there is nothing in our annals which war- rants evil presage from the growth of our army, nothing which precludes the hope, the just confidence that our very blood and the inefface- able character of our race will save us from any mischief that militarism may have brought to others, aud that in the future another chiv- alry may arise which shall be to other armies and other systems what the Anglo-Saxon ideal of popular liberty is to the political institutions of other peoples — a paragon and an example. SHght consideration will compel one to admit that militarism has to do neither with the size nor the cost of armies, and that it has but de- rived its name from that medium through which it may manifest itself — ^the military institution, and that it is neither the parent nor the off- spring of national armament for defense. We must, therefore, conclude that it is the out- growth of excessive governmental centraliza- tion, which cannot exist in, the United States under its present form of government, however large an army may be maintained, and however well trained in arms our citizens might be, and 128 FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE however well prepared to save to humanity those priceless institutions which we inherited from onr forefathers. Nations may be classified both with respect to the status of their military institutions and their national dispositions in the past as fol- lows: 1. Militaristic, militant; German type. 2. Military, militant; French type. 3. Military, pacific; Swiss type. 4. Unmilitary, militant ; British type. 5. Unmilitary, pacific; China type. The difference between the German and the French types in this classification illustrates the true meaning of militarism in a very force- ful way. A survey of the history of the United States up to 1914 would seem to indicate that it be- longed to the most dangerous of these types, or the British type — the most dangerous be- cause militant, yet unprepared as a whole peo- ple. Eecent events would seem to indicate, however, that the nation, honey-combed with pacifism to a greater extent than even Great Britain, has lost its old militant spirit, and un- able to rise with the sword of Christ to a plane of moral belligerency, has sunk under the in- 129 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC fluence of the false teachings of St. Pierre, and Kant, and Tolstoi to that of unmilitary paci- fism — to that plane in which the horrors and the evils of human strife are allowed to obscure completely the moral grandeur of righteous war, and the uplifting influence of a sacrifice to an ideal. For a brief period it seemed as if the British Empire had lost not only its will, but its ability to rise above this sordid, immoral plane. But with what high hope for Christendom and the spiritual salvation of humanity it freed itself from the sloth of false pacifism, and cast aside the fatuous doctrines of the misguided, over- zealous humanitarians ! How grandly was the fate that had almost overtaken it under this false leadership denied ! Was it not Christ who whispered into the national ear in that dark hour of travail and uncertainty : * * What profit- eth your wealth if your soul be lost? Arise and go forth with the sword of truth which I have given unto you! Put on the whole armor of God! Fear not to strike for that spiritual peace that passeth all understand- ing!" And thus touched, the soul of the na- tion responded to its awakened conscience, and a people, sure of the divine justice of their mis- 130 FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE sion, and witli all evil shed away, rose to strike with God-given might for truth, for justice, and for humanity! Can it be that peace — supine peace — can hold for a race so great a reward as that which will come with Christ's victory? Shall we scorn the valor of those who go forth to conquer in His name? How can we bring ourselves to despise the blood sacrifices of the brave, and hold the ideals for which they offered up their all as unworthy of the tribute of hu- man life? Do not the God-like choirs of poster- ity live through the dying deeds of those whose requiem they chant ? And what shall become of our faith if we must believe with the pacifist that in an hour of unwisdom God permits the smil- ing, beardless youth of a warrior race to per- ish and their mothers to weep vainly? In order that we may retain our faith we need not demand to know in advance the where- fore of all things. Wisdom may consist of knowing what one does not have to know. Let us say with Socrates: **What God is I know not; what he is not, I know." Do we not know that God created between men the great an- tagonisms out of which strife arises, so that **The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance : He shall wash his feet in the blood 181 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC of the wicked; so that men shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: Verily there is a God that judgeth in the Earth." (Psalms 59. 10, 11.) And shall we derive no consolation from the words of the Greek orator who could declare — **0f the dead who have fallen in battle the wide Earth itself is the sepulchre ; their tomb is not the grave in which they are laid, but the undying memory of the generations that come after them. They per- ish, snatched in a moment, in the height of achievement, not from their fear, but from their renown. Fortunate! And you who have lost them, you, who as mortal have been born sub- ject unto disaster, how fortunate are you to whom sorrow comes in so glorious a shape ! ' ' Is there for mankind only loss, and sorrow, and bitter regret in the death of Kitchener whose tomb is some unknown cavern of the sea, but whose watery grave shall be forever decked with a wreath of spray and billows? Is the Calvary a meaningless symbol! To these queries we answer, no — emphatically no ! These things are far from being meaning- less. Symbolical of our most exalted aspira- tions they are the planets in the firmament of our faith — often o ^erclouded and obscured from 132 FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE our moral vision, but ever there above us, and ever and anon shining down upon us with re- newed brilliance to guide and to beckon us on through the darkness of doubt. It is he who so loudly claims to do God's bidding — the importunate pacifist — who is lack- ing in faith; he who chafes at the will of God, and not the soldier who willingly sheds his blood for an ideal. There is not a crumb that falls from His hand, or the soul of a warrior that passes upward to Valhalla, without a di- vine purpose. So why should we moralize on perpetual peace, and doubt? The wars of nations are not the petty strifes