Defenseless America
by Hudson Maxim · English · Gutenberg #39893 · 477,523 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Defenseless America
Author: Hudson Maxim
Release date: June 1, 2012 [eBook #39893]
Language: English
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[Illustration: _Photo by Marceau_]
DEFENSELESS
AMERICA
BY
HUDSON MAXIM
[Illustration]
"_The quick-firing gun is the greatest
life-saving instrument ever invented._"
Page 83.
HEARST'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY CO.
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1915, by
HEARST'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY CO., INC.
_All rights reserved, including that of translation into the
foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_
FOREWORD
* * * * *
THIS BOOK IS PRESENTED
WITH THE
COMPLIMENTS OF THE AUTHOR
To a Few Selected Leaders of American Thought and Shapers of Public
Opinion
* * * * *
DEAR READER:
I send you this book in the hope that if not already convinced, you will
be convinced by it of the defenseless state of this country--convinced
that our danger is as great as our weakness. I hope that you may be
moved to use your influence that this country may, by adequate
preparation against war, safeguard the property, honor and lives of its
people and the sanctity of the American home from violation by a foreign
foe.
If you are already convinced of our great need then the reading of this
book may still strengthen your conviction and stimulate your efforts in
the cause of national defense.
After you have read the book, kindly lend it to your friends, that they
also may read it.
Defenseless America was published a year ago at two dollars per copy.
Several editions of the book have already been printed and sold.
Soon after the publication of the work I presented ten thousand copies,
with my compliments, to students graduating in American universities.
This has given many persons the impression that Defenseless America is a
book for free distribution.
To correct such an impression, let me say most emphatically that this
book is not free, except to a few persons whom I have selected, and to
whom I have sent it free at my own personal expense, for the good of the
cause of national defense.
The book has exerted so marked an influence in rousing the people of
this country to their needs for defense against the red hell of war,
that the publishers, through patriotic duty, have placed the good it is
doing above all considerations of profit to themselves, and have
supplied me copies of this edition of the work absolutely at cost.
The publishers have also put an edition of the book on sale, of which
this copy is a specimen, at only fifty cents a copy. In order to enable
them to do this, I have cut out all royalties on sales which they may
make.
This edition of the book may be bought of or ordered through any book
store at fifty cents a copy, or from the publishers, Hearst's
International Library Company, 119 West 40th Street, New York, N. Y.,
who will send single copies of the book to any address on receipt of
sixty cents, or they will send ten copies of the book, in a single
package, to any address on receipt of five dollars--fifty cents a copy.
Copies of the regular library edition, printed on superior paper and
bound in extra cloth, gold stamping, may be obtained from booksellers or
direct from the publishers at two dollars a copy.
Many of the readers of this book have already seen that wonderful motion
picture play, "The Battle Cry of Peace," founded upon it.
Commodore J. Stuart Blackton, President of the Vitagraph Company of
America, who wrote the scenario of "The Battle Cry of Peace", has this
to say about Defenseless America:--
"To the fearless patriotism of Hudson Maxim and the plain,
practical, straightforward truths in his book, 'Defenseless
America,' I owe the inspiration and impetus which caused me to
conceive and write the scenario of 'The Battle Cry of Peace.'
"The object of both book and picture is to arouse in the heart
of every American citizen a sense of his strict accountability
to his government in time of need, and to bring to the notice
of the greatest number of people in the shortest possible time
the fact that there is a way to insure that peace for which we
all so earnestly pray."
Commodore Blackton, being a staunch patriot and a man with phenomenal
vision and breadth of understanding, and being one of the largest
producers of motion pictures in the world, saw at once, as soon as he
read Defenseless America, that the best way to impress the American
people with the message of the book, as he had himself been impressed by
reading it, was to visualize that message in a great motion picture.
Then the people would be able to see, with their own eyes, those
terrible things happening in our country and in our very homes, which
are happening abroad and which are surely going to happen to us if we do
not prepare, and immediately and adequately prepare to save the country.
Faithfully yours,
HUDSON MAXIM.
MAXIM PARK,
LANDING P.O.,
NEW JERSEY,
1916
PREFACE
The main object of this book is to present a phalanx of facts upon the
subject of the defenseless condition of this country, and to show what
must be done, and done quickly, in order to avert the most dire calamity
that can fall upon a people--that of merciless invasion by a foreign
foe, with the horrors of which no pestilence can be compared.
We should bring a lesser calamity upon ourselves by abolishing our
quarantine system against the importation of deadly disease and inviting
a visitation like the great London Plague, or by letting in the Black
Death to sweep our country as it swept Europe in the Middle Ages, than
by neglecting our quarantine against war, as we are neglecting it,
thereby inviting the pestilence of invasion.
Self-preservation is the first law of Nature, and this law applies to
nations exactly as it applies to individuals. Our American Republic
cannot survive unless it obeys the law of survival, which all
individuals must obey, which all nations must obey, and which all other
nations are obeying. No individual, and no nation, has ever disobeyed
that law for long and lived; and it is too big a task for the United
States of America.
It is the aim of this work to discover truth to the reader, unvarnished
and unembellished, and, at the same time, as far as possible, to avoid
personalities. Wherever practicable, philosophic generalizations have
been tied down to actualities, based upon experiential knowledge and
innate common-sense of the eternal fitness of things.
The strong appeal of Lord Roberts for the British nation to prepare for
the Armageddon that is now on, which he knew was coming, did not awaken
England, but served rather to rouse Germany.
Admiral Mahan pleaded long with his country for an adequate navy. All
the Great Powers of the world except America were stimulated by his
logic to strengthen their navies. The beautiful, imaginative, logical
language of General Homer Lea, on America's military weakness, in his
"Valor of Ignorance" and "The Day of the Saxon," has caused many a gun
to be made, many a battalion of troops to be enlisted, and many a
warship to be built--in foreign countries.
The eloquent words of wisdom of Lord Roberts, Admiral Mahan, Homer Lea,
and all real friends of peace and advocates of the only way of
maintaining peace--by being prepared against war--have fallen on a deaf
America. I am well aware of the fact that nothing I can say will rouse
the people of my country to the reality and magnitude of their danger,
and to a true appreciation of the imperative necessity for immediate
preparation against war.
Possibly this book may lessen a little the effect of the pernicious
propagandism of the pacifists--may somewhat help Congressional
appropriations for defense--may place a few more men and a few more guns
on the firing-line, and thereby save the lives of a few of our
people--may save a few homes from the torch--may lessen the area of
devastation--may, by adding a little power to our resistance, help to
get slightly better terms from the conquerors for our liberation.
Pacifism has ringed the nose of the American people and is leading them,
blind and unknowing, to the slaughter. War is inevitable. It matters not
that, if this country could be roused, it might be saved. When it is
impossible to vitalize the impulse necessary to the accomplishment of a
thing, that thing is impossible. So, I say, war is inevitable and
imminent.
The American people could not now be roused sufficiently to avert the
impending calamity even by a call that would rift the sky and shake down
the stars from heaven!
Fate has decreed that our pride shall be humbled, and that we shall be
bowed to the dirt. We must first put on sackcloth, ashed in the embers
of our burning homes. Perhaps, when we build anew on the fire-blackened
desolation, our mood may be receptive of the knowledge that we must
shield our homes with blood and brawn and iron.
HUDSON MAXIM.
Maxim Park,
Landing P.O.,
New Jersey.
March, 1915.
CONTENTS
PREFACE v
OUR GREAT OBSESSION xiii
I DANGEROUS PREACHMENTS 1
II CAN LAW BE SUBSTITUTED FOR WAR? 22
III OUR INCONSISTENT MONROE DOCTRINE 56
IV MODERN METHODS AND MACHINERY OF WAR 68
V THE NEEDS OF OUR ARMY (With Letter from General
Leonard Wood) 113
VI THE NEEDS OF OUR NAVY 141
VII LANGUAGE OF THE BIG GUNS 181
VIII AERIAL WARFARE 203
IX OUR ARMAMENTS NOT A BURDEN 222
X EGO-FANATIC GOOD INTENTIONS AND THEIR RELATION TO
NATIONAL DEFENSE 235
XI A DANGEROUS CRIMINAL CLASS? 247
XII THE GOOD AND EVIL OF PEACE AND OF WAR 265
WHAT SHALL THE END BE? 306
INDEX 309
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Vast Territory that Our Inflated Monroe Doctrine Obligates
Us to Defend 60
The Heart of America 76
Relative Numerical Strength of Field Artillery 104
Portrait of General Leonard Wood, U. S. A. 114
Number of Officers and Enlisted Men of U. S. Regular Army 118
Strength of Regular Armies on Peace Footing 124
Portrait of Admiral Austin M. Knight, U. S. N. 150
Strategic Spheres of Vital Importance in the Pacific 160
Battleship Strength of the Nations 168
How New York Could Be Bombarded from a Position off Rockaway
Beach Beyond the Range of Our Forts 188
Opposing Fleets in Action _between_ 197 and 198
Some Annual United States Expenditures 226
Enormous Resources of the Warring Nations 232
Casualties of Peace and War Compared 296
INTRODUCTION
OUR GREAT OBSESSION
Success in every human pursuit depends upon ability to discern the truth
and to utilize it. Facts, though they may be stern, are our best
friends, and we should always welcome them with an open mind.
Napoleon said that with good news there is never any hurry, but with bad
news not a moment is to be lost. Consequently, those who discover to us
certain facts of serious concern are our friends, even though it may be
bad news. It is every man's duty, not only to himself, but also to those
dear to him, to know the truth about anything which may menace his and
their welfare, in order that he and they may become awakened to the
danger and prepare for it accordingly.
Those who deceive us by warning us of danger when there is no danger may
not do us any harm; in fact, they may even do us good by cultivating our
alertness and awareness. The hare may jump at a thousand false alarms to
every one of actual danger; but it is the false alarms that have given
him the alertness to save himself when real danger comes. On the other
hand, those who convince us that there is no danger when there is great
danger are the worst of enemies; they expose us, naked of defense, to
the armed and armored enemy.
Among the great deceivers with whom the human race has to contend is the
confidence man, for he plays upon the fears, vanity, and credulity of
his victim with the skill of a Kubelik upon the violin. He enlists his
victim with him, and they work together to the same end. No man is
greatly deceived by another except through his own co-operation. Every
one has his pet egoistic illusion always under the spotlight of
self-view; to him, his own importance is a veritable obsession.
A nation is only a compound of individuals, and what is true of an
individual also holds true of any aggregation of individuals.
We, the people of the United States of America, are at this moment, and
have been for many years, afflicted with a dominating egoistic obsession
concerning our greatness, our importance, and our power, while we
correspondingly underrate the greatness, the importance, and the power
of other nations and races. Our accomplishments have indeed been
marvelous, and we have not neglected to award them all the marveling
that is their due.
There is no denying the fact that in many competitive pursuits requiring
intellectual acuteness for the greatening of material welfare we have
outstripped the rest of the world. But the rest of the world has been
busy, too, and though we may possibly deserve more credit for our
accomplishments in the aggregate than any other people, still, others
have far outdone us in many important respects.
Our hitherto isolated and unassailable geographical position has enabled
us to utilize our unequaled resources to become the greatest industrial
and the wealthiest people in the world.
We have not been obliged to concern ourselves very much thus far with
measures for national security, and having at home all the land we
needed, we have acquired the habit of looking upon national armaments in
the light of frills, which we must maintain merely for national
respectability. Many of us look upon our Navy as dress-parade
paraphernalia, to be worn on gala occasions.
Our response to the advocacy of a sufficient navy, of coast
fortifications, and of a standing army adequate to our needs, has been
that we have no use for either army or navy, and that coast
fortifications would be a useless expense.
Our enormous wealth and inexhaustible resources have been and still are
pointed out as reasons why we require no armaments, although, as a
matter of fact, they are the strongest possible reasons for armaments of
a magnitude proportionate to that wealth and those resources.
In America, we pride ourselves upon our so-called free institutions,
blindly believing that they are free, and that, therefore, every man
being an aristocrat, we, by consequence, have no aristocracy, entirely
oblivious to the fact that we have merely substituted the esteem of
wealth, and the power and the privilege which it represents, for the
esteem of family worth and family name, and the power and the privilege
which they represent.
Isolation and wealth beget vanity and arrogance; and vanity, resting
upon the laurels of past accomplishments, rapidly fosters decadence and
weakness; so that the very pride of strength and virility begets
weakness and effeminacy.
It has been said that usually there are but three generations between
shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves. The old man trades upon the name made
in the days of his younger strength, and the son, seldom possessing the
strength of the father, trades on the father's name, while the third
generation generally gets back to shirt-sleeves again. Although this
statement is not a general truth, it has truth enough to excuse it.
The main reason why luxury and opulence lead to degeneracy, weakness,
and effeminacy, is that those who live on Easy Street, being relieved of
the intense strife necessary to gain a livelihood and to climb to
positions of opulence and power, suffer from weakness and decay, and
finally find their way down to shirt-sleeves, at the foot of the
economic and social ladder, either to be submerged in hoboism, or to
make the climb of old progenitors over again.
What is true of individuals and families in this respect holds true also
of nations, only it takes a little longer time, starting from
shirt-sleeves, to get back to shirt-sleeves again.
We Americans were taught by the promoters of the American Revolution--in
short, by the fathers of our country--that all men are created equal in
respect to privilege, and that no class distinction and no class
privilege were worthy of honor unless earned. By consequence, the symbol
and the badge of our class distinction became the dollar.
Taught to despise aristocracy, we immediately created for ourselves a
new aristocracy in the shape of a plutocracy. This aristocracy of wealth
was fast becoming as tyrannical and unbearable and as much a menace to
the freedom of the people as the old aristocracy which it had replaced.
The old aristocracy had been established by the right of the sword; the
new aristocracy had been established by the purchasing power of the
dollar, and the people learned that combinations of wealth were a
compelling power as great as the combination of armies, and that a
government dominated by the dollar might become as intolerable as any
form of absolutism.
Then there came another American revolution, led by the labor unions,
which proved that it is only necessary for the people to organize, in
order to conquer with the short-sword of the ballot as effectually as
with the sword of steel.
Unhappily, just as intolerance and avarice have always led conquerors to
be overgrasping and tyrannical, so have intolerance and avarice made
prosecutions under the Sherman Law veritable persecutions. Now that the
common people have found their power, nothing under heaven can halt
them, or prevent them from abusing that power, except a higher education
of the common people and their leaders, compelling them to understand
the great truth that the people of a nation must co-operate with a
patriotism that shall emulate the spirit of the hive of bees so
admirably interpreted by Maeterlinck.
Nevertheless, we must remember that, while we may with advantage imitate
the bee in this respect, the bee does not progress. There has been no
enlightenment in bee-life for a hundred thousand years, for the very
reason that the bees are dominated by that beautiful spirit of the hive.
We owe our ability to progress and to become more and more highly
intelligent and enlightened, to the existence of that instability and
heterogeneity which stimulate and develop us by causing us to strive for
stability and homogeneity.
Life is a series of reactions between the individual and environing
stimuli. For this reason, stern and exacting stimuli are required to
develop a man to the full. In all the ages during which the race has
been developing there have existed formative influences of the sternest
and most exacting kind; so that, just as our ears are constituted to
hear only a certain character of sounds, and sounds of a limited pitch,
duration, and loudness, and are deaf to all other sounds, so are we
constituted to react only to certain environing stimuli, and to react
with each stimulus in a certain definite measure, and only in a certain
definite measure. It is impossible for us to react supremely, or to be
developed supremely, by mediocre stimuli, but we must have supreme
stimuli, and in order to get those stimuli, there must be a prompting to
activity that demands of a man every ounce of his strength; and
everything that is dear to him must be staked to bring out and develop
all the latent, larger energies that are in him.
Nothing that can be said and done by all the friends of national defense
will make this country take adequate measures for its defense. Nothing
but a disastrous war will supply the necessary stimulus. In all the
history of the world, this truth has been made manifest--that no nation
can be made adequately to prepare against war, no matter what the menace
may be, without either suffering actual defeat, or being so embroiled in
war as to realize the necessity for preparedness.
This country must first be whipped in order to prepare sufficiently to
prevent being whipped. Therefore, our business at the present time is to
pick our conquerors. I choose England. I would much rather see the
red-coat in the streets of New York than the spiked helmet. I would much
rather see the genial face of the British Tommy Atkins than the stern
mystery of the Japanese face.
If England does not give us a good, timely whipping, we are going to be
whipped by Germany or Japan, and the humiliation will be more than is
really needed to stimulate us for adequate preparation.
When the present war is over, the precipitation of a war with England
may not depend on what England will choose to do, but it may depend on
what we shall choose to do. We have been a lamb rampant for a long time
in a jungle alive with lions, and we have owed our security to the fact
that the lions have been watching one another, and have not dared to
avert their eyes long enough to devour us. If we did not have a
grandiose sense of our importance and power, we should not need a
whipping in order to prepare against war, but so long as we believe that
we can beat all creation without any preparation, we are going to act
just as though it were true, and England, although she may be friendly,
may be forced, by our inconsiderate bluff and arrogance, to declare war
on us. Much better England than any other country. England now has no
territorial aspirations that would make her want to annex some of our
land. She would be satisfied with a good big indemnity, which we could
well afford to pay for the benefit we should gain from the war. If
England will merely come over seas, and whip us, and tax us for the
trouble, and thereby lead us to prepare adequately to defend ourselves
against less friendly nations, she will do us the greatest possible
good.
We are living and working not alone for ourselves, but also for those
who are our own, and for all others insomuch as their interests and
their welfare are in common with our own.
Our welfare is part and parcel of the aggregate welfare of all those for
whom we are working, and our welfare and their welfare are not only a
condition of the present, but are also a condition of the future. The
welfare of our children and our children's children, and of those whose
interests will be in common with theirs, is part and parcel of our own
present welfare. This is the true philosophy by which we who are sane
and conscientious are guided. Upon such philosophy are based all
economics and all prudence.
The false philosophy of the selfish and the sensual, the spendthrift and
the debauchee, is the philosophy of such as they whose acts of omission
and commission brought on the French Revolution, and who said, "_Apres
nous le deluge_"; but such should not be our philosophy.
Therefore, if now there be a calamity in the making, which we are able
to foresee must surely descend upon the heads of our children, even if
it does not come soon enough to fall upon our own heads, it is a thing
that should awaken our concern and stimulate our inquiry, and lead us to
seek ways and means for averting it.
It is a fact, which I absolutely know as certainly as anything can be
known in human affairs, that we, and all of those who are near and dear
to us, are sitting today on a powder magazine with the train lighted,
and it is only a question of the slowness, or quickness, of the fuse
when the time shall arrive for the explosion.
The laws that govern human events are as mathematically accurate and as
immutable as the laws that govern the motions of the heavenly bodies;
the laws that govern human reactions--the reactions between men and men,
communities and communities, nations and nations--are as immutable and
are governed as exactly by the laws of cause and effect as are chemical
reactions. Nothing can happen without a cause, and there can be no cause
that does not make something happen. Every event is the child of its
parents--cause and effect.
Now let us look at the parentage of the cause and effect whose progeny
are soon to bring upon us the great red peril of war, and, finding us
unprepared, will treat us as Germany has treated Belgium. We are
rich--our country from one end to the other possesses a vast wealth of
enticements to the invasion of a foreign foe--and we are defenseless.
These conditions are the parents of vast impending calamities.
Europe, today, is involved in the greatest war in the history of
mankind, and--in spite of all the saving grace of our so-called modern
civilization, in spite of all the mercifulness of the Christian
religion, in spite of all the charitable kindness of the Red Cross--the
sum of brutality, savagery, and misery of this war is certainly not much
less than it has been at any other time in the history of a striving
world, every page of which has been written with blood.
We have arrived at a time when we must decide whether or not our safety
can be better secured and peace maintained with armaments or without
armaments.
DEFENSELESS AMERICA
CHAPTER I
DANGEROUS PREACHMENTS
"There will be no war in the future, for it has become impossible now
that it is clear that war means suicide."
_I. S. Bloch, "The Future of War," 1899._
"What shall we say of the Great War of Europe ever threatening, ever
impending, and which never comes? We shall say that it will never come.
Humanly speaking, it is impossible."
_Dr. David Starr Jordan, "War and Waste," 1913._
They who are loudest in their vociferations about the calamities that
the warring nations of Europe have brought upon themselves are those
peace-palavering persons who have been telling us all along, during the
past twenty-five years, that human nature had improved so much lately,
and the spirit of international brotherhood had become so dominant, that
the fighting spirit was nearly dead in the souls of men.
The peace praters have assured us from time to time that the last great
war of the world had been fought; they have told us that no great
nations would dare to go to war any more, because war between any of
the Great Powers would now mean bankruptcy and national suicide; they
have assured us that all international differences would hereafter be
settled by jurisprudential procedure, and that law would be substituted
for war.
About fifteen years ago, a M. de Bloch "proved" in his book, entitled
"The Future of War. Is War Now Possible?" that war had become so deadly
and destructive, and, above all, so expensive, as to be impossible. So
impressed was the Czar of Russia with de Bloch's arguments that he
called a conference of the nations to consider disarmament. Since that
time a thousand different persons have, in a thousand different ways,
"proved" to us that war on a large scale was not only impossible, but
also absolutely unthinkable. Droll, isn't it, that the nations keep
right on fighting? We are consoled, however, by the insistence of the
peace prophets that this war is truly the last great war. We are assured
that this war will be the death of militarism, and then the lamb can
safely cuddle up to the lion. Consequently, we have been told that, war
on a large scale being now impossible, the United States needs no army
and no navy, and that it would be folly to waste the taxpayers' money on
such useless things.
Many believe that this country should set the other nations of the world
a great moral example by pulling the teeth of our dogs of war, making
them lambs, and inviting the lions to lie down with them, unheedful of
the lesson of all ages that when the lion does lie down with the lamb,
the lamb is always inside the lion.
Furthermore, we have been assured that the mere possession of armaments
leads a nation to wage war, because being able to fight makes one want
to fight; and that, obviously, the best way to avoid a fight is to be
unable to fight.
I quote the following from Theodore Roosevelt's book, "America and the
World War":--
* * * * *
"_These peace people have persistently and resolutely blinked facts. One
of the peace congresses sat in New York at the very time that the
feeling in California about the Japanese question gravely threatened the
good relations between ourselves and the great empire of Japan. The only
thing which at the moment could practically be done for the cause of
peace was to secure some proper solution of the question at issue
between ourselves and Japan. But this represented real effort, real
thought. The peace congress paid not the slightest serious attention to
the matter and instead devoted itself to listening to speeches which
favored the abolition of the United States navy and even in one case the
prohibiting the use of tin soldiers in nurseries because of the
militaristic effect on the minds of the little boys and girls who played
with them!_"
* * * * *
When the prophet Isaiah told the Jews that there were big troubles
brewing for them in the East, he spoke to unhearing ears, because
unwilling ears. There were in those days, as in our day, the false
prophets of peace who said that Isaiah was wrong; that there was no
cause for worry about the indignation of Jehovah; that even at the worst
His wrath could be appeased at any time, as necessity might arise, by a
few burnt offerings and sacrificial mumblings. Their assurances were
more pleasing than the warnings of Isaiah, so the Jews listened to the
false prophets instead of to Isaiah, and they paid the penalty in
Babylonian bondage.
The Isaiahs of true prophecy have long warned the people of this
country that there is big trouble brewing for us in the East and in the
Far East, and that we need armaments and men trained to arms to
safeguard us against that trouble. These Isaiahs have told us that we
cannot safeguard ourselves by any sacrifices made upon the altar of
international brotherhood, or forefend ourselves against the great red
peril of war by a few mumblings written down in arbitration treaties;
but that we must have guns and men behind the guns. The Isaiahs who
have been telling us these things are our true peace-advocates.
Those self-styled peace-men who are telling us that the best way to
avoid war is to be unable to defend ourselves are not peace-men, but
war-breeders. Though they emulate the dove in their cooing, they are far
from being doves of peace. They ought to be styled dubs of peace. Their
intentions may be good, yet they are enemies of peace, and betrayers of
their country. Those who prevent the building of coast fortifications,
which are our modern city gates, by advising against them, betray their
country as actually as those who opened the gates of Rome to the hordes
of Alaric.
Those who are trying to defeat our Congressional appropriations for a
larger navy, for an adequate army, and for sufficient coast
fortifications, although they may mean well, are as truly enemies of
their country as if they should, in war, contribute to the armament and
fighting force of an enemy, for the effect in both cases is identical.
Again I quote from Mr. Roosevelt:
* * * * *
"_We object to the actions of those who do most talking about the
necessity of peace because we think they are really a menace to the just
and honorable peace which alone this country will in the long run
support. We object to their actions because we believe they represent a
course of conduct which may at any time produce a war in which we and
not they would labor and suffer._
"_In such a war the prime fact to be remembered is that the men really
responsible for it would not be those who would pay the penalty. The
ultra-pacifists are rarely men who go to battle. Their fault or their
folly would be expiated by the blood of countless thousands of plain and
decent American citizens of the stamp of those, North and South alike,
who in the Civil War laid down all they had, including life itself, in
battling for the right as it was given to them to see the right._"
* * * * *
But the false prophets of peace have assured us all along that there is
no danger whatever of war between the United States and any other
country. They tell us further that our armaments are a menace to other
nations; that they evidence suspicion of other nations, and thereby
place us under suspicion. According to such philosophy, the college man
who becomes an athlete is a trouble-breeder, for the reason that the
mere possession of muscle makes him a menace to other men.
Now, if we are in any danger of war, we ought to do the right thing to
secure the safety of our country, of our homes and our families, and all
things that are dear to us.
If it be true that the possession of armaments is an inducement for
those who have them to use them, and if it be true that armaments fret
the fighting spirit of other nations as a red rag frets a bull, and
thereby lead to war, then, surely, we do not need more armaments, but
less. Instead of arming ourselves any more, we should disarm until we
are defenseless enough to be perfectly safe. On the other hand, if there
be any likelihood that this country may be invaded by a foreign foe, we
should be prepared to meet the invaders in the right way, and with the
right spirit.
If it be the proper way to go and meet them as the inhabitants of
Jerusalem went out to meet Alexander, with the keys to our gates, and
with presents and sacrificial offerings, then we should adopt that way
of preparing to pave their path with flowers and make them drunk on
grape-juice and the milk of human kindness.
Dr. David Starr Jordan believes in disarmament. He further believes that
armor-plate, guns, battleships, and ammunition should not be made by
private manufacturers, but that, on the contrary, these things should be
made exclusively by the government, for he is of the opinion that
manufacturers of war materials foment disorder and promote war in order
to bring themselves more business.
Long association with the manufacturers of war materials, especially of
explosive materials, has enabled me to know whereof I speak, and I do
know that such a belief is the utterest nonsense. The manufacturers of
war materials with whom I am acquainted are among the staunchest of
peace men, and they would no more be guilty of promoting war to bring
themselves business than a reputable surgeon would be likely to string a
cord across the street to trip up pedestrians and break their limbs in
order to bring himself business.
In the treatment of human physical ailments, we should deem it folly to
confound remedy with disease, and to hold the physician responsible for
pestilence. No one would think of looking upon our science of sanitation
and our quarantine system as breeders and harbingers of pestilence, and
no one would think that our laws against crime and our system of police
protection tend to foster crime. Yet such is the attitude of many
well-intentioned but overzealous persons with respect to our naval and
military system and armaments. They consider them breeders and
harbingers of war.
An army and navy are merely a mighty quarantine system against the
pestilence of war. We must fortify our shores, police our seas with
armor-clads, and be prepared to patrol the skies with aeroplanes around
our entire national horizon when the need may come.
But it is urged that the people are overburdened with the cost of
maintaining armies and navies. Assuming that the burden is great, was it
ever less? Was it ever so small as it is now, compared with the numbers
and wealth of the people? Again, cannot we well afford to bear a
considerable burden of armaments as an insurance against war, and as a
further insurance that if war comes, it will be far less deadly than it
would be without them?
If Dr. Jordan were better acquainted with the manufacture of war
materials, he would know that they can be made more cheaply, with equal
excellence, by private concerns, than by the government. Furthermore, he
would know that big manufacturers of war materials are obliged to employ
a very large force of skilled labor, and that this labor has to be
supplied employment when there are no government orders for war
materials. For example, the manufacture of armor-plate by the United
States Steel Corporation is only a small part of that company's
business. The manufacture of guns and armor-plate by the Bethlehem Steel
Company does not keep it constantly occupied, and it has to furnish
other employment for its men when government orders are not forthcoming.
Consequently, it is obliged to make things besides armor-plate and guns
and war materials.
The du Pont explosives companies do a far larger business in high
explosives and smokeless powders for commercial purposes than they do
for government purposes.
Therefore, if the manufacture of war materials were to be confined
entirely to government shops, then the government would truly have to
promote war to keep its employees busy. At any rate, the government
would have to maintain a large labor force, making war materials alone,
for the government could not devote itself to the manufacture of
automobiles, chairs, cloth, artificial leather, dynamite, sporting
powder, and the like, for commercial purposes, as private manufacturers
do.
There is another reason why the private manufacturers of war materials
should be encouraged by the government, and it is that, in the event of
war, the government would find the large capital and plants of the
wealthy Steel Trust, the Bethlehem Steel Company, and the du Ponts
available for the purpose of national defense in addition to the
government's own resources. This is very important.
The battle of Lake Erie was quite as much a du Pont victory as a Perry
victory; for the resources, energy, and generalship of the du Pont
Powder Company overcame inconceivable difficulties, carted the powder
from Wilmington, Delaware, all the way overland to Lake Erie, and got it
there on time.
It is unfortunate that a person's confidence in his knowledge of a
subject is often directly proportionate to his ignorance of the subject.
It is a psychological truth that ignorance may be taught, just like
anything else, and a person may become very erudite in things which are
not true, just as he may in things which are true.
Dr. Jordan, in recent public utterances, has said that he would rather
the United States should lose its Pacific possessions than that we
should go to war; and he has remarked that now, while the world is drunk
with war, is a bad time to lay in more liquor. This is an ingenious
metaphor, and well designed to trip the intelligence of the unwary. As a
matter of fact, when the world is drunk with war, and rapine, murder,
and plunder are rife, it is exactly the time to lay in more ammunition.
Had Dr. Jordan been in the position of Captain John Smith in the
Virginia colony, when the Indians were on the war-path, he would have
advised the settlers to disarm and destroy their stockades and forts.
The Indians at that time went on the war-path and got drunk for war
because they had a grievance.
When the present war is over and international commerce is
re-established, we are destined to give some other nation a grievance,
for the same reason that we then gave those Indians a grievance, and
that other nation will go on the war-path, just as those Indians did,
and that other nation when it takes up the torch and the sword and gets
a taste of blood, is going to be as savage as the men engaged in the
present European conflict.
There are two kinds of true prophets: The one kind, like Isaiah, who is
directly inspired of God; and the other kind, who judges the future by
the lessons of the past. The scientist is a true prophet; but he is not
one of the inspired kind. The way he does his predicting is the way of
the astronomer, who uses a base line the width of the earth's orbit in
order to triangulate the parallax of a star. So the scientific prophet
triangulates the parallax of future events from a base line compassing
all human history.
There is no one lesson which history teaches us more plainly than that
the possession of wealth by a defenseless nation is a standing _casus
belli_ to other nations, and that always there has been the nation
standing ready to attack and plunder any other nation when there was
likely to be sufficient profit in the enterprise to pay for the trouble.
Never have we seen any treaty stand for long in the way of such
practices between nations. Treaties have always been mere scraps of
paper, which, like the cobweb, ensnare the weak, while they let the
strong break through.
It is strange that those who recommend that this country try the
experiment of disarmament to secure peace by setting other nations a
great moral example, should not have read history to see whether or not
the experiment were a new one; and whether or not, judging by past
experiments, it were likely to prove a success or a failure. Should
these men look back through history, they would find that ancient Egypt
tried the experiment, and went down under the sword and torch of fierce
invaders from over the desert. They would learn that the Greeks tried
the experiment and found it a failure. They would learn that India and
China have bled through the ages because of their peaceableness. They
would learn that the fall of Carthage was due not so much to the
superior military power of Rome, or to the reiterations of Cato that
Carthage must be destroyed, as it was to the peace talk of Hanno, which
withheld the necessary support of Hannibal in Italy. They would learn
that when old Rome lost her vigor and neglected her defenses, she was
hewn to pieces by fierce barbarians. They would learn that the fathers
of our own country, after the Revolution, tried the same old experiment,
with the result that the city of Washington was captured and burned by
the British in the war of 1812. They would learn, furthermore, that all
prophets who have said that the nations will war no more, have been
false prophets.
Four years before the Russo-Japanese war, I wrote an article for a New
York magazine, in which I prophesied that war, and predicted Japanese
victory. I predicted also at the same time that there would be in the
near future a general European conflict. It has come.
The following quotations from that article may be of interest:
* * * * *
"_By far the greatest probability of imminent war lies in the Far East,
between Russia and Japan. Japan feels the sting of the Russian whip that
made her drop Port Arthur and withdraw from the continent of Asia, thus
relinquishing the chief advantages gained by her victory over China. The
whole sum paid Japan by China as a war indemnity has been expended on
her navy and on armaments. In the East, in both naval and military
strength, she is superior to Russia_.
"_Whether or not we shall soon have war will depend on whether Japan
will quietly wait until Russia shall have finished the Trans-Siberian
Railway, secured Korea, intrenched and fortified herself along the
Asiatic coast, and built a fleet of sufficient strength entirely to
overawe the little empire. It is doubtful if Japan will wait for the
time when Russia shall be ready to strangle her. She may strike and
drive Russia from Korea and secure, as well, a fair share of Chinese
territory; or, what amounts to the same thing, a lease of a portion of
the Celestial Empire. She will thereafter be better able to protect her
interests in Chinese trade and opportunities. Should she strike soon,
and she and Russia be left to themselves, Japan ought to win, for she is
close at hand and will be able to bring to bear upon the points of
collision a much greater force than Russia. She will also be able to
act with correspondingly greater celerity._
* * * * *
"_If we would essay to predict future events, we must draw the lines of
divination in the direction that we see the nations grow, and these
lines must be parallel with those of great commercial interests--be
parallel with those of national self-interests. We then have but one
more question to consider, on which to base a priori judgment. It is the
question of might--of national resources and blood and iron._
"_What was true on a small scale, with primitive tribes of men, is also
true on a large scale, with the great world powers of today. In early
times, like the ebb and flow of the tides of the sea, conquest and
re-conquest, victory and defeat, followed one another. Then destruction
succeeded growth and growth destruction._
"_As the great banyan tree constantly encroaches upon the territory of
surrounding flora, to overtop and blight and kill all upon which its
shadow falls, so do and so must nations in their growth encroach upon
their neighbors._
"_In recent times, the tremendous strides made in the arts and sciences,
and the birth of new industries, and the enormous growth of all, have
provided room and occupation for the earth's great dominating peoples.
Vast land areas have been reclaimed, and boundless resources
developed. Thus far the overflow has been upon the lands of the tameless
American Indian--of the lazy African--of the docile Hindoo, and the
simple savage of the southern seas. Now it is China's turn, and the
wolves of greed, in the guise of trade, are already howling at her
gates._
"_Growth is proceeding with constantly accelerating rapidity, and soon
the overflow must be on lands already filled to overflowing--not then
with simple savages. It will then be Greek to Greek, over fortresses
that frown along the whole frontier. Then there will be a clash. It is
coming. Where the storm will first break, and when, is a question. That
a great conflict will come, and at no distant date, is certain."--"The
Home Magazine," July, 1900._
* * * * *
At the first annual banquet of the Aeronautical Society four years ago,
I predicted exactly the use of the aeroplane in war that it has had
since that time. President Taft was one of the speakers, and his subject
was his pet peace and arbitration treaties. He said that there were not
likely to be the requisite wars for testing out the aeroplane, as
predicted. He said that there was going to be a shortage of wars.
Since that time, we have had the revolution in China, the Italian war
with Tripoli, the Balkan wars, a continuous revolutionary performance
in Mexico, and finally, we have the present great European War. Not
much of a shortage in wars, truly!
The following quotation from Dr. David Starr Jordan's "War and Waste" is
an excellent illustration of the prophetic wisdom that is keeping the
United States of America unprepared against war:
* * * * *
"_What shall we say of the Great War of Europe, ever threatening, ever
impending, and which never comes? We shall say that it will never come.
Humanly speaking, it is impossible._
"_Not in the physical sense, of course, for with weak, reckless, and
godless men nothing evil is impossible. It may be, of course, that some
half-crazed archduke or some harassed minister of state shall
half-knowing give the signal for Europe's conflagration. In fact, the
agreed signal has been given more than once within the last few months.
The tinder is well dried and laid in such a way as to make the worst of
this catastrophe. All Europe cherishes is ready for the burning. Yet
Europe recoils and will recoil even in the dread stress of
spoil-division of the Balkan war...._
"_But accident aside, the Triple Entente lined up against the Triple
Alliance, we shall expect no war...._
"_The bankers will not find the money for such a fight, the
industries of Europe will not maintain it, the statesmen cannot. So
whatever the bluster or apparent provocation, it comes to the same thing
at the end. There will be no general war until the masters direct the
fighters to fight. The masters have much to gain, but vastly more to
lose, and their signal will not be given._"
* * * * *
Eight years ago, when the great Peace Conference was held at Carnegie
Hall, New York, to discuss the limitation and abolishment of armaments,
the most notable of the pacifists represented were invited by the
Economic Club of Boston to attend a banquet in that city for the free
hot-airing of their views.
There was much sophistical palaver about destroying our old battle-flags
and leveling our soldiers' monuments and all landmarks and reminders of
war. William T. Stead, however, was more rational, and he was annoyed by
the silly impracticable nonsense of some of the dubs of peace. Stead's
better sense was evidenced by the fact that the following winter he
recommended to the British Parliament that England build two battleships
to every one built by Germany.
Invited to speak in defense of armaments, I held that we must arm for
peace, and not disarm for it. I began my remarks by telling them this
story:
In a small paragraph in an obscure place upon the back page of a
leading Boston paper, I once saw the announcement that Herbert Spencer,
the great philosopher, was very ill, and not expected to live. On the
front page of the same paper, under bold headlines, was a three-column
article on the physical condition of John L. Sullivan.
John L. Sullivan was a fighter, while Herbert Spencer was only a
philosopher; hence the difference in public interest.
John L. Sullivan, in his time, standing on the corner, would deplete the
hall and break up any peace meeting in the world, and block the street
with massed humanity for a square, jostling for a sight of him.
Several years ago, a reverend gentleman by the name of Charles Edward
Jefferson elicited much applause by his public utterances on the
blessings and advantages of non-resistance and meekness mild. He made it
as clear as the day dawn of June, to the unreasoning, that it is all a
mistake to build guns, warships, and coast fortifications; that our war
colleges are not institutions of actual learning at all, but are
institutions for teaching ignorance. He declared that militarism is
squandering the taxpayers' money by the hundreds of millions, and all
because the advocates of militarism and the friends of militarism are
perverse and wilfully wot not what they do, though wisdom radiant as the
rainbow stares them in the face; and because our military men, who have
been educated at government expense and who, we have thought, were
devoting their lives to the country's service in studying its needs and
fighting its battles, are desirous merely of promotion and of widening
the sphere of their activities.
According to Dr. Jefferson, these men are not what we have supposed
them--a bulwark against trouble, but are trouble-makers, ignorant of the
primary essential of their profession, namely militant meekness; and
instead of being guardians of peace and an assurance against war, they
are actual war-breeders. He seems to think that there is a real
conspiracy to squander the taxpayers' money in the interest of a
military clique.
A man may be wrong, and yet be honest. Prejudice is honest. Dr.
Jefferson is doubtless honest, and if it should be that he is right,
then his doctrine is practicable. If he is right, our military men are
wrong. If our army and navy officers, who have been educated at the
public expense and in the school of experience, do not know and
understand better this country's needs in the respects and particulars
for which they have been educated than does this good ecclesiastic, then
it is proved that the church is a better military school than Annapolis
or West Point. Theology, and not military science, should hereafter be
taught in those institutions. The military parade should be called in
from the campus and be replaced by knee drill in the chapel, and
hereafter, at Annapolis, at West Point, and along the firing-line, the
command should be Shoulder Psalms, instead of Shoulder Arms.
Let us lay down our arms and spike our guns, disband the military parade
from the campus, as the sentimentalists desire us to do, and we shall
very soon, with Kubla Khan, hear "ancestral voices [George Washington's
among them] prophesying war."
CHAPTER II
CAN LAW BE SUBSTITUTED FOR WAR?
I am a peace advocate--that is to say, I am one who advocates an active
campaign in the cause of peace, employing the best means and instruments
for the accomplishment of practical results.
Unfortunately, a wide difference of opinion exists in the ranks of those
who style themselves peace advocates as to how the war against war can
best be fought. That difference of opinion is as to whether we should
arm for the fray, or disarm for it. Shall we go into the fight with
sword and buckler, and with armor on, prepared to return blow with
stronger blow; or shall we go into the fight with bared breasts, and,
when we receive a blow upon one cheek turn the other cheek also, and let
both our eyes be blackened and our nose be skinned in order to shame our
antagonist, by giving him an object lesson of the horrors of war?
Ernst Haeckel has said there is nothing constant but change. He might
have said also that there is a no more consistent thing in its constancy
than human inconsistency.
That other great philosopher, Herbert Spencer, declared that, as he grew
older, the more and more he realized the extent to which mankind is
governed by irrationality.
Josh Billings said, "It is not so much the ignorance of men that makes
them ridiculous as what they know that is not so."
The complex problems of ethics, eugenics, economics, and human dynamics,
which enter into all questions and problems of peace and war, are like
so many Chinese puzzles to the ordinary mind.
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of minds--the ratiocinative and
the irrational; in other words, the logical and the illogical. The
logical mind proceeds scientifically from sure premises to just
conclusions, taking no direction and traveling no faster and no farther
in any direction than warranted and justified by ascertained fact. The
irrational or illogical mind, on the contrary, is unable to discriminate
between belief and knowledge, between facts and fancies. Consequently,
this type of mind proceeds from guess to conclusion, with the result
that final judgment is necessarily distorted, warped, and swerved from
truth just in proportion as the basic guess is incorrect or false.
There is a no more momentous problem before the world today than that of
international jurisprudence, especially with respect to the maintenance
of peace where practicable, and the control of wars, when wars are
inevitable or necessary; and there is no subject of such moment more
fruitful of irrationalism.
In the light of practical common-sense, there is nothing funnier in the
writings of Mark Twain than the inconsistent prating of our peace
sophists. It is as though they let not their right-hand brain know what
their left-hand brain is doing. They are usually brimmed and primed with
sacrificial sentimentality and over-soul. Their delicatessen natures
shrink from contact with the stern, man-making realities of life. They
are the disciples of soft stuff. The mush and moonshine of maudlin
sentimentalism are their element. They possess no powers of
discrimination between the actual and the erroneous. The guise of fact
is no recommendation to them unless it fits into their scheme. An error
is far more welcome if it comes in a garmenture that conforms with their
ideals. They put their union label on what we receive by the grace of
God, but they fail to recognize and appreciate that they cannot
comprehend the infinite; that what to them seems disorder and confusion
in the world may be the most perfect order in the eye of God. They
cannot understand how infinite wisdom, infinite justice, and infinite
mercy should have created a warring world; consequently, they have set
themselves the task of repairing the faults of creation and of
recreating the world to suit their own ideas as to what infinite wisdom
and mercy ought to be.
When one of these peace sophists gets into a fight, however, he promptly
prays to God to help him whip the other fellow. The pacific
sentimentalist is usually a most arrant coward. In time of war, the
cowardly sentimental pacifists are the loudest in appeals to Almighty
God to fight on their side and to lead their army to victory--that same
army which in time of peace they have done everything in their power to
disarm and disband.
Recently, when speaking at a church, I was asked the question, "How long
is it going to take to make might right?" I asked my interrogator this
question: "If, at the creation, you had been consulted and your advice
asked as to whether or not a world should be made in which all life
should feed on other life, and half of the animal creation should be
made prey for the other half; whether everything should be made tooth
and nail, claw and scale, hunter and hunted, terror and blood, strife
and war; whether or not the cat should train for the hunt by torturing
the little bird--how would you have replied to God?" My querist did not
answer me, but went home to think it over.
I do not purpose to make any apology for Infinite Wisdom. My pacifist
friends are doing that constantly. It is my humble opinion that the
Creator did the best He could for us, and that we ought to be thankful
and grateful.
I believe with Pope, that:
"_Spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear--whatever is, is right._"
I realize that the most perfect order is confusion to the mind that is
not constituted to comprehend it.
I know that the macrocosmic mechanism moves with mathematical
exactitude, and that we, in comparison, are mighty only in our
arrogance; that, in fact, we are but microscopic specks in the drift of
worlds.
Nature seems to care little for individuals, but very much for races and
species; little indeed for a person, very much for a people.
The terms right and wrong, good and bad, are entirely relative. Right
for an individual may not be so for a large aggregation of individuals.
The welfare of a nation or a people may not be the welfare of the world,
and God has His eye on the world.
_The wrong are weak, the right are strong.
This mean the two terms right and wrong;
And truth sought out to any length,
Finds all wrong weakness, all right strength._
FORMATIVE STRIFE
Primeval man found himself thrust into an environment where all animal
life fed on other life, and half the animal creation was prey for the
other half. He was one of the hunted. Yet, with less strength but
greater cunning, he was destined to master all. Man's supremacy has been
developed by warfare of wit, craft, and cunning, versus brute force.
Primitive man found himself "up a tree" in both the actual and the
metaphoric sense. His teeth and claws were no match for those of the
leopard and the sabre-toothed tiger. He had no recourse but flight until
stern necessity taught him to wield a club.
Then he climbed down from his abode in trees, and began the conquest of
the earth. The club made man a traveler. His forays with that weapon
taught him to walk and fight upon his hind legs, and gave him his erect
carriage. But he had to travel a long and thorny pathway indeed, armed
only with a club, before he invented the stone hatchet and spear of
sharpened flint or bone. It was a far-flung span across the gulf of time
from the tree-home to the cave in the hill, his new abiding-place.
The bow and arrow, which enabled him to kill at long range, were his
next weapon, and were the greatest invention of all time.
The protection of the heart with the left arm and shield, with the right
arm free to wield the sword or hurl the javelin, made man right-handed.
Armed with the bow and arrow, spear and shield, man was equipped still
better for travel; and ever since travel has been widening out the sky
and broadening man's mental horizon.
The fighting spirit widened the acquaintance of different peoples, and
the terrible menace of some savage common enemy forced different tribes
to unite and build up nations. Union against danger is the best
instructor of self-government, and the best guarantee of internal good
behavior.
It is generally recognized that man is a product of his environment;
that he is in body and mind the sum of his own and ancestral
experiences; that he is omnivorous; that he drinks water and breathes
air; and yet, many persons fail to recognize the inevitable concomitant
conclusion that he is also of necessity a warring animal, and that the
formative influences of the fierce struggle for existence have made him
what he is. His life is a series of reactions to environing stimuli; and
he is actuated and shaped by those stimuli, and just as those stimuli
have been necessary to his growth, so they are still necessary to his
continued growth, and even to his very existence. In other words, the
formative influences that have made and sustained man are still
necessary to his maintenance. The character of the strife may be
changed, and is already largely changed, from war to business. But the
intensity of the struggle cannot be alleviated one whit, because it is
impossible, in the nature of things, to maintain man's strength of
character in any other way. He could live a little longer without strife
than without food or air or water, but the absence of strife would be as
fatal to him in the end as would be the absence of food, air, or water.
The struggle for existence has always been a business proposition with
man, and business today is a struggle for existence as intense and
merciless as the struggle in war.
In olden times, piracy and war for plunder were the principal business
of mankind. Today, business is a warfare, and though it may be
law-abiding, still the weak go down under it and suffer and die under it
as surely as they did in old-time wars. The relation of strength to
weakness remains unchanged, and the reward for strength and the penalty
for weakness are as great as they ever were.
There now exists, as always, the same intensity of incentive of all
classes to strive for something more and something better than they
have. Though the condition of all classes has improved, the struggle of
individual with individual is as great, the strife of class with class
is as intense as ever.
The ownership of one's earnings, with freedom to apply and enjoy them,
was the greatest prize ever offered to stimulate the working genius of
this world, and the results during the past hundred and fifty years have
been phenomenal.
The world has progressed more within that time in those things which
tend to complete living than it had previously progressed in all the
ages that had dragged their slow length along since the world thawed out
of the ancient ice.
But human agencies, like all agencies in nature, are essentially
rhythmical. In order to accumulate the necessary energy and enthusiasm
to go far enough in the right direction, we inevitably go too far, and,
when the pendulum returns, it swings to the other extreme.
It is important to realize the great truth that freedom ends when it
aims beyond the spirit which strives for the greatest good to the
greatest number.
According to Herbert Spencer, the criminal classes are composed of those
who have been pushed out of the race in the struggle for existence under
modern conditions. They were normal components of society in the past,
when all men were soldiers and all soldiers were bandits, and the
principal business of mankind was piracy and war for plunder.
There being no longer the ever-present opportunity to join in an
inter-tribal or an international war for robbery, the soldier-bandit
now makes war upon society.
All of the Huns and Vandals in our midst are today armed with the
short-sword of the ballot. How important it is then that they should be
taught to know and to understand that in the use of this weapon their
work should be formative and not deformative; that it should be
constructive and not destructive!
SUBSTITUTION OF LAW FOR WAR
The poet's words, "The parliament of man, the federation of the world,"
have become a very familiar quotation in recent years. Anciently all
wisdom was taught in poesy, and we have never yet quite freed ourselves
from the age-long habitude of receiving as unimpeachable wisdom whatever
may be said in verse.
To the common mind, a statement in didactic verse has the proselyting
power of Holy Writ. Now, this line of Tennyson, "The parliament of man,
the federation of the world," points us toward a Utopia, without hope of
actual attainment.
There is at the present time a growing good intention to put an end to
wars by international conciliation and arbitration; in short, to
substitute law for war. We must, however, keep strongly in mind the
interdependence of law and force, and the consequent interdependence of
international law and armaments. Conciliation must not be confounded
with arbitration, and persuasion must not be confounded with law.
Law has been aptly designated "codified custom." Actually, law is an
attempt to construct experience into prophecy. We are able to judge of
the sufficiency of new laws only by the sufficiency of laws in past
practice.
The error is very common, to confound as having the same meaning terms
of quite opposite meanings--for example, it is a very common error to
confound society with government, and civilization with enlightenment.
Society is an order of things by virtue of which we are able to
co-operate with one another and to enjoy mutuality of possessions which
gives them their only value; while government is an order of things for
the purpose of protecting society.
The world has arrived at great enlightenment, and has attained some
degree of civilization. Self-interest is becoming more and more
altruistic, and altruism is becoming more and more profitable. We are
not so barbarous as we used to be, but we still slaughter one another to
adjust international differences. This cannot be esteemed civil
procedure. Enlightenment may be very uncivil, and civility may not be
enlightenment.
The great problem yet remains of uniting under practical laws the
nations of the earth into a family of nations.
This is not a work for dreamers or sentimentalists; but is purely a
business proposition, which can be effected only to the extent that the
best interests of all the contracting parties are thereby secured.
When will arbitration be able to realize the Utopian dreams of the
pacifists? General Homer Lea answers the question once for all in the
following expressive terms:
* * * * *
"_Only when arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime
and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and
nations. Thence will International Arbitration come of its own accord as
the natural outgrowth of national evolution through the individual. As
nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his
crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the
basis of individual impulse, so long will they control the acts of
nations._
"_When, therefore, the merchant arbitrates with the customer he is about
to cheat; when trusts arbitrate with the people they are about to
fleece; when the bulls and bears arbitrate with the lambs they are about
to shear; when the thief arbitrates with the man he is about to rob, or
the murderer with his victim, and so on throughout the category of
crime, then will communities be able to dispense with laws, and
international thievery and deception, shearing and murder, resort to
arbitration._"
* * * * *
The men who control our city and state politics and make and enforce our
city and state laws all over the country are not always honest, but, on
the contrary, they are often notoriously corrupt, notwithstanding the
fact that they have much stronger incentives to be honest here than they
would have in dealing with foreign nations and strange peoples. What,
therefore, are we to expect of their integrity and their honesty in the
settlement of international disputes and in the enactment and execution
of international laws?
What an enormous field for graft it will be when some weaker nation
tries to get its rights at the coming international tribunal!
Our laws are now notoriously inadequate with respect to theft, burglary,
highway robbery, and municipal-government graft. The amount of money
loss to the people of this country through the failure of our laws to
suppress these iniquities is enough to support a standing army of half a
million men, build four battleships a year, and place us on such a
defensive footing as absolutely to preclude all danger of war with any
foreign power.
Has human nature improved so much lately that special privilege will no
longer result from special power? Has the human race progressed so much
lately that privilege and oppression will not follow power; wealth and
luxury follow privilege; and degeneracy and disorganization follow
wealth and luxury?
The race has certainly not so altered that men do not grow old and die;
and nations, like men, have their youth, their middle age, their
decrepitude and death.
Periodically, some religio-pathological sect will announce the
conclusion of an understanding with the Great Reaper, whereby, through
certain incantations or breathing exercises, death may be indefinitely
postponed; but they, like other mortals, keep on dying.
Those good men who are the leaders in the present peace movement must
realize the fact that the carrying out of their project will devolve,
not upon them--not upon the philanthropist, the sentimentalist, and the
humanitarian--but upon the politician.
The actual procedure of the Hague congresses enables us to forecast
exactly this result. The judicial bench of that court was a
bargain-counter, over which political advantage was bartered for
political advantage. It was no real love of peace that dominated those
tribunals: only the powerful nations spoke or were heard. No protection
was suggested for the weaker nations, who, presumably, would be most
benefited by international arbitration. They were quite out of the
running.
International arbitration will ultimately become a political machine.
Nothing can prevent it, and there is no reason to believe that those
politicians who will have control of the international arbitration
machine will be any more honest than other machine politicians.
ALL LAW MUST BE BACKED BY FORCE
It is a popular belief that when the paradoxical conciliatory legal
persuasion in the form of arbitration goes into effect, we shall no
longer require any armaments, but may forge our swords into plow-shares
and spears into pruning-hooks, disband our armies, and return the
soldiers to the shops and farms.
We are prone to forget that law is as much a representative of the
requisite power behind it for its enforcement as a paper dollar is a
representative of the requisite gold available for its redemption. A
well-known orator came very near becoming President through a popular
misconception as to the interdependence of gold and paper money, and he
failed to get the Presidency because of a public awakening to the error.
We are prone to forget, furthermore, that it is the respect for power
behind law that makes possible its enforcement. Any law to adjust
international differences by arbitration will simply be an embodiment
of the collective wisdom of allied Powers in the exercise of force, and
a force that is representative of their banded armies and navies.
International law is static military force. War is the dynamic form of
the same force. I believe in international arbitration for all it is
worth. It is a good thing to push along. It will unquestionably lessen
the frequency of wars, but many wars are sure to come in spite of it,
and because of it.
NON-JUSTICIABLE DIFFERENCES
There are ills of national bodies politic that can be cured only by the
sword. Insurmountable differences between various nations and races of
men are always sure to arise, as impossible to arbitrate as the
differences between the herbivora and the carnivora.
The existence of the carnivora depends upon the sacrifice of the
herbivora. Their interests are, from their very nature, antagonistic,
and their differences are, by consequence, insurmountable, and not
justiciable. The harmony of nature depends upon inharmony between the
meat-eaters and the vegetable-eaters, and the harmony of modern progress
has likewise depended in large measure upon formative inharmony between
peoples.
Such radical differences and such concomitant radical diversity of
interests exist among the various races of men that the task of
harmonizing their interests, aims, and activities will be about as great
as would be that of bleaching their skins to a uniform color.
It is a practical impossibility to enact international laws that will
make the welfare of each nation the concern of all, with no
subordination of any one to the welfare of another. Will arbitration be
able to place all peoples upon a plane of equality? Will it be able to
secure to all, even the meanest, equal rights to enjoyment of property,
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Will arbitration be able to make the Anglo-Saxon, the Teuton, the
African, and the Oriental meet one another on common ground, and share
and share alike, live and let live, when their interests come into
collision?
If arbitration cannot do this--if arbitration does not do this--if it
does not treat all with strict impartiality, then those who are
ill-treated are going to rebel, and wars will still come.
Between nations no sentimental consideration exists or is possible,
sufficiently effectual to exert more than the merest microscopic
influence as a deterrent of war. Self-interest always has been, and
always will be, the deciding factor in the settlement of international
disputes. War uncloaks international hypocrisy, and the people are seen
in their true character.
The attitude of the warlike and powerful nations in the past toward the
weaker nations has been very similar to that of the carnivora toward the
herbivora.
International arbitration may somewhat lessen the burden of armaments,
but the time will be long before it can lift the burden. The orators who
plead at the International Tribunal will speak in the voice of the
deep-throated guns behind them; their persuasion will be that of cold
steel, and neither brotherly love nor international sympathy will be
their guide, but self-interest, and no demands will be relinquished
except from policy in their observance of such rights of others as are
warded by the frowning ramparts of opposing force.
Unless all the nations of the world join in the pact, then arbitration
will simply be an alliance for the benefit of the allies themselves as
against all others. There will be nothing new in such an arrangement.
The Six Nations of New York did the same thing; they formed a federation
and settled their differences by arbitration, and it was a good thing
for the Six Nations; but it was not a good thing for the neighboring
Indian tribes.
We Americans expect to get all we want any way, either with or without
arbitration. If we expected that the Chinese would be forced upon us,
or our rights and privileges curtailed in the Orient, we should not
think of joining in an arbitration pact for a minute.
There will always be the warfare of commerce for the markets of the
world, and it will be tempered with avarice, not mercy; and commercial
warfare will become more and more severe as the nations grow, and as
competition, with want and hunger behind it, gets keen as the sword-edge
with the crowding of people into the narrow world.
UNCHANGING HUMAN NATURE
Human nature is the same today as it was in the ante-rebellion days of
human slavery. It is the same as it was when Napoleon, with the
will-o'-the-wisp of personal and national glory held before the eyes of
emotional and impressionable Frenchmen, led them to wreck for him the
monarchies of Europe. Human nature is the same today as it was in
Caesar's time, when he massacred two hundred and fifty thousand
Germans--men, women, and children--in a day, in cold blood, while
negotiations for peace were pending, and entered in his diary the simple
statement, "Caesar's legions killed them all." Human nature is the same
today as it was in the cruel old times, when war was the chief business
of mankind, and populations sold as slaves were among the most
profitable plunder. Yes, human nature is the same as it has always
been. Education and Christian teaching have made pity and sympathy more
familiar to the human heart, but avarice and the old fighting spirit are
kept in leash only by the dominance of necessity and circumstances,
which the institutions of civilization impose upon the individual.
The following is quoted from "Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain,"
by the late Professor J. A. Cramb:
* * * * *
"_War may change its shape, the struggle here intensifying it, there
abating it; it may be uplifted by ever loftier purposes and nobler
causes. But cease? How shall it cease?_
"_Indeed, in the light of history, universal peace appears less as a
dream than as a nightmare, which shall be realized only when the ice has
crept to the heart of the sun, and the stars, left black and trackless,
start from their orbits._"
* * * * *
Max Mueller has told us that the roots of some of our words are older
than the Egyptian Pyramids. Far older still are the essential traits of
human nature. The human nature of today will be the human nature of
tomorrow, and the human nature of tomorrow will be in all essential
respects the same as it was in ancient Rome, Persia, and Egypt, and even
in the palmy days of sea-sunk Atlantis.
The best of us are at heart barbarians under a thin veneer of
civilization, and it is as natural for us to revert to barbarous war as
for the hog to return to his wallow.
If we were able to apply to the upbuilding of our Army and Navy the
money that goes to political graft throughout the country, and the money
that has been squandered, and is still being squandered through our
notorious vote-purchasing pensions, we could place ourselves upon a war
footing that would be an absolute guarantee of permanent peace. It is
not, therefore, very encouraging, to enlarge this failing system of
laws, in order to save an annual expenditure certainly less than what
the defects of our laws now cost the country.
Even though international wars may be prevented by a court of
arbitration, can rebellion and civil war be prevented, and ought they
always to be prevented?
JUSTIFIABLE WARS
When the unjust laws of an iniquitous government make existence
intolerable for the great mass of the people of a country or of a
colonial possession; "when in the course of human events, it becomes
necessary" for a people to throw off the yoke of oppression, as we did
in our War of the Revolution, or as the French people did in the French
Revolution, or as the great Chinese people have lately done by their
rebellion against the domination of an intolerable savage Manchu
monarchy, then war is the only remedy, and freedom can then plead only
with the sword.
I quote the following from Theodore Roosevelt's "America and the World
War":
* * * * *
"_In 1864 there were in the North some hundreds of thousands of men who
praised peace as the supreme end, as a good more important than all
other goods, and who denounced war as the worst of all evils. These men
one and all assailed and denounced Abraham Lincoln, and all voted
against him for President. Moreover, at that time there were many
individuals in England and France who said it was the duty of those two
nations to mediate between the North and the South, so as to stop the
terrible loss of life and destruction of property which attended our
Civil War; and they asserted that any Americans who in such event
refused to accept their mediation and to stop the war would thereby show
themselves the enemies of peace. Nevertheless, Abraham Lincoln and the
men back of him by their attitude prevented all such effort at
mediation, declaring that they would regard it as an unfriendly act to
the United States. Looking back from a distance of fifty years, we can
now see clearly that Abraham Lincoln and his supporters were right. Such
mediation would have been a hostile act, not only to the United States
but to humanity. The men who clamored for unrighteous peace fifty years
ago this fall were the enemies of mankind._"
* * * * *
Those who are oppressed by the superincumbent weight of society, and
labor for mere existence, with no hope of freedom from poverty, are
slaves as much as were those made bondsmen in old-time wars. It matters
little whether the wolf at the door be a creature of sociological
conditions, or a creature of war. The evil is no less real.
James Russell Lowell, in his admirable poem on France and the French
Revolution, said about the most expressive, the most potential, and
altogether the best thing that has ever been said illustrative of the
uncontrollable massiveness of the popular will, which, under the
stimulus of patriotism or the smart or burden of accumulated wrongs, can
stampede a nation into war:
"_As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches
Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow,
Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches
And the blind havoc leaps unwarned below,
So grew and gathered through the silent years
The madness of a People, wrong by wrong.
There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears,
No strength in suffering;--but the Past was strong:
The brute despair of trampled centuries
Leapt up with one hoarse yell and snapt its bands,
Groped for its rights with horny, callous hands,
And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes._"
The justification of war depends entirely upon the conditions which
produce it. In short, war is justifiable only when it is a remedy for
evils greater than the evils of the war. War is sometimes a very bitter
remedy; nevertheless, there are diseases much worse than the remedy. The
horrors of the French Revolution, bad as they were, remedied a condition
still more horrible, for the condition of the French common people,
"bowed by the weight of centuries," had become so abject that life was
intolerable; no change could be for the worse. Under such circumstances
there is no fear of death; the fear of death is only fear of the loss of
life through love of life. When existence is intolerable, and there is
no hope in the heart for better things, life, having no value, is not
much loved, and death has no terrors.
In spite of all the bloodshed of the reign of terror, in spite of all
who fell under the leadership of Napoleon, the French people were
benefited by the Revolution a thousand-fold more than they were injured
by it.
If arbitration could prevent such wars, which are man's God-given
privilege that a people may secure its inalienable rights, then
arbitration, in that respect, would be an iniquitous thing.
War, at best, is a horrible business. It is a reversion to the brute
force of primitive savagery, and is never justifiable except in the
extremity of last resort. But we must appreciate and acknowledge the
fact that the horrors of war, the sacrifice of treasure, the sacrifice
of life, are no arguments whatever against war when inalienable human
rights are at stake that must be fought for, and that are worth the
sacrifice.
There are at times objects and obligations which are worth the
sacrifice. To prevent war in such cases would be a disgrace and a crime.
As Admiral Mahan says, "Even the material evils of war are less than the
moral evil of compliance with wrong."
CHRISTIANITY AND WAR
In 1901, the editor of _The Christian Herald_ requested me to write an
article in answer to the following question: "Is it consistent for a
loyal Christian, who believes that war is contrary to the teachings of
the Prince of Peace, to engage in the manufacture of material designed
exclusively for the purpose of war?"
In my reply, I pointed out that the great majority of Christians
throughout the world, while they hate war, are often called upon
themselves to become warriors and to fight for their doctrine of peace.
The Rev. T. De Witt Talmage was chosen to reply to my article, which he
did by agreeing with all I had said.
According to the annals of history, wars have almost invariably been
caused by one party attempting to rob another party, or one people
another people. On such occasions, it is self-evident that the blame for
the wars rested with the robbers. Those who fought in defense of their
lives and property, although actual participants in warfare, were
guiltless.
Of course, the attempt to rob and plunder has sometimes been mutual, and
both participants have been aggressors, as were Napoleon and Alexander
in the Russian war. In the great majority of cases, however, one side
has been on the aggressive, and the other on the defensive.
When an officer of the law catches an evil-doer in the act, and is
attacked by him, if, in making an arrest, the officer is compelled to
draw his own revolver and shoot the malefactor, he does a justifiable
act. We have here war in miniature, and it may be taken as a type of all
wars. While we are free to grant that wars are wrong, yet the wrong
rests entirely with the offenders, instead of with the defenders, of
human right.
Housebreaking is wrong, yet the brave knight who, in mediaeval times,
breached a castle wall to free some prisoner unjustly held, did a wholly
commendable act. Similarly, one nation which raises an army to free from
bondage slaves held by another nation, does an equally commendable act,
and the blame for the war rests with those who hold the slaves.
War is an ugly and an awful thing, while some peace theories are very
beautiful, and they are quite safe in times of peace; but when, in the
past, slaves had to be freed, then the true Christians took down their
old swords and shouldered their old guns, and went to the front. If we
read the inscriptions on the monuments erected to the memory of those
who died in our great Civil War, we find it was an army of Christians
who fell.
War is often a necessity. It cannot always be avoided, and, when it
comes, we want the best tools we can get with which to fight. It is
criminal negligence for a nation not to be prepared against war. It is
criminal negligence for a great nation not to be abreast of the times in
arms and equipment.
Often at the bayonet's point, trade and civilization and even
Christianity, have been forced upon the savage, and upon exclusive and
unwarlike peoples, and now Christianity, civilization, and militarism,
sisters of strange relation, hand in hand, embrace the world.
In "Sartor Resartus" Carlyle says:
"_The first ground handful of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal drove Monk
Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling. What will the last do?_"
His own answer is that it will
"... _achieve the final undisputed prostration of force under thought,
of animal courage under spiritual_."
Again Carlyle says, in the same work:
* * * * *
"_Such I hold to be the genuine use of gunpowder: that it makes all men
alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more
mind, though all but no body whatever, then canst thou kill me first,
and art the taller. Hereby, at last is the Goliath powerless and the
David resistless; savage animalism is nothing, inventive spiritualism is
all_."
* * * * *
What does the Bible say about Christ's mission of peace?
* * * * *
"_And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, good will toward men" (Luke II: 13, 14)._
"_And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest ... to
guide our feet into the way of peace" (Luke I: 76, 79)._
"_And his name shall be called ... The Prince of Peace" (Is. IX: 6)._
* * * * *
I hold that there is nothing whatever in the foregoing quotations
inconsistent with warring for the right. From the nature of things, war
is often the price of peace, and justice can only be enforced by the
sword. In the great American Rebellion it was the voice of guns alone
that could command the emancipation of the slaves.
An apostle of the Prince of Peace may often best serve his Master by
becoming a good soldier. The Christian armies that turned back and drove
out of Europe the invading Moors rendered their Master better service
than had they, in order to escape war, fled before the advancing hosts
of Islam.
Should China and India become really aroused and advance during the next
twenty-five years as rapidly as has Japan during a like period in the
past, and should the great "Yellow Peril" rise in its might, and
threaten the Christian World, is there a single soldier of the Cross now
enlisted in the cause of Peace who would not then buckle on his
cartridge-belt, shoulder his gun, and go and fight in the defense of his
religion and his home?
I must confess my belief that, if invasion were threatened on the
Atlantic Coast, some of the pacifists I have met would not buckle on the
cartridge-belt, but would, on the contrary, gird up their loins, take
the advice of Horace Greeley, and go West.
Let us again quote from the Scriptures:
* * * * *
"_The Lord is a man of war_" (_Ex. XV: 3_).
"_The Lord of Hosts is his name_" (_Is. LI: 15_).
"_Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and
my fingers to fight" (Ps. CXLIV: 1)._
* * * * *
It is evident that the modern Christian misunderstands Christ's true
mission, for he said:
* * * * *
"_Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send
peace, but a sword" (Matt. X: 34)._
"_I am come to send fire on the earth" (Luke XII: 49)._
"_And he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one ...
for the things concerning me have an end" (Luke XXII: 36, 37)._
* * * * *
St. Paul said:
* * * * *
"_For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that
which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain; for he
is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth
evil" (Rom. XIII: 4)._
* * * * *
Dr. Lyman Abbott, who is one of the best of America's big men, and one
of the biggest of America's best men, has the following to say about
war:
* * * * *
"_I am not, therefore, one of those who think that war is always wrong.
I cannot think that Jesus Christ Himself inculcated the doctrine that
force never could be used--He who, when He saw the traders in the
Temple, did not wait to argue with them nor to appeal to their
conscience, for He knew that they had neither reason nor conscience, but
drove them out with a whip of small cords, driving the cattle before Him
and overturning the tables of the money-changers and letting the money
roll upon the floor. I am not afraid to follow Him with whatsoever force
it may be necessary for righteousness to put on, when unrighteousness
has armed herself to commit wrong. I cannot think all war is wrong. If I
did, I should not want to look upon a Bunker Hill Monument, for it would
be a monument to our shame; I should want never to speak the name of
Gettysburg, for my lips would blister and my cheeks would blush; I
should want to bury in the grave of oblivion the names of Washington and
Grant._"
* * * * *
There can be but one interpretation of Christian duty and but one
interpretation of true peace. Without justice, the mere absence of war
does not constitute peace to the Christian. Neither to the Christian is
warfare waged in the interest of justice incompatible with the peace
principles which underlie his religious faith. Therefore, the true
interpretation of peace is absence of war, where justice reigns, and the
true Christian mission is to see that justice be done, for without it
there can be no righteous peace. Such peace as can reign with injustice
becomes the abettor of injustice.
While I believe in international conciliation and arbitration, peace and
good will, I do not believe in unlimited arbitration. I do not believe
that arbitration can ever be a universal panacea with which all evils
can be cured without resort to firearms. There are times when throats
have to be cut, and when God is on the side of the executioner.
When a nation persists perennially in war, it can only be brought to
peace by some other nation which will meet it on the battlefield.
Christ established the dictum that they who take the sword shall perish
by the sword. War begets war. The sword brings the sword. As Napoleon
said about sparing murderers and abolishing capital punishment, "_Que
messieurs les assassins commencent_."
We want to put a stop to wars to save life. I wonder why it is that we
are not equally anxious to prevent loss of life from other causes
besides war. Why are we not equally interested in preventing the
tremendous loss of life from easily preventable railroad disasters? An
international movement for safety equipment and sanitation, with an
enlistment of effort and money equal to that being devoted to this great
peace movement would save many more lives every year than the annual
loss in the Napoleonic wars.
Dr. Strong, President of the American Institute of Social Service,
stated at a dinner several years ago, that the number of persons killed
and wounded every year in the United States alone by railroad accidents,
steamship accidents, workshop accidents, accidents in the streets, and
other accidents--all very largely due to preventable causes--amounts to
more than 500,000. In the Japanese-Russian war a total of 333,786 men
were killed and wounded on both sides, not counting the losses in naval
battles. During the same period in the United States alone the great
army of American laborers engaged in manufacturing and building
operations suffered a loss of 425,000 killed and injured; 92,000 more
were therefore killed and injured in our industries in one year than
during that entire war.
I wonder why it is that we are not as enthusiastic in this
social-service work as we are in attacking the problem of war. Is it
that there is more glory and more that appeals to the martial
imagination in attacking war and warriors than there is in the prosaic,
tame, and glamourless enterprise of simply saving human life in peaceful
pursuits for the mere sake of saving it? Is it the old war spirit in the
breasts of the peace men that moves them? Are they fighters, too? In
attacking war, do they feel that they are somehow identified with the
pomp and circumstance of glorious war?
CHAPTER III
OUR INCONSISTENT MONROE DOCTRINE
"If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most
frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject, because
doctrines get inside of a man's own reason and betray him
against himself."
_William Graham Sumner_, "_War and Other Essays_."
A doctrine is a creed, usually mandatory, framed by one person or set of
persons, for the belief or conduct of another person or set of persons.
A doctrine is not necessarily based upon principles of right, equity,
justice, or even expediency.
Doctrines are directions written on the guide-boards of fanaticism. An
exact truth is never proclaimed as a doctrine: there is no doctrine of
mathematics.
The Monroe Doctrine, which pledged the United States to defend American
republican institutions, north and south, against monarchical
encroachments from the Old World, with the dependable support of
England, was proclaimed in 1823, mainly in response to a Continental
doctrine called the Holy Alliance, formed in 1815 by and between
Austria, Russia, Prussia, and France. The Holy Alliance was in effect a
system of mutual political monarchical insurance, under which the
forces of the allied Powers could be used to subdue revolution against
the institution of kingship.
The French Revolution, followed by the democratic empire of Napoleon,
had severely shaken the old intolerant and intolerable order of things.
The Holy Alliance was an expedient of the old order to insure itself
against democratic institutions.
A revolution in Spain in 1820 was promptly suppressed by the Holy
Alliance, and the Spanish people, who had raised their heads and begun
to look around for freedom, were again bowed under the yoke of the
detested Bourbons. The Holy Alliance was surely a most unholy alliance.
Russia, by a ukase in 1821, claimed the right to keep the vessels of all
other Powers out of the North Pacific Ocean. That was a Russian "Monroe
Doctrine" which helped to make Monroe a doctrinaire.
In 1823 Spain lost, through revolutions, all of her American possessions
except Cuba and Porto Rico, and Portugal had lost Brazil. France had
lost the island of Haiti.
The United States naturally sympathized with the newly-formed states
built on the ruins of the Spanish and Portuguese empires. They had
mostly adopted republican institutions, becoming sisters of the great
northern republic.
James Monroe was not the father of the child named for him, for the
actual formulator of the Monroe Doctrine was John Quincy Adams, at that
time Secretary of State, who got the cue from George Canning.
England wanted unrestricted trade with the Spanish-American countries;
she had no need of additional territory on the American continent, but
she saw danger in its acquisition by other nations. George Canning tried
four times in 1823 to get the United States to join England in her
declaration of the open-door policy. Monroe favored the proposal, but
finally Adams convinced the President that it would be better to avoid
any entangling arrangement with England, and to stand alone.
On the second of December, 1823, in his annual message to Congress,
President Monroe made the following declaration on behalf of the United
States:
* * * * *
"_The American continents, by the free and independent condition which
they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as
subjects for future colonization by European powers.... We should
consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion
of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the
existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not
interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have
declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we
have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we
could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them or
controlling, in any other manner, their destiny, by any European power,
in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly
disposition toward the United States._"
* * * * *
Such was the birth of the famous Monroe Doctrine. Its recognition by
England made it effective. The Monroe Doctrine has nothing whatever to
do with international law. It is simply an expression of British
national policy for the United States.
Our diplomacy, being a branch of our politics, is often inconsistent
with our national policy. American justification for the doctrine
appears to have been mainly dependent upon the fact that we had no
intentions of encroaching upon the spheres of influence of any of the
nations of the Old World, but that we intended to safeguard what we
conceived to be our legitimate sphere of influence.
The American Republic was very young when the Monroe Doctrine was
proclaimed--a doctrine which, as one writer has said, is "the most
magnificent bluff in all history, and so far the most successful."
During the American Civil War, France, with the connivance of England,
conceived the plan of establishing in Mexico the empire of Maximilian.
We were too busy at the time, settling some little differences of
opinion within our family of states, to exact recognition of our
protest. After the memorable exchange of compliments and courtesies
between Grant and Lee at Appomattox, however, Uncle Sam indicated to
Napoleon the Little that the Imperialists must be kicked out. Lacking
the support of France, they were kicked out by the Mexicans.
While through the Monroe Doctrine the United States served notice on the
nations of the Old World to keep hands off the American continent, the
doctrine at the same time constituted an implied promise on our part to
keep hands off any territory beyond the confines of America. So long as
the policies of Great Britain did not run counter to our Monroe
Doctrine, it was destined to be quite effective in preventing
land-grabbing on the American continent by other European Powers. But
the Monroe Doctrine possesses an innate dog-in-the-manger aspect,
certain some day to bring trouble, for the great nations of the world
have far outgrown the expectations of our forefathers; their commerce
has become an inseparable part of the commerce of South American
countries, and their interests in like measure have become identified
with the interests of those countries. Just to the extent that their
welfare and the welfare of the South American republics become mutual
are they likely to be brought into collision with the Monroe Doctrine,
and, when the collision comes, it means war, unless the United States
abandons that doctrine.
[Illustration: The Vast Territory That Our Inflated Monroe Doctrine
Obligates Us to Defend]
Our self-assumed protectorate over the South American republics is not
welcomed by those countries. They resent our arrogance. We have never
cultivated trade with them, nor joined them in the development of their
industries, and have never financed their enterprises. Even when an
American citizen has paid a visit to a South American country, he has
first found it necessary to go to England and take ship from there.
The European countries, on the other hand, have promoted business
relations with the South American republics, have supplied them with
working capital and cultivated their friendship, confidence, and
respect, while we have done nothing of the sort.
The citizens of the United States whom the South Americans have seen in
their dominions have usually been adventurous, irresponsible
fortune-hunters. Their trouble-breeding propensities have not tended to
foster amicable feeling between the great Republic of the North and her
Southern sisters.
So long as the Monroe Doctrine did not circumscribe the ambitions of the
United States the institution possessed some semblance of vitality; but,
when the explosion came that blew up the _Maine_, it also exploded the
Monroe Doctrine, for immediately the United States, abandoning its
time-honored policy of keeping within American confines, and out of
entangling alliances and complications with other nations, reached out a
grasping hand and seized upon the Far Pacific possessions of Spain,
right at the door of China and within the legitimate sphere of influence
of Japan. Yet, curiously enough, we still adhere to the old
proclamation, America for the Americans, oblivious of the equal right of
China and Japan to proclaim, Asia for the Asiatics.
Several years ago, I spoke at a luncheon of the Twentieth Century Club
in Boston. I was seated beside a noted Japanese diplomat. He said, "Mr.
Maxim, you have a Monroe Doctrine--America for the Americans; we also
have a similar doctrine--Asia for the Asiatics; but we are not ready to
enforce ours yet, and you are not ready, and are not likely to be ready,
to enforce yours. A little later, we shall inquire by what logic you can
proclaim America for the Americans, and disclaim our right equally to
proclaim Asia for the Asiatics."
The Japanese are a far-seeing and a patient people. They know how to
wait, but they know also when to strike, and how to strike with the
force of a Jovian thunderbolt. They are no longer merely a cute little
picture-book people. They have risen with stupendous strides into a very
eminent position as a World-Power, a Power to be reckoned with. They are
different from us, but we have no right to consider them our inferiors.
They may very possibly prove to be our superiors. A government of the
people and for the people is a failure if the government does not take
measures for the adequate defense of the people. Self-preservation is
the first law of nature. Consequently, it is a law which must be
observed as the chief element of greatness.
I quote the following from "The Valor of Ignorance," by General Homer
Lea:
* * * * *
"_How unreasonable is it to expect that the combined nations of Europe,
with all their military strength, shall remain restricted to one-twelfth
of this world's land, burrowed into and hewn over for the last thousand
years, while this Republic, without armies, shall maintain dominion over
one-half the unexploited lands of the world! Or that Japan, possessed of
two-thirds the population of this nation and a military organization
fifty-fold greater, shall continue to exist on her rocky isles that are,
inclusive of Korea, but one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth of the earth's
lands, while an undefended one-half lies under the guns of her
battleships!_
* * * * *
"_The Monroe Doctrine is Promethean in conception, but not so in
execution. It was proclaimed in order to avoid wars; now it invites
them...._
"_The Monroe Doctrine, if not supported by naval and military power
sufficient to enforce its observance by all nations, singly and in
coalition, becomes a factor more provocative of war than any other
national policy ever attempted in modern or ancient times.... Societies,
religions, unions, business men, and politicians on the one hand, spare
no effort to debase every militant instinct and military efficiency or
preparation necessary for its enforcement, while, on the other, they
demand that the Chief Executive shall assert to the entire world this
Republic's intention to maintain, by the force of arms if necessary,
this most warlike and encompassing policy ever enunciated by man or
nation._"
* * * * *
The Monroe Doctrine did not require that any American possessions of the
European monarchies should be relinquished, but simply that they should
not be extended; and that, if relinquished or lost, they should not be
re-established as monarchical possessions.
England, being in possession of the vast domain of Canada in North
America, British Honduras and British Guiana in South America, and a
goodly number of the West Indian islands, was in a position to look with
favor on the Monroe Doctrine, because in the event of Great Britain
being defeated in war by any of the Great Powers, her victor or victors
would be unable to seize any of her American possessions, for
automatically the United States would become an ally of Great Britain,
and would, in order to defend the Monroe Doctrine, have to defend these
possessions.
When Sir Charles Tupper was High Commissioner of Canada, the writer saw
him in London, and suggested to him that it would be a good idea for the
Canadians to buy some automatic guns. He replied that Canada was very
peculiarly situated; that she could not be attacked successfully by any
Power unless the British fleet were first destroyed, which was not
likely, and, in the possible event of that fleet being destroyed, then
the United States would be obliged to defend Canada in order to defend
the Monroe Doctrine.
The peace sophists often refer to the unfortified border-line between
the United States and Canada as an argument in favor of the abolition of
armaments throughout the world. They fail to perceive that the same
unarmed condition would not work between European countries, as, for
example, between France and Germany. If the people of Canada and the
United States were as different in race, language, ideals, and
ambitions as are the French and Germans; and if, also, the two countries
were as thickly settled and the inhabitants as land-hungry; and if each
had a history as antagonistic as the French and Germans; then
fortifications would be needed on the Canadian border. But the Canadians
and ourselves are of the same race, we speak the same tongue, we have
similar ideals and ambitions, and our history is not antagonistic; on
the contrary, it has been largely a common history--the history of
England, the mother country.
England and France were obligated to defend Belgium against Germany.
Their defenses consisted mainly in bluff, but they were, nevertheless,
far better prepared to support Belgium than we would be to support any
South American country against German aggression.
The navy of England is so far superior to ours that should she at any
time care to ignore the Monroe Doctrine and colonize in South America we
should be absolutely unable to prevent her. She would be able to isolate
us from South America and from the rest of the world, within the
continental territory of the forty-eight states. An impenetrable barrier
of British warships would lie between us and the Panama Canal.
Therefore, it will be seen that our Monroe Doctrine is an Anglo-American
compact, an _entente_, which we are obliged to defend if it should be in
the interest of Great Britain, and which Great Britain would not be
obliged to observe in case she might want to ignore it:
Let us invite Admiral Mahan to conclude this chapter:
* * * * *
"_In the Monroe Doctrine, as now understood, and viewed in the light of
the Venezuela incident, with the utterances then made by our statesmen
of all parties, we have on hand one of the biggest contracts any modern
state has undertaken._"
* * * * *
CHAPTER IV
MODERN METHODS AND MACHINERY OF WAR
"In the course of time, no one knows when or how soon, the
family of nations may get to playing at cards, and beyond the
sea, perhaps, will be found a 'full hand' against our three
'aces'--the Navy, Coast Fortifications, and the Militia."
_Lieut. Gen. Adna R. Chaffee, U.S.A._
"Whenever a nation's attitude toward war is evasive, its
conduct indecisive, and its preparation an indifferent,
orderless assembling of forces, it prepares for defeat."
_Homer Lea._
In the _Sunday American_ of the seventeenth of January of this year, Mr.
Andrew Carnegie gave expression to some opinions that challenge the
attention of all thinking people of our country who, in this trying time
of war, are becoming aroused and are asking themselves the question: Are
we adequately prepared against the dread eventuality of war, and if not
adequately prepared, why not?
There is no person, of howsoever humble a station, whose opinion has not
some weight. Horace Greeley--or was it Henry Ward Beecher?--once said
that his views upon a very important subject underwent a material change
from conversation with a blacksmith while having his horse shod.
The opinion of Andrew Carnegie, the greatest steel and iron smith the
world has ever known, is certain to have great weight with a very large
number of persons, whatever the subject may be upon which he expresses
himself.
The world owes Andrew Carnegie a debt of deep gratitude for many most
munificent and beneficent actions, and our gratitude to him has begotten
love for him, and our gratitude and our love beget our sympathetic
attention whenever he speaks. Consequently, when Mr. Carnegie speaks
upon the subject of our national defense, he is bound to exercise a
tremendous power for good or evil, and this power for good or evil is
directly proportionate to the extent that his opinions are right or
wrong.
At this time, the question of our national defense is one of so serious
concern that anything a well and favorably known man says may have a
determining effect upon the minds of many persons, and thereby be
fruitful of national good or national harm.
If Mr. Carnegie is right in his belief that our best defense is in
military defenselessness, then he is doing the country a great service
through the wide publicity given to his opinions. If, on the other hand,
he is in the wrong, he is doing this country a very great injury, and
his words not only help defeat Congressional appropriations for
building more guns, but also help to spike the few guns we have.
Let us first consider some of the more remarkable and also the more
radical of his statements. He says, to quote:
* * * * *
"_Not one of the great nations has the slightest desire to be other than
friendly with the United States. We are a friend to all; an enemy of
none. They could gain nothing by a war with us, nor would we by a war
with them. We have no territorial ambitions, and only desire to be left
alone._
"_As for this foolish talk of an invasion, that is an impossible
contingency. Imagine any country being able to successfully bring enough
troops to accomplish anything worth while from a military standpoint
from a point three thousand miles off and attack a hundred millions of
people!_
"_I have always said that if at any time any country was foolish enough
to attempt invasion the best possible plan would be to make their
landing as easy as possible, point out to them the best possible roads,
and allow them to go as far as they desired to go inland. Then warn them
to look out, and turn a million of our 16,000,000 of militia loose upon
them. Getting in would be easy, but how to get out would result in
surrender._
"_There is no other country in the world so well equipped to repel
invasion or make it so hot for an enemy should he land as to make him
exceedingly sorry he ever tried it._"
* * * * *
The foregoing statements of Mr. Carnegie contain in a nutshell the whole
pith and gist of the present anti-armament peace advocacy, backed by the
ten-million-dollar Carnegie foundation, representing an income of half a
million dollars a year.
Now, if it happens to be a fact that these views of Mr. Carnegie and his
coterie of peace advocates are wrong, and if we need to take immediate
and radical measures for our national defense, then whenever the
Carnegie advocacy prevents a battery of guns being built, the resultant
injury to the country is as great as though a battery of our guns were
to be destroyed, or as though a battery of guns were made for a possible
enemy.
Truly, as Mr. Carnegie states, we are friendly to other nations, and we
do not want any of their territory, but I do not agree with him that we
have nothing which they might want, for we are both very rich and very
defenseless, and the history of nations has shown that always the rich
and the defenseless sooner or later become the prey of the poor and the
powerful.
One after another of the surrounding nations will likely be drawn into
the war before it is over. After the present belligerents have settled
their scores with the sword, there will be other scores to be settled
between the victors and the neutral nations. Differences between the
warring and the neutral powers--differences which, in time of peace,
might produce very strained relations or precipitate war--may now be
lightly passed over as mere discourtesies. But, after the war, some of
the acts of the neutrals that at present seem quite insignificant may be
magnified to advantage as _casus belli_.
It is my opinion that, whichever side wins, the United States will
likely have to fight the winner within a short time after the war is
over, for neither the Germans nor the Allies, in the heat of passion
that now dominates them, will be in a mood to forgive some of the things
that we may feel compelled to do in the maintenance of our neutrality.
In short, the things that we may be led to do to avoid being embroiled
in the present war may serve to embroil us with the victors, unless the
war should end in a draw.
Mr. Carnegie thinks it would be quite a difficult undertaking for a
foreign nation to land troops enough on our shores successfully to
contend with our people. Our expert army and navy officers, who have
been educated at government expense, and who are supposed to know about
such matters, tell us that it would be impossible for us to mobilize and
bring to the front more than 30,000 of our standing Army during the
first month; and that it would be impossible to mobilize and get our
militia into shape to resist an army of 100,000 of the well-trained and
well-armed troops of one of the Great Powers, inside of a year and a
half.
Also, our naval and military experts tell us that it would require not
only months, but years, to get our Navy into such efficient fighting
trim as to be able to resist the navy of any one of the leading Great
Powers of the world. They tell us that we are so short of ammunition
that we might easily exhaust the present supply in the first four weeks
of the war, and possibly in the first few days of the war.
We are in the habit of speaking of our Navy as ranking somewhere second
or third from the top. As a matter of fact, we rank much lower than
that, because of the shortage of our ammunition supply. Just as a
steam-engine cannot be run without fuel, regardless of its size and
power, so a navy cannot be run without gunpowder.
When the present war broke out, France, Germany, and England each had
ten times as much smokeless powder on hand as we had. We have between
forty and fifty million pounds of smokeless powder at the present time,
whereas we should have 500,000,000 pounds.
The only difficulty in landing as large an army as an enemy might desire
upon our shore, would be in overcoming our fleet. Once our fleet were
smashed, an enemy could land a hundred thousand men, either on our
Atlantic or on our Pacific seaboard, long before we could mobilize the
troops we have. In fact, a quarter of a million men could be landed
before we could get the troops we have into fighting shape.
Let us examine for one moment Mr. Carnegie's proposition to welcome an
army of invaders, showing them the best roads to the interior, and then
turning lose on them a million improvised citizen soldiers. Like Pompey,
Mr. Carnegie seems to believe that he can raise an army at will by
stamping his foot upon the ground.
Not only should we have to raise the million men, but also we should
have to provide small arms, Maxim guns, rapid-fire field-cannon, and
siege howitzers for them. At least four years' instruction and
experience in the use of these weapons would be required; furthermore,
the men would have to be imbued with the courage that veterans have,
which can be acquired only after much experience on the firing-line;
they would have to be officered by men of military education and
training, and lastly, they would need large corps of trained and
experienced engineers, and also a trained commissariat.
None of these things can be created in a day, or a month, or made
efficient in a year, so that the army of invaders, after it had received
the Carnegie welcome and had taken possession of the country, would have
quietly to wait for us to get ready to swoop down on them, as Mr.
Carnegie suggests.
When the present war is over, should one of the belligerent nations,
with its veteran fighting blood up, attack us, how are we prepared to
meet that attack?
Our army and navy men tell us that our position is pathetically
defenseless. They tell us that, should our Navy be destroyed or evaded,
and an army of only a hundred thousand men, equipped with all of the
arms and paraphernalia of modern warfare, be landed on our coast, the
invading army could go anywhere it might see fit, live off the country,
capture our big cities, and hold us up for ransom in spite of all that
we could do.
What could we do? How could we flee? Where could we flee? We simply
could not flee. Most of us have doubtless thought that if war should be
declared, we would seek safety in the interior. But immediately war is
declared, all the railroads and all automobiles will be commandeered for
military purposes. All banks will close. All securities will be rendered
worthless, and we, reduced to penniless hoboes, will be compelled to
stay right here and face the music.
Let us assume merely that an invading army of a hundred thousand men
should be landed near New York. Should this army send out detachments to
capture the places where our arms and munitions of war are made, they
would not have far to go.
A RICH PRIZE FOR A HOSTILE ARMY
They would find the smokeless powder works of the United States Army and
the Picatinny Arsenal, where all the smokeless powder and high
explosives of the United States Army are stored, near Dover, New Jersey,
about thirty-five miles from New York; also they would find there the
big naval depot for ammunition and explosives.