of individual men. The very magnitude of the stake at is- sue in a war that is believed to be a righteous one exalts the souls of those who perish for their cause, and ennobles the spirits of those who survive, for both have sealed their faith with life itself. War — righteous war — a war for ideals — is no more out of tune with the in- finite than the destructive elements of fire, and flood, and drought; no more so than the con- suming ambitions of the human soul which lead men upward and ever upward to the altitudes of transcendent thought and deeds. In human society there are groups all along the tortuous 133 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC path of life. Wars for ideals are but the eternal friction between groups moving upward and downward at varying rates and thus con- flicting. Nor was it ever designed by the all- wise Power that there should be no crusaders, no missionaries, no martyrs on this earth to overcome with force and example those who have proved unworthy to lead, but yet who cling to their scepters of dominion. These facts the pacifist in his humanitarian enthusiasm ignores, and in his sweeping, all- embracing condemnation of human conflict makes no distinction between a war for an ideal and a tribal foray, between a Christian soldier and a murderous bandit, between hu- man suffering as a moral sacrifice, and death through unlawful violence, and often goes so far as to speak of the brutalizing effect of war even upon the conscious champions of an ideal ! The law of recompense is immutable. How happy is he who can with Aristotle, and Plato, and Carlyle see the God-head in the cannon's flash and smoke of battle, and in the din of strife detect the rumble of Jehovah's wheels. How vapid and uninspiring is the faith of those who like Tolstoi and Bloch can only see the blanching faces and hear the shrieks of the 134 FEAR OF MILITARISM UNREASONABLE dying — who know only the pathological side of war. Pacifism dates from the first battle among men — it is as old as war itself. But still there are Lowells who can write : . * * The best guide from old to new is Peace — Yet, Freedom, thou canst scantify the sword! Bravely to do whatever the time demands, Whether with pen or sword, and not to flinch, This is the task that fits heroic hands: So are Truth's boundaries widened inch by inch. I do not love the Peace which tyrants make; The calm she breeds let swords' lightning break! It is the tyrants who have beaten out Plowshares and pruning hooks to spears and swords, And shall I pause and moralize and doubt? Whose veins run water let him mete his words!" It is through service in a righteous cause that men have widened Truth ^s boundaries inch by inch. It can only be through the universal service in arms of our citizens that those boun- daries wrested from the wilderness of tyranny by our patriot forefathers will be preserved, and within them that freedom which has sancti- fied their swords. It is a mistake, nay more, a crime upon humanity, to teach the race that 135 THE CALL OF THE REPUBLIC to fight for the blessings it has inherited is wrong, or to encourage onr men to neglect any means by which they may protect their price- less heritage. All of our men need not be actually trained as soldiers, but the whole race, men and women alike should be rendered war- riors at heart. Every man should be subject to compulsory service whether trained or not. The actual training of a sufficiently large pro- portion of our men will make warriors of the whole race — ^warriors with a hatred of militar- ism and injustice in their hearts that will for- ever guarantee the persistence of our demo- cratic institutions. **With us the decision rests. K we should decide wrongly — ^it is not the loss of prestige, it is not the narrowed bounds we have to fear, it is the judgment of the dead, the despair of the living, of the inarticulate myriads who have trusted to us, it is the arraigning eyes of the unborn. "Who can confront this unappalledr' In making our decision shall we deny the wisdom of God who imposes upon His people the ordeal of battle, and yet continue to raise aloft our national hymn — Lord God of Hosts, Lord God of Hosts, protect us by Thy might! 136 BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY One who wishes to study the scientific organi- zation of armies, and the principles underlying the modern military institutions, must prepare himself to examine the authorities of Europe. Fortunately, many of the great works of the political and military writers of Europe have been translated into English. The knowledge of the American people of things military is based almost entirely upon the works of their own statesmen and the popular narratives of their soldier heroes, who, as a rule, while brave and patriotic, have been poorly educated as compared with the military students of Eu- rope. The following list might be multiplied indefi- nitely, but in it will be found many landmarks in the progress of thought, and the works enu- merated will afford that authoritative infor- mation upon which the student may alone ar- rive at an intelligent conviction. 139 BIBLIOGRAPHY Delapield, Art of War in Europe in 1854-5-6. Eeeves, Military Education in the United States. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein. KuppEL, Biography of Scharnhorst (German). Osgood, The American Colonies in the 17th Century. Bbuce, Institutional History of Virginia in the 17th Century. EoEMEB, Cavalry, Its History, Management and Uses in War. Hatjseath, Treitschke, His Doctrines and His life. Delbruck, Life of Gneisenau (German). Spiegel, Dr. Albert Zizaus Hardenberg (Ger- man). Von deb Goltz, The Nation in Aj^ms. Clausewitz, War. Wise, Empire and Armament. BouTABic, Institutions militaires de la France. Gautieb, La Chevalrie. ScHULTz, Das Hofische Leben zur Zeit der Min- nesinger. Ranke, Geschichte Wallensteins. Geijee, Geschichte Schwedens (German transla- tion). ViLLET, Histoire des institutions politiques. 140 BIBLIOGRAPHY Seignobos, Feudal Regime (Dow translation). Stephens, Commentaries on the Laws of Eng- land. Makmont, De Pesprit des institutions mili- taires. HuiDEKOPEE, The Present State of Unprepared- ness. Upton, Military Policy of the United States. Geeen, The Present Military Situation in the United States. SoMBAET, Krieg und Kapitalismus. Steinmetz, Die Philosophic des Krieges. Tocqueville, Democracy in the United States. Dodge, Gustavus Adolphus. Thotjmas, Les Anciennes armees frangaises des origines a 1870. Jeeeam, Armies of the World. Ceamb, Origin and Destiny of Imperial Britain. 141 TJV.ST DATE SBTORN TO dLIS^?' USE — "iectroIS^a.^ .Due^d of WINTER Q„e^, --^^- it 7^, -^ YB 04123 359906 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY ■>%m