At Bridgeport, Connecticut, they would find the Union Metallic Cartridge
Works, and the American and British Manufacturing Company's Works for
the manufacture of rapid-fire cannon, and at New Haven they would find
the Winchester Repeating Arms and Cartridge Company's Works and the
Marlin Firearms Works. At Springfield, Massachusetts, they would find
the Smith and Wesson Revolver Works and also the United States Arsenal,
where our rifles are made. At Hartford, Connecticut, they would find the
Colt Patent Firearms, and the Pratt and Whitney Works; at Ilion, New
York, the Remington Small Arms Works, and at Utica, New York, the Savage
Arms Works.
They would find one of our most important big-gun factories at Troy, New
York, and another at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where also much of our
armor-plate is made. The big Cramp Shipbuilding Works would be found at
Philadelphia. They would find at Groton, Connecticut, the factory where
all the interior parts of the Holland submarine boats are made, and at
Fore River, Massachusetts, the big shipyard where the Holland submarine
and other war vessels are constructed.
[Illustration: The Heart of America]
They would find the Lake Submarine Torpedo Boat Works at Bridgeport, the
United States Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, and one of
our biggest navy yards, together with the E. W. Bliss Torpedo Works, in
Brooklyn. The New York Arsenal they would find unprotected on Governor's
Island. They would find the great duPont Smokeless Powder Works at
Carney's Point, Parlin and Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, and at various
points in New Jersey the largest and most important high-explosives
works in the world.
Take a map of the United States, and a pair of compasses, and with one
point placed on the Hudson River, at Peekskill, New York, draw a circle
having a radius of a hundred-and-sixty miles. There will be included
within that circle all of the above-mentioned ammunition and armament
works, which constitute nearly all the smokeless powder works, cartridge
works, torpedo-boat works, small-arms works, and big-gun and armor-plate
works in the United States. Also, this circle will include not only New
York and nearby cities, but also Boston, Albany, Syracuse, Philadelphia,
and the most important coal fields of Pennsylvania.
The conquest of this area would not be a work of months, or of years,
but only of a few days, and the thing would be done before we had time
to mobilize the available fighting forces we have, much less to enlist
and train and arm a citizen soldiery.
This vital area is the solar plexus of Uncle Sam, and an army of a
hundred thousand trained men, landed on our Atlantic seaboard, would be
able to capture this entire area and subdue the populace as easily as
the police force of New York can subdue a rioting mob.
While we were arming and training our million men to make the Carnegie
swoop, the army of invaders would be very busy.
They would commandeer all our above-mentioned factories, and proceed to
operate them with skilled American labor, which they would also
commandeer and force to work, just as the Germans have forced the
Belgians to work for them, and Mr. Carnegie's army of citizen soldiers
would find themselves without means either of arming themselves or of
supplying themselves with ammunition or of getting the skilled labor
necessary to do the work.
But this is not all that the invaders would be doing while we were
getting our million men together. They would have means of knowing what
we were doing, and they would send out a detachment and defeat our whole
enterprise. They would probably levy on New York City for a billion
dollars, and levy upon all the cities in the captured area for every
dollar that could be squeezed from the inhabitants under threats of
destruction.
Not only this, but they might take the notion, and probably would take
the notion, to annex the conquered territory, just as Germany has
annexed Belgium, and, as we should then automatically become citizens of
the enemy's country, we should be conscripted and forced to fight our
own people, just as the Belgians, according to report, have been forced
into the ranks of the Germans.
Such a military measure is not new; it is as old as war itself.
Frederick the Great frequently forced his prisoners to fight in his own
ranks, and Napoleon Bonaparte sometimes gave them the option of joining
his legions or of faring much worse. Attila took with him the entire
male population of the countries through which he passed as additions to
his military host. Those who resisted were immediately killed, and those
he did not need were killed, whether they resisted or not. As to what
may be done in war, there is no arbiter but necessity.
To receive an invading army is not so pleasant a thing as Mr. Carnegie
assumes. As guests they are just about as lovable and make just about as
good pets in the family as rattlesnakes, cobras, scorpions, and
tarantulas.
A few Americans who were caught in the war zone when the present war
broke out got some useful knowledge of war's inconveniences and
harassments. What the people for whom there was no escape suffered in
Belgium and Northern France, is beyond our powers of conception. No one
who has not had personal experience can form the least idea of the
barbarous atrocities perpetrated by an invading army on the defenseless
population.
Invaders always live off the invaded country. It is considered more
important that they should live well than that any one else should live
at all. If, after the invaders' wants are supplied, there is enough left
for the people to live on, well and good; if not, then the people must
starve. The invaders must have food and clothing and the bare
necessaries of life; also, they must have luxuries. They must have
cigars and cigarettes, wine, women, and song. If our country should be
invaded, we should not only have to furnish food, clothing, cigars,
cigarettes, and wine for the armies of the enemy, but also our wives and
our daughters and our sweethearts would be commandeered to supply the
women and song.
Occasionally, an American citizen, with more manhood than discretion,
would resent a nameless indignity, and kill some military blackguard,
who would immediately be avenged by the burning of the town and the
corralling and shooting of the people with machine-guns. This is not an
overdrawn picture--the thing has actually been done in the present war.
It is very likely that some of us who look upon this page will be forced
to see wife or daughter or sweetheart namelessly maltreated to gratify
the brutal lust of an invader, and lose our own life for a blow on the
scoundrel's jaw or a stab in his ribs, unless--aye, there's the
rub--unless this whole country awakens to its danger and rises up as one
man and demands prompt and adequate defensive measures for national
protection. As this saving thing is not likely to happen, the entire
country east of the Alleghanies will probably be Belgiumized with fire
and the sword, depredated, degraded, and desolated by an invading army
within a very short time after the European War is over.
This is an age of mechanics--an age wherein man-made mechanism more and
more replaces hand work. Everywhere in our industries of peace, we have
seen labor-saving machinery replace the labor of human hands. Today all
the men in the world could not do by hand all of the world's ploughing,
sowing, reaping, and carrying of the world's food to market; all the
women in the world could not, today, do the world's sewing without the
sewing-machine; and all the men in the world and all the women in the
world combined could not, today, do a tenth of the world's writing
without the typewriter and type-setting and printing machinery.
One of the giant dredges that have been ladling out of the Panama Canal
the vast landslides, can do the pick and shovel and wheelbarrow work of
a thousand men. Everywhere, in everything we do, and in everything done
for us, we find human hands now mainly engaged in guiding the work of
labor-saving machinery.
The people of the United States of America have been able to develop
their enormous resources and to keep abreast of the world's industrial
progress mainly by the invention of labor-saving machinery under the
protection of our patent law.
In our competition with other nations for the markets of the world, no
one thinks of referring to the prowess of our unskilled citizen soldiers
of industry unsupported by machinery, but all reliance is placed upon
our multiform labor-saving machinery, and our skilled labor behind that
machinery.
With these pregnant facts before us, it is very strange that it should
not be perfectly plain to every one that what is true of labor-saving
machinery in peace is likewise true in war. It is very strange indeed
that there should be intelligent men and women among us unable to see
and to understand that labor-saving machinery and labor skilled in its
use are as applicable and as indispensable to successful warfare as to
peaceful industry. Furthermore, labor-saving machinery in war is
life-saving machinery. The quick-firing gun is the greatest life-saving
instrument ever invented. These persons do not seem to appreciate that
war is an industry. As a matter of stern fact, war is, and has always
been, the biggest and the most vital industry of mankind, and in no
other industry is labor-saving machinery so important and so vital, and
in no other industry does so much depend upon the skill of the labor
operating the machinery.
We are the slaves of belief, and we love our chains. Although our faith
may be false, we hate the hand that tries to free us. The people of this
country have a great false faith in the fighting qualities of their
citizen soldiery, improvised in time of war. They point proudly to the
War of the Revolution and the War of the Rebellion to prove how our
volunteer soldiers can fight. They overlook the fact that fighting was
then mostly done by hand; that now it is mostly done by machinery, and
that it is just as foolish and absurd to think of taking untrained men
off the farm to operate the guns and machinery of war as it would be to
try to operate the factories with them where the guns and machinery are
made. It takes as long today to convert a farmer into a skilled soldier
as it does to convert him into a skilled mechanic.
Battles are no longer decided merely by the patriotism and personal
bravery of the rank and file, nor even by their numbers, but by the
efficiency and sufficiency of machinery and materials of destruction and
the science and scientific experience of the commanding officers. There
is no time to build steam-fire-engines or to train fire brigades after a
conflagration has broken out.
A citizen soldiery without years of training in the discipline and
weapons and mechanism of modern warfare is only a mob, as easily
scattered by a few real soldiers as chaff by a whirlwind.
George Washington held the following opinion about the value of militia
in warfare:
* * * * *
"_Regular troops alone are equal to the exigencies of modern war, as
well for defense as offense, and when a substitute is attempted it must
prove illusory and ruinous. No militia will ever acquire the habits
necessary to resist a regular force ... the firmness requisite for the
real business of fighting is only to be attained by a constant course of
discipline and service. I have never yet been witness to a single
instance that can justify a different opinion, and it is most earnestly
to be wished that the liberties of America may no longer be trusted,
in any material degree, to so precarious a dependence."--Washington._
* * * * *
If Washington held it a mistake to rely on untrained, undisciplined men
in time of war, who can differ with him today, when not only bravery and
discipline are required, but also a knowledge of the complicated
enginery of warfare?
It is obvious to any one that ten men armed with the modern magazine
shoulder-rifle, with a range of more than two miles, would easily be
able to defeat a thousand men--a hundred times their number--armed with
slings and bows and arrows, short-swords and spears, as was the army of
Hannibal. Hannibal's famous Balearic slingers were able to hurl a slug
of lead through a man. But ten riflemen would have time to kill a
thousand of them before they could get within sling range. A thousand of
the famous English bowmen who fought at Agincourt could all be destroyed
by our ten riflemen before they could get within bowshot.
The same thing holds equally true with old short-range and obsolete
firearms, as compared with the longer range and more accurate guns of
the latest pattern. Ten good marksmen, armed with the latest rifles,
could kill a thousand equally skilled marksmen armed with the old
muzzle-loaders of the Civil War, before they could get within range.
These ten men would each be able to fire with ease a carefully aimed
shot every two and a half seconds; the ten men could fire 250 aimed
shots a minute. A thousand men, armed with the old muzzle-loaders, would
surely have to advance at least a mile and a half after coming within
range of the modern rifles before they could get the ten riflemen within
range of their muzzle-loaders. Charging forward on the run, it would
take them at least ten minutes to cover the mile and a half. In that
time the ten riflemen would be able to fire 2,500 carefully-aimed shots.
Such is the difference in the potentiality of troops dependent upon
suitable arms.
With the modern automatic magazine-rifle a single soldier would be able
to defeat a hundred men armed with the old smooth-bore single-shot
muzzle-loaders of the Civil War; in fact, he would be able to kill or
wound every one of them in an open frontal attack over level ground with
his long-range rapid-fire rifle before they could get near enough even
to reach him with their short-range muskets. One man operating an
automatic machine-gun would be more than a match for a thousand men,
armed with the old Civil War musket in an open-view frontal attack, over
a distance covered by the range of the machine gun. In fact, with this
weapon, firing 600 shots a minute, he could play the gun on their
advancing line with the freedom of a hose pipe, and put them _hors de_
_combat_ in a few minutes--certainly, before they could get near enough
to reach him with their short-range guns.
Half a dozen automatic machine-guns supported by a battery of half a
dozen modern rapid-fire field-guns throwing shrapnel shell at the rate
of from thirty to forty a minute, planted on Cemetery Hill, would have
been able to defeat Pickett's charge at Gettysburg more quickly than did
the entire Army of the Potomac.
It is obvious, therefore, that a nation's war potentiality depends very
largely upon its preparedness to fight by machinery, and that a mere
citizen soldiery, without the machinery of modern warfare, is as
impotent in the face of modern war engines as a swarm of ants in the
face of an anteater. It is obvious that, whereas fighting machinery is
very expensive, modern warfare is a very costly business, and a business
requiring an enormous investment; and also that, whereas a thing is
worth most in war which can, for the least cost, produce the best
results, machinery becomes much more valuable than life. A single
field-piece may be worth more than a hundred men, and at times even more
than a thousand men.
In modern warfare, the cost in treasure and machinery is of far greater
concern than the loss in blood. Therefore, the efficiency and great cost
of all kinds of modern fighting equipment have served to give the great
nations pause, and to make them consider well the awful risk before
precipitating war. The progress in fighting machinery of every sort has
been so rapid, and the number of wars so few, that until now there has
been no adequate opportunity to test fighting machinery in actual
warfare.
In direct proportion as warfare becomes more scientific, complicated,
and expensive does it require longer time to prepare for war, both in
the making of the enginery and in the making of the soldiers.
Time signifies only the measure of change. Consequently, time is merely
a relative term, indicative of the sequence in a series of happenings or
eventuations. If the universe were annihilated, there would be no such
thing as time because nothing would happen.
Were we to be attacked by any foreign Power, we should be able to rely,
not upon what we might be able to produce three or four years afterward,
but upon what we should be able to put into action at once. Modern
methods and machinery of war cause events to move many times as fast as
in former wars. Three months is a long time after war is declared. A six
months' war today is relatively as long as a six years' war used to be.
The following extract from Bernhardi's "How Germany Makes War" is
evidence of that expert's opinion of the factor of time:
* * * * *
"_If Germany is involved in war, she need not recoil before the
numerical superiority of her enemies. But so far as human nature is able
to tell, she can only rely on being successful if she is resolutely
determined to break the superiority of her enemies by a victory over one
or the other of them before their total strength can come into action,
and if she prepares for war to that effect, and acts at the decisive
moment in that spirit which made Frederick the Great seize the sword
against a world in arms._"
* * * * *
Napoleon once said, "The fate of nations often hangs on five minutes,"
and, "God fights on the side of the heaviest artillery." Also, he said,
in effect, that the art of winning battles depends upon the
concentration on the chief point of attack of a force superior to the
enemy at that point.
If we pass our finger down the pages of history, we shall find the above
expression of Napoleon thoroughly substantiated and vindicated. Most
great battles have been won by the concentration of a superior force
upon an inferior force at some vulnerable point, and often quite
irrespective of the sizes of the opposing armies taken as a whole.
Everything depends upon the quickness in concentration of concerted
action. The herculean physique of Goliath did not count for much after
little David hit him with the pebble. He needs be a big man indeed not
to be whipped when even a small antagonist has succeeded in thrusting a
dagger close to the heart. Armies, like individuals, have vital parts,
the penetration of which means defeat.
Alexander the Great frequently met and annihilated armies many times
larger than his own. He was often weaker than the enemy as a whole, but
at the point of attack he was always vastly the stronger. This enabled
him to crush the enemy in detail. Hannibal, Caesar, Charles Martel,
Marlborough, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Grant, Lee,
Stonewall Jackson, Sheridan--all great captains--appreciated and applied
this winning principle: Be able to strike the enemy upon one given point
with greater force than he shall be able to oppose, and strike first;
then follow up the advantage and crush the enemy in detail by
concentrated force always superior at the point of attack, however
inferior to the general force to which it is opposed and through which
it penetrates.
Broadly speaking, the machinery of modern warfare adds a thousand-fold
to the potentiality of the soldier in battle above his potentiality at
the time of the Civil War.
Ten thousand men, armed with modern guns and all the paraphernalia of
modern warfare, would on the battle-line be more than a match for a
million men armed with the old smooth-bore guns of the Civil War. As a
matter of fact they could kill all that surrounded them as fast as they
approached from every quarter, and they could advance through the
opposing lines with absolute freedom without the loss of a single man
from the fire of the enemy.
Let us see for one moment what ten thousand men would be able to do upon
such a host in open frontal attack: Let us assume that the ten thousand
were armed with a thousand automatic guns, and, say, a hundred
rapid-fire field-guns, in addition to the usual magazine shoulder-rifle.
As soon as the enemy came in sight, the ten thousand would open on them
with their hundred field-guns, pouring into their ranks a perfect storm
of shrapnel. The old, smooth-bore field-guns of the enemy would be
completely disabled before they could be brought within cannon-shot of
the ten thousand. As soon as the enemy came within rifle range, the ten
thousand would open on them with their thousand automatic machine-guns
and magazine-rifles. As an automatic machine-gun fires at the rate of
600 shots a minute, a thousand would fire at the rate of 600,000 shots a
minute. The magazine shoulder-rifles would fire aimed shots at the rate
of twenty-five a minute, and the quick-firing field-guns would each fire
shrapnel at the rate of forty a minute. Making every allowance for
stoppages and for variables, dispersion of fire and bad marksmanship,
there would be enough effectual hits with the shrapnel, the automatic
machine-gun fire, and the magazine-rifle fire, to kill or wound every
man of the enemy before that enemy could get near enough to reach the
ten thousand with their old smooth-bore muskets.
Every automatic gun and every quick-firing field-gun and every magazine
shoulder-rifle puts in the hands of our soldiers the means of avoiding a
corresponding sacrifice of their lives. Not only this, but every
automatic gun that we make and furnish our troops enables one man to do
the work of a hundred men; it enables a hundred men to remain at home
engaged in peaceful pursuits while only one man has to go to the battle
front and fight.
Then let us realize the fact that every automatic gun saves a hundred
lives from jeopardy. Every magazine-rifle saves ten lives, and every
quick-firing field-cannon saves easily a hundred lives.
This should make a strong appeal to the professional pacifists who
pretend that they want to save life. Surely, if war cannot be prevented,
and all history, and the present moment as well, prove that it cannot,
then we should make it as merciful as possible, and fight it in a way
that will cause as little sacrifice of life as possible.
In estimating the cost of war in human lives, we cannot count values
that may be placed upon them by sentiments of humanity, but only such
values as, when destroyed, make the losing nation economically so much
the poorer.
According to I. S. Bloch, a new-born child of the farming class has a
value of twenty-five dollars. At five years of age, he has a value of
two hundred and fifty dollars; at ten years of age, he is worth about
five hundred dollars; at fifteen, he is worth almost a thousand dollars;
and at twenty, he is worth a little more than a thousand dollars. His
maximum value is at twenty, and he begins to depreciate in value as he
grows older, because of his shortened days of service.
Therefore, the average economic value of soldiers may, according to Mr.
Bloch, be put at a thousand dollars.
According to David Starr Jordan, it costs about fifteen thousand dollars
for each soldier killed in battle, so that, according to these two
eminent peace advocates and peace propagandists, when the Germans slay,
say, a thousand of the Allies, the loss to the Allies is the value of
the thousand men, namely, a million dollars, and as it costs the Germans
fifteen times as much to kill them as they are worth, the loss to the
Germans is fifteen million dollars; so that the actual German loss is
fifteen times as great as that of the Allies. But as the Allies are
killing a good many Germans, they are generously sharing with the
Germans a fair proportion of the cost of the war.
These figures are not far out of the way. The fact is that, in modern
warfare, the actual loss of life for the numbers engaged is
correspondingly less than it used to be, while the cost is
correspondingly greater. In modern warfare, the loss of money is far
greater than the loss of life. It is more the dollar than blood, that is
now shed.
In ancient times, when men fought hand to hand in compact form, with
short-sword, spear, and battle-axe, they used often to slay half the
numbers engaged--easily ten times as many for the numbers engaged as are
now slain. There are more than ten million Allies now under arms against
more than seven million Germans and Austrians. These numbers have not as
yet all been brought face to face with one another on the line of
battle, owing to modern methods of warfare; but under old-time methods
with old-time arms, they would have been at once brought into collision
in two enormous armies. In ancient times, less mobilization could be
effected in a year than can now be effected in a month, but when the
collision came, the issue of the war was decided on one great field.
If these great European armies were armed with short-swords, spears, and
battle-axes, as armies used to be, instead of with modern war weapons
and enginery, they would, during the time they have been engaged, very
likely have slain a third of their number--certainly ten times as many
in proportion to the numbers engaged as have actually been killed in the
present war. Even a tenth of their numbers would be a million and a
half.
Never in all history have such vast numbers of men been drawn up in line
of battle. Never have they been so scientifically armed, and,
consequently, never have they, for the numbers engaged, killed so few.
Modern machine-guns and quick-firing guns, with bullets and shrapnel and
canister, are so deadly that troops in mass form cannot live for a
minute in front of them, but as opposing armies with modern war
machinery line up at the present greater tactical distances, and throw
out their men in long-extended battle-lines, and spread them over
correspondingly wide areas, the fight becomes one largely of gun against
gun, engine against engine, with the result that not nearly so many
lives are lost as there would be if the fighting were done by hand, and
hand to hand, in close order. The German siege guns smashed the forts of
Liege and Namur from a distance of nine miles.
As nations are bound to fight, it is far more merciful that they should
be armed to the teeth, but it is vastly more expensive. Can we not
afford, however, to spend dollars instead of men to kill our enemies?
Therefore, even according to the facts and figures of those two eminent
peace-men, I. S. Bloch and Dr. David Starr Jordan, the money loss today
is a concern fifteen times more serious to the economic welfare of a
nation than is the loss in lives.
It is a very strange paradox indeed that the professional
peace-propagandists, who claim to be actuated mainly by considerations
of humanity, should advocate disarmament and the inevitable reversion to
the old and more deadly arms and methods of warfare, on account of the
greater expensiveness of warfare conducted with modern scientific arms
and methods.
By doing away with our present highly scientific and very expensive war
enginery and fighting methods, the nations would be able, in a war like
the present, to kill one another at very much less cost. They would then
be able to kill ten times as many in a given time, while the cost would
be only a small fraction of the present cost.
It is a matter of solemn certainty that the quick-firing gun is the most
beneficent implement of mercy that has ever been invented, and every
peace advocate in the world and every lover of his kind should
appreciate this fact and use his influence in favor of armaments which
serve to make war expensive, and tend both to prevent war, and to save
life when war comes.
Let us for a moment suppose that the great European Powers had disarmed
fifteen years ago when the Czar of Russia broached the subject to them.
What would have been the result? This war would have come just the
same, and probably much sooner; and it would have been ten-fold more
bloody, even had the nations flung themselves upon one another armed
with scythes, carving-knives, wood-axes, and common tools of trade, or
even had they fought, as the simple cave men did, with clubs and stones.
Love of home and country--patriotism--on the one hand, and race hatred
on the other, are far more potent in the human heart than any lately
created sentiments of international brotherhood and humanity. Before
this war came, it was a common preachment of the peace-men and a common
belief of the multitude, that many socialists, members of brotherhoods
of labor and other opponents of war, would refuse to fight, and if
drafted would shoot down their officers from the rear. But nothing of
this kind has happened. When this war broke out, socialist, labor
unionist, and preacher of international brotherhood joined with their
militant fellow-countrymen in singing the "Marseillaise," "Wacht am
Rhein," "Britannia Rules the Waves," and rushed to arms and to war, and
are now fighting like demons, shoulder to shoulder with the imperialist
and the war lord.
In order that we may be made as right-seeking as possible, God has
ordained the trials of strife and hardship which force us to get busy,
and thereby develop our usefulness. Human duty may be expressed in the
following terms: The best preparation for the attainment of success in
life is the acquisition of a thorough realization of the fact that no
one deserves more from the world than he earns out of it, and that the
bigness or littleness of any one is exactly proportionate to his use to
the world, and that, consequently, actual self-service is impossible
except indirectly through world-service.
Whatever may be done in the service of an individual to help him attain
success and find comfort, or to lessen his discomfort, may not be best
for the general good, because individual welfare must, in the end of
things, be subservient to the general welfare.
It sometimes becomes perfectly right and proper that individual life
should be sacrificed for national life, but never national life for
individual life. The nation has, however, its obligations to the
individual, and obligations as exacting as those of the individual to
the nation. If a nation does not exercise due and reasonable diligence
to safeguard its people against war and does not provide itself with the
necessary trained men and machinery to forefend war, then the obligation
of the individual to the nation in the event of war is just so much
lessened. The leading of an untrained and ill-armed, improvised citizen
soldiery against an army of trained veterans, with all of the equipment
of modern warfare, results in useless, senseless slaughter.
If a nation does not prepare itself to demand and enforce respectful
treatment of its citizens in foreign countries, then its citizens should
have no patriotism, for they are like men and women without a country.
But when a nation is armed with guns, and armed with the purpose to
defend its citizens, wherever they may be, to the last man and last
pinch of gunpowder, and is so adequately prepared with labor-saving,
life-saving machinery that in the event of war the minimum of human
sacrifice shall be made, then it is the duty of every man to place
himself unreservedly at the service of his country.
If the people of this country could be roused to a realization of what
invasion means, there would be no longer heard any senseless prating
about an unarmed peace, but the whole people would rise in their might
and demand adequate armaments and an adequate army and navy, and the
senseless peace fanatics would be burned in effigy.
We have for half a century listened with confidence to the assurance
that we are so splendidly isolated by broad seas that we need not fear
invasion.
Our inadequate Navy is today the only bulwark against invasion, for
modern means of transportation over seas have reduced the ocean to a
ferry.
Both England and Germany have navies superior to our own, and would be
able to destroy our Navy, and land on our unfortified shores a hundred
thousand men in less than two weeks--half the time that would be
required for us to mobilize our little Army of thirty thousand men.
Japan is not so far away as she used to be. She has been rapidly
narrowing the Pacific, and she could land a quarter of a million men on
the Pacific coast in less than a month, much quicker than we could get
our thirty thousand regulars there to receive them.
We are no longer splendidly isolated from other nations. We are isolated
only from ourselves, and we are truly splendidly isolated in that
particular.
The other nations are isolated only by such time and difficulty as they
would have to encounter in order to bring veteran troops to our shores,
with all the necessary equipment of war, and, as we have seen, this is
an isolation of less than a month, while we are isolated by
unpreparedness by at least fifty months, for it would take more than
four years, if we should start now, to raise, equip, and train an army
that would compare in numbers, equipment, and training with the army
that any one of the Great Powers could place upon our shores in a month.
In a recent interview, Secretary of War Garrison said:
* * * * *
"_If tomorrow any first-class military power should attack the United
States in force and should succeed in getting her warships and
soldier-laden transports past our fleet, landed out of range of our
coast defenses, once fairly ashore she could pulverize our small regular
army and punish us to a humiliating degree, if not actually make us sue
for peace, before we could raise and train a volunteer army adequate to
cope with the invaders. In other words, at present our navy is our only
considerable bulwark against invasion. Even such part of our militia as
we could depend on and the available regular army would make an
extremely small force, our army being in size only a local police force,
well trained and highly efficient indeed, but in numbers little more
than twice the size of the police force of New York City--that is, not
large enough for our great country even as a mere police force._"
* * * * *
Let us, for argument's sake, assume for a moment that we were to be
invaded with an army of only a hundred thousand men, trained, equipped,
and supplied with the supreme adequacy with which the troops of the
other Great Powers are trained, equipped, and supplied.
The enemy would line up in a battle-front three times as long as our
little thirty thousand could be stretched with equal powers of
concentration, or if our thirty thousand were to be stretched out a
hundred miles we should be at least three times as weak as the enemy at
any point of attack, even were our thirty thousand to be as well
equipped and as well supplied as the troops of the enemy. But we should
be without the requisite field artillery, and the artillery that we
should have would be without the requisite training. We should be
without the needed cavalry, and our cavalry would be without proper
organization and experience. We should be without ammunition trains, and
very short of ammunition. Our troops, hustled together, and rushed to
the front for the first time to face a real enemy, would be unprepared
to behave like an army, and, what is very important, they would have no
hope of success.
Despair would be in the heart of every man. Both officers and men would
know that there were no ready resources, no reserves and reserve
supplies behind them, and no adequate arrangements for providing any.
Every man of the thirty thousand would know that he was being sacrificed
in atonement for national blundering, just as at Balaklava the noble Six
Hundred were by a blunder sacrificed in the charge of the Light Brigade.
PREPONDERANCE OF GUN-FIRE
It is strange how little the law of battles is understood by most
persons. Most persons imagine that in a fight between our Navy and
another navy, or between our Army and the army of an enemy, although
the enemy might have the advantage in the number of ships and in the
size and range of guns, the advantage would be immaterial and one which
might be balanced by the superiority of our personnel, and that,
although we might be somewhat short of the required field batteries and
ammunition, the superior fighting qualities of our men would render them
more than a match for the enemy, even in the face of superior gun-fire.
It does not appear to have been fully recognized even by the advocates
of better equipment for the American Army, how vitally important is
length of range in field artillery.
In the Boer War, the British field batteries found themselves at great
disadvantage in face of the longer French guns of the Boer batteries.
In the present European war, the great long-range German howitzers,
pummeling forts into heaps of scrap, and their plunging fire blowing
great craters along the battle-front, spread terror in the ranks of the
Allies, similar to the terror that the Romans felt when the fierce
Gothic giants slid down the Alps into the vineyards of Italy. But the
long-range French field-artillery soon restored confidence, for it was
found that the French field batteries could outrange the German
batteries.
We need field-guns of longer range. We need field-guns that shall not
only equal in range those now in use in Europe, but also we need guns of
even longer range. We should have field-guns of a range sufficient to
command sky-line from opposing sky-line. Here is an opportunity for the
vaunted American genius to assert itself.
It is necessary that the facts as they actually are should be recognized
and appreciated.
Victory in a naval battle today depends absolutely upon the weight of
the broadsides and the speed of the vessels, which enables them to
manoeuvre and choose positions of advantage with respect to the enemy;
while victory or defeat in a land fight depends upon the weight of
gun-fire, which can be directed against the positions of an enemy.
The actual number of infantry engaged is of secondary importance. It is
artillery that is of supreme importance. Should we be involved, our
field artillery must pave the way with the dead bodies of the enemy
before our infantry can advance. Also, the batteries of the enemy must
be silenced by our own batteries before they, with their gun-fire, shall
be able to silence ours. Other things being equal, therefore, it is the
number of field batteries that, more than anything else, turns the tide
of battle for defeat or victory. If the enemy's guns have a longer range
than ours, then they will be able to silence our batteries while far
beyond the range of our guns. They will be able to destroy our
artillery, while we should not be able even to injure theirs.
[Illustration: Relative Numerical Strength of Field Artillery]
Let us picture a land fight:
Our aerial scouts inform us that the enemy is approaching, and that they
have already mounted their long-range field artillery on a convenient
ridge; also that they have placed their big howitzers on an adjoining
lowland under the concealment of a wood, and that this formation is
repeated in similar units from ridge to ridge and hill to hill over a
front a hundred miles in length.
The enemy has also dug long lines of trenches far in advance of their
artillery. The enemy's position is well beyond the range of our
artillery. We are unable to reach the enemy's position with our guns,
while the enemy, being provided with guns of much longer range, is able
to storm our position along our entire front, and to throw shrapnel
shell into the trenches filled with our men, which stretch along the
lowland in front of our positions. We try to dig additional trenches to
advance our front, but the men sent to do the work are very quickly
killed by the shrapnel fire of the enemy.
We see with our field-glasses that the enemy has sent out detachments to
advance the line of their trenches. We fire at them, and find that our
shrapnel falls far short. The enemy, seeing this, advances and digs
trenches close up to the limit of the range of our guns.
All at once, the enemy opens fire with shrapnel upon our entire line of
trenches, and with shrapnel and howitzers upon all our fortified
positions. We return the fire, but without any effect; the range of our
guns being too short to reach the enemy. Many of our guns are quickly
silenced. The perfect hurricane of shrapnel thrown upon our trenches has
killed large numbers of our men and confounded the remainder.
The infantry of the enemy now advances pell-mell over the intervening
space, still under cover of artillery fire. Field batteries of the enemy
also advance rapidly and take up new positions.
Finding our positions untenable, our army retreats precipitately, taking
with it a few remaining guns, and our men re-form their batteries on
commanding positions to cover our retreat, but they are soon dislodged
by the long-range guns of the enemy. Finally, our army takes up its
stand far in the rear, forming a new battle-front, which has been
previously fortified.
The enemy advances, repeats the previous tactics, forming a long
battle-front on commanding positions just beyond the range of our guns,
and again proceeds to dislodge us, and drive us back by their long-range
gun-fire.
Our loss in men and guns has been enormous. The enemy, on the contrary,
has lost no guns, and but few men.
It will be seen that the enemy can very easily proceed in this manner
into the interior, and conquer the whole country without suffering very
much discomfiture, unless we have guns of as long or longer range than
the enemy has, and as many of them, also as many skilled troops to
operate them.
Most persons imagine that infantry, armed with the modern long-range
magazine-rifles, can go into battle, and shoot large numbers of an
enemy, and that, if the infantry is numerous and daring enough and brave
enough, they will be able to whip the enemy without the support of field
artillery. This is a grave error. An army of a million men, consisting
entirely of infantry, armed with modern shoulder-arms, would be
completely over-matched and easily defeated by an army of 25,000 men
amply equipped with modern field artillery. The infantry would be wholly
unable to get within musket-range, because they would all be destroyed
by the shrapnel of the enemy before they could get near enough to fire a
single effective shot.
A hundred thousand English, Germans, or Japanese, equipped with the
longest and best modern field artillery, with plenty of ammunition and
supply trains, air-scouts and engineer corps, could, in our present
defenseless condition, march through this country as Xenophon's ten
thousand marched through ancient Persia. They could cut their way
through all opposition that we could offer. We have neither the
infantry, nor the artillery, nor the cavalry, to oppose them, and the
artillery we have is of so much shorter range that at no time could we
get near enough to the enemy to reach him with our guns.
If war comes between us and any of the Great Powers, the splendid young
men of the country--husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, lovers--will have
to go to the front and meet the invaders.
If they go forward equipped with the necessary arms, ammunition, and
enginery of war, and are well trained and well officered, then they will
be able not only to hold their own against the invaders, with
comparatively little loss of life, but also to repel and drive out the
enemy and save our land from spoliation and our homes from despoliation.
If, on the other hand, they are to be sent forward without the necessary
arms, ammunition, and enginery, and without training, and incompetently
or incompletely officered, as the pacifist propagandists and other
sentimentalists are advising and planning that they be sent, then they
will go just like lambs to the slaughter.
The zone of fire in front of the enemy's trenches will be heaped high,
acres wide and miles long, with their dead bodies; and writhing,
groaning, shrieking, agonized forms of the wounded will crawl over and
under the dead toward the hope of safety and mercy.
Into such a hell are the hyper-sentimental peace sophists planning to
send those you most love, those to whom you most cling, and on whom you
most depend; and you are aiding and abetting the crime if you believe
the words of these false reasoners.
Every word you aim against necessary preparedness for war may, in the
final reckoning, aim a gun at the heart of him whom you love more than
all the world; and you might be able to say a word that would protect
him with a gun.
That human attribute which, more than any other, distinguishes man from
the brute, is imagination. Also, it is the attribute which, more than
any other, differentiates the normal man from the criminal. If, in
imagination, a would-be murderer could foresee the distorted face and
the despairing agony of his dying victim, and could foresee the
tear-streaming eyes of those mourning for him, he would, unless brazened
against every feeling of pity, stay his hand. If those who, through
their ignorance, false belief, or hypocrisy and desire for publicity,
are planning to sacrifice the unimaginable thousands of our best young
men in the bloody shambles of war, as an offering to false faith,
vanity, or hypocrisy, could only foresee in imagination the long lines
of manhood swept and annihilated by the withering fire of an enemy,
without guns to return that fire, then possibly they might submerge
personal limelight-lust for considerations of mercy.
If you believe them, and speak as they are speaking, and advise as they
are advising, against adequate national defense, you should at once
change your belief, and use your voice and every resource at your
command in future to forefend this country and avert the great useless
sacrifice.
Come, young lady reader, let us, in imagination, stand together on the
firing-line: Those regiments lining up are from New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, Massachusetts. They are forming for a charge. It is the
only way. Those shells, bursting among them with such deadly effect, are
shrapnel from the quick-firing guns of the enemy placed just over the
crest of yonder distant ridge; and those huge plunging projectiles,
which throw up great inverted cones of earth, with fragments of men, are
from the enemy's big howitzers, located under cover of the wood that
fringes the horizon.
If we only had the necessary quick-firing field-guns and shrapnel
ammunition, and the necessary field howitzers, we might dislodge or
silence those deadly batteries of the enemy. At any rate, we should be
able to engage them efficiently and cover the charge of our troops. We
should also be able to storm that line of trenches, to the discomfiture
of the enemy hidden there in vast numbers, and thus to prepare for the
onset of our men. But we have neither the guns nor the ammunition.
See--the order is given. Onward they go. Watch them, the brave fellows!
Why does the front line lie down so suddenly, with a few left standing?
My friend, they are not lying down; they are dead. But they are not all
killed, a large number of them are wounded. They are torn in every
inconceivable, horrible manner of mutilation. And look!--the other lines
go down, too; some lying still, others writhing on the ground. One of
those poor devils, with hands clenched in the grass and gnawing the
earth, is your brother!
See--a huge howitzer shell explodes right among them. The young man whom
you were to marry on his return from the war was standing on the verge
of the crater when the explosion came, and he is now lying there, with
both eyes blown out by the awful blast and hanging on his cheeks. There
are visions of you in the blasted eyes, and there are thoughts of you in
the dazed brain, and his dying breath is a whisper of your name.
Will you continue to think thoughts and speak words which may drive him
to that awful death?
The picture is horrible. That of the blasted eyes is revolting. True,
and for this reason it may not come within the artistic, as outlined in
the philosophy of Longinus; but it is not my purpose here to be
artistic. My very purpose is to visualize the horrible, because the only
way for the people of this country to prevent this on-coming horror is
to make the necessary military preparations for national defense.
But, young lady, this is not the end of the dreadful picture: Let us
look into your home. The awful news comes--our men are beaten with
enormous slaughter; father, brother, sweetheart--all your home's
defenders--are dead. The invaders who have murdered them are in the
street outside. There comes a summons at the door. A certain number of
the enemy have been billeted to your house, and you must play the genial
hostess. Though they get drunk, and ill-treat you beyond the power of
words to tell, there remains no remedy. Your dear ones, who were your
natural defenders, have been sacrificed on the altar of false faith in
defenselessness as a deterrent of war.
CHAPTER V
THE NEEDS OF OUR ARMY
* * * * *
LETTER FROM GENERAL LEONARD WOOD
GOVERNOR'S ISLAND, N. Y.,
_February 6th, 1915._
_Dear Mr. Maxim:_
_I am very glad indeed to learn of your interest in military
preparedness. The subject is one which is of vital importance to the
American people. We do not want to establish militarism in this country
in the sense of creating a privileged military class, dominating the
civil element, receiving especial recognition, and exercising perhaps an
undue influence upon the administration of national affairs, but we do
want to build up in every boy a realization of the fact that he is an
integral part of the nation, and that he has a military as well as a
civic responsibility. All this can be done without creating a spirit of
militarism or of aggressiveness. Take Switzerland as an example. Here we
have a country where every boy and young man who is physically sound
receives, largely as a part of his school work, military training to the
extent necessary to make him an efficient soldier. This is a policy
which ought to be followed with our youth. It is not enough that a
man should be willing to be a soldier. He should also be so prepared as
to be an efficient one. This can only be accomplished through training.
Switzerland and Australia have shown that this can be done through the
public-school system, and with a resulting vast improvement in public
morals and the quality of citizenship. The criminal rate in Switzerland
is only a small fraction of ours. Respect for the law and constituted
authorities, the flag of the country, and a high sense of patriotism are
evident on all sides, and yet there is practically no standing army._
_We have here a patriotic people, living not with arms in their hands,
or with a large standing army, but trained, equipped, and ready to
efficiently and promptly defend the rights of their country. This I
believe is the ideal we should strive for. We need a standing army big
enough for the peace work of the day, i.e., the garrisoning of our
foreign possessions, the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Panama, the
little garrisons in Porto Rico and Alaska, and a force in the
continental United States adequate for the peace needs of the nation._
_We must never again trust ourselves to the emergencies of a great war
without proper preparation. If we do we shall meet with an overwhelming
disaster. Preparedness is really an insurance for peace, and not an
influence for war._
[Illustration]
_To send our men untrained into war to meet equally good men, well
trained and disciplined, was once described by Light Horse Harry Lee, of
Revolutionary fame, as murder. Perhaps this is too strong, but it
certainly is a gross disregard of human life._
_Very truly yours,_
LEONARD WOOD.
MR. HUDSON MAXIM,
_698 St. Mark's Ave.,
Brooklyn, N. Y._
* * * * *
The facts given in this chapter have been gathered from many
authoritative sources. It would be very comforting if these facts were
known only to the American people, but unfortunately they are already
known to the military authorities of all the other nations. Other
nations are all very well aware of our unpreparedness; therefore, I am
giving out no national secrets. English, German, French, Russian, and
Japanese navy and military experts know exactly the men and equipment we
possess.
It is the American people only who are not aware of the truth about our
unpreparedness. This ignorance is largely due to the beguilers who have
set the face of a great mass of our people against armaments, and have
made them turn deaf ears to every voice that tries to rouse them to
their danger.
Our ship of state has been drifting down stream like a raft. The only
reason the raft has not been wrecked lies in the fact that we have been
fortunate enough to have a pretty clear stream to ourselves all the
while, with no breakers and no cataracts in sight. But there are
breakers and rapids and cataracts down stream, and we are at last
nearing them rapidly.
Even as long ago as 1880, General Emory Upton spoke thus prophetically:
* * * * *
"_In time of war the civilian as much as the soldier is responsible for
defeat and disaster. Battles are not lost alone on the field; they may
be lost beneath the Dome of the Capitol, they may be lost in the
Cabinet, or they may be lost in the private office of the Secretary of
War. Wherever they may be lost, it is the people who suffer and the
soldiers who die, with the knowledge and the conviction that our
military policy is a crime against life, a crime against property, and a
crime against liberty. The author has availed himself of his privilege
as a citizen to expose to our people a system which, if not abandoned,
may sooner or later prove fatal. The time when some one should do this
has arrived._"
* * * * *
In 1912, Admiral Kane said: "They told me in London, 'You are living in
a fool's paradise. Some day you will wake up with a fight on your
hands, and you won't be ready for it.'"
Not only must the United States solve the great problem of shaping a
military policy that will enable us to establish an adequate force for
national defense in time of war, to build up and man our Navy, construct
and man coast fortifications, and enlist, arm, and train an adequate
army, but also there must be faced the far more difficult problem of
enlisting the co-operation of the American people in the enterprise.
The fathers of our country, believing that a large standing Army would
be a menace to the liberties of the people, ordained that our Army, in
time of peace, should not exceed twenty-five thousand. Since then,
Congress has several times raised the limit until we now may have an
Army, in time of peace, of not more than a hundred thousand men. As a
matter of fact, we have a regular Army of 93,016, both staff and line.
As this Army has to be spread out over our entire continental and
outlying possessions, the sight of an American soldier of our regular
Army is about as rare an occurrence as the sight of a sea-serpent.
Within the actual limits of our forty-eight states we have but 48,428
regular troops. Of these 17,947 must be kept in our coast
fortifications, even as a pretense of garrisoning them. This leaves only
30,481 mobile troops, including engineers, cavalry, infantry, and field
artillery. We have a militia on paper numbering 127,000, men and
officers. Only 60,000 of these, however, are in readiness for service.
Therefore, we have in the United States to-day a regular Army of 48,000,
and 60,000 militia ready for duty, or 108,000 men and officers
altogether. In time of war not a man of our militia could well be spared
for military service to repel an invader, for in such troublesome times
they would all be needed for police duty to maintain order and obedience
throughout the country.
General Wood recently told us that it would take a month to mobilize
even our little Army of thirty thousand men.
Out of the 127,000 officers and men of the militia which we have on
paper, only 60,000 being available, and only 30,000 of our regulars
being available, we could place on the firing-line only 90,000 men and
officers, and there would be no reserves.
When Napoleon, the world's greatest military captain, went into battle,
he always kept a large and powerful force in reserve, to give confidence
to those on the firing-line, and to save the day in case of a reverse,
and possibly to turn defeat into victory, and at the worst to cover a
retreat, and save the army from rout. This same need exists with us for
a large national reserve of well-armed and well-trained men, ready to be
called from civil life to refill the depleted ranks of an army at the
front.
[Illustration: Number of Officers and Enlisted Men of United States
Regular Army]
Our regular Army is, in men and guns, but a mere nucleus of what we
ought to have, and of what we must have to save this country from defeat
and abject humiliation should war come.
Not only this--the artillery we have is without adequate field
organization. It would take at least four months to train additional
personnel in order to get our field artillery ready for duty. It would
take us four times as long, therefore, to get our own artillery on the
firing-line, ready for battle, on either our eastern or western
seaboard, as it would for an enemy to get its artillery there.
It is we ourselves who are handicapped by isolation, not the
enemy--isolation not of space, but of time.
If it be true that God fights on the side that is the best equipped with
artillery, God could not be expected to fight on the side of our
militia.
Our militia at the present time has only sixty-five organized batteries,
with four guns each. It is absolutely imperative that we should have
seventy-nine additional batteries, with six guns each, even moderately
to complete our equipment in field artillery. Think of it! Our militia
has less than half the number of field batteries necessary for battle.
It is also worthy of mention that these batteries are without ammunition
trains, and without officers or men for the new organization, and we
have not the necessary horses to draw the batteries we already have.
Our militia is entirely without siege artillery, while neither our
militia nor our regular Army is equipped with field mortars or howitzers
of the larger calibers now used abroad, which have been so terribly
effective in the present war.
Not only are foreign nations far ahead of us in actual existing war
strength in men and guns, but also they have each an efficient system
whereby their present equipment may be rapidly expanded. We have no such
system.
OUR FATAL ISOLATION
Never yet have we perceived the important truth that in this age of war
machinery, requiring months and years to create, isolation by time is an
equivalent to isolation by distance. Our own isolation in the matter of
the time required for us to raise and train armies and equip them with
shoulder-rifles, automatic guns, quick-firing cannon, siege howitzers,
ammunition supply trains, and to build, man, and equip with guns,
battleships, battle-cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, submarines, and,
no less important, to equip flying machines with trained aviators, would
be a far more serious handicap to us than our isolation by the seas
would be to our enemies.
The _Scientific American_, February 6, 1915, says:
* * * * *
"_We could not supply the men for the necessary field-artillery
organization for four months, or the ammunition trains and ammunition
for a year and a half, and not a gun is yet made or appropriated for,
for the volunteers. The militia is short in cavalry and requires over
fifty additional troops of cavalry to provide the divisional cavalry
alone. There is an alarming absence of auxiliary troops. Most of the
militia cavalry is poorly mounted, much of it practically without
mounts, and, with the exception of a few special organizations, has had
little or no field training. It needs months of hard work in camp.
Engineers, signal and medical troops of the militia are as a rule
insufficient in number, deficient in organization, equipment, and
reserve supplies, and very many of them are far below their prescribed
strength and without available personnel to fill them up._"
* * * * *
The following is quoted from a statement made before a Congressional
committee in 1912, by General William Crozier, Chief of Ordnance of the
United States Army, and one of the ablest officers that the Army has
ever had:
* * * * *
"_So far as transporting troops is concerned, the sea as a highway is
not an obstacle, but a facility. It is very much easier to get any
number of troops across the Atlantic Ocean than it would be to get the
same number over anything like the same distance on land. Marine
transportation is the very best kind you can have; the easiest, least
expensive, and most expeditious, if you are considering large bodies of
troops and large amounts of material. The fuel charge for transportation
in good tramp steamers does not amount to one two-hundred-and-fiftieth
part of a cent per ton per mile. The sea is a splendid means of
transportation. The distance is only ten days for a vessel of very
moderate speed, and you can carry a thousand men on a vessel of 3,000
tons' capacity without any trouble at all. There are any number of
vessels to be had, and there is no resistance on this side against a
well-equipped force of a hundred thousand men._"
* * * * *
SHORTAGE OF OFFICERS
We have in our regular Army to-day about 4,572 officers. The number of
English officers killed, wounded, and missing during the first six
months of the European war was, in round numbers, 5,000, a little more
than the total number of our officers.
It has been estimated by the most able authorities, among them the
editor of the _Scientific American_, whom I quote, that: "In case of
invasion we would need 380,000 stationary volunteer coast-guard troops
to guard the approaches to our cities and coast-defense works." We
should also require an additional 500,000 men at the very least. To be
rational, we should have a mobile army of a million men. In this
enormous country a standing army of a million men would, comparatively
speaking, be small. It would still be one-fifth the size of the German
army, one-tenth the size of the Russian army, and it would be less than
the available Japanese army. Surely this great Republic can afford to
maintain a standing army equal to that of Japan!
The number of officers we have at the present time would, of course, be
practically lost in our proposed mobile army of a million men. Radical
and immediate measures should at once be taken to increase tenfold the
officer-making capacity of West Point. Also, any private in the ranks
should, by meritorious conduct manifesting military promise, be open to
promotion to West Point, to complete his education there. This would be
a tremendous stimulus and encouragement to the rank and file.
The burglar who has begun to plan to rob a house and has commenced
inspection of the locality to keep tab on the movement of the police in
the vicinity, has already declared war on that house. The bank-raider
who has begun to spy on the cashier of a bank and the nocturnal habits
of the people of the town, and has equipped himself with the kit of
tools and the explosives to breach the vault where the cash lies, has
already declared war on that bank.
In this same sense, and to this same extent, there is more than one
nation that has already declared war on the United States. Their spies
have been working among us for years, and they have the kit of tools and
the explosives all ready to breach our Navy and our coast
fortifications.
Our lack of field-guns for our artillery and our lack of ammunition are
very clearly put in the _Scientific American_ of February 13, 1915:
* * * * *
"_We have in the hands of troops, or stored, 634 completed guns. We have
under manufacture or contract, 226. These guns will probably not be
completed for at least a year and a half. In other words, the number of
completed guns is a little less than half the total number deemed
necessary for the field force of 500,000 men, and provides no guns
whatever for the coastguard troops or new volunteer organizations which
will be required in addition to the 500,000 field force. Of ammunition,
we have, made and under contract, approximately 30 per cent. for the
entire project of guns (1,292). Half of this is under manufacture or
contract, so that there is not more than 15 per cent. actually
completed. For the guns on hand and under manufacture we have, of
ammunition on hand and under manufacture, about 41 per cent.;
actually on hand, approximately, 20.5 per cent. For the guns actually
made (634) we have 27 per cent. of the ammunition necessary. For the
guns now in the hands of the regular army and militia we have about 44
per cent. of the ammunition necessary. It should be remembered, however,
that the guns in the hands of the regular army and militia at the
present time are less than half the guns required for these forces when
properly equipped with guns, even under our scheme for the assignment of
guns and ammunition, which is in both instances far lower than in any of
the great armies today, and the present war has indicated, in the case
of one great power at least, that the consumption of ammunition has
exceeded twice their maximum estimates, and that the proportion of
artillery will, in future, be increased._
[Illustration: Strength of Regular Armies on Peace Footing]
"_At the rate of even last year's appropriations, which were the largest
made for field-artillery guns and ammunition, it will take between eight
and nine years to complete our present modest estimate for guns and
ammunition, and the necessary equipment in the way of ammunition trains
and other accessories._"
* * * * *
We are told in the Report of the Chief of Ordnance, 1914, that no
permanent ammunition trains have been provided.
The following figures give the personnel of our regular Army, and of
our militia. They are taken from the Report of Major-General
Wotherspoon, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, for the period
from April 22, 1914, to November 14, 1914:
_Actual strength of the United States Army_, exclusive of Philippine
scouts:
Officers 4,572
Men 88,444
Authorized strength:
Officers 4,726
Men 95,977
Hence, shortage:
Officers 154
Men 7,533
Of total enlisted strength, 22.50 per cent., including recruits and
recruiting parties, belong to the non-combatant and non-effective class,
and are not with the colors; 19.45 per cent. are in that branch whose
special function is coast-defense.
Mobile army (engineers, cavalry, field artillery, and infantry) is 58.05
per cent. of actual strength, and comprises:
Officers 2,738
Men 51,344
Omitting cooks, musicians, scouts, etc., mobile strength is:
Officers 2,738
Men 45,968
Mobile strength in continental United States:
Enlisted men 30,481
_Ammunition:_
We need 11,790,850 artillery rounds.
We have on hand
and being manufactured 580,000 " "
We need 646,000,000 rifle cartridges.
We have on hand
and being manufactured 241,000,000 " "
We need a supply of 9-1/2, 12-1/2, and 16-1/2 howitzers.
We have only thirty-two 6-inch howitzers and smaller pieces, none
larger.
_Militia:_
Total enlisted men, 119,087, of which only 52.56 per cent. have had any
rifle practice, and only 33.43 per cent. have qualified as second-class
marksmen or better.
From the Report of the Chief of Staff for the year ending June 30, 1914,
we learn that out of our 120,000 militiamen, 23,000 failed to present
themselves for the annual inspection; 31,000 absented themselves from
the annual encampment; and 44,000 never appeared on the rifle range from
one year's end to the other.
Congressman Gardner tells us, further, that 60 per cent. of our militia
were unable, in 1913, to qualify even as third-class marksmen, and that
half of that 60 per cent. (30 per cent.) did not even try to qualify.
For years prior to the breaking out of the great European conflict, Lord
Roberts pleaded with the English people, and prayed that they might hear
his appeal to prepare for war with Germany. Like a voice crying in the
wilderness, he called the British nation to arms. His voice was not
heeded, and the nation did not arm.
The voice of Lord Roberts sounded harshly on the ears of sensitive
English officialdom. Lord Haldane, to emphasize his attitude, disbanded
80,000 British troops at the very moment when England should have
enlisted and begun to train 800,000. Also, he threatened to abolish Lord
Roberts' pension if he did not keep quiet. The grand old soldier was
spared by a kind Providence to stand on the firing-line when the great
war came which he had foreseen, and there he saw thousands of his
country's dead who had fallen from failure to regard his timely warning.
We have a Lord Roberts, too. There is a grand old American soldier who
for years has appealed to us to fly to arms with all speed in
preparation against war. He has even greater reason than Lord Roberts
had, because our danger is many times greater than was England's danger.
We are practically defenseless, while England was not.
I quote the following from the American Lord Roberts, General Leonard
Wood:
* * * * *
"_... We have neither guns nor ammunition sufficient to give any general
commanding an army in the field any assurance of success if attacked by
an army of equal size which is supplied with its proper quota of
field-artillery._
"_The fire of modern field-artillery is so deadly that troops cannot
advance over terrain swept by these guns without prohibitive losses. It
is therefore necessary to neutralize the fire of hostile guns before our
troops can advance, and the only way to neutralize the fire of this
hostile field-artillery is by field-artillery guns, for troops armed
with the small arms are as effectual against this fire until they arrive
at about 2,000 yards from it as though they were armed with knives. This
field-artillery material and ammunition cannot be quickly obtained. In
fact, the Chief of Ordnance estimates that almost one year would be
required to supply the field-artillery guns needed with one field army
of a little less than 70,000 men. No war within the past 45 years has
lasted for one year, so that after war is declared it would probably be
over before we could manufacture an appreciable number of guns; and the
same applies to ammunition._
"_The Ordnance Department states that by running night and day with three
shifts Frankford Arsenal could turn out about 1,600 rounds of ammunition
per day, and that if private manufacturers were given orders to run
under war conditions they could begin deliveries of ammunition in from
three to four months, and after getting under way could turn out about
100,000 or 200,000 rounds per month for two or three months, and after a
total time of six months the production would perhaps equal 250,000
rounds per month. The best estimates indicate that at the end of the
first six months not to exceed 350,000 rounds could be procured from all
sources, including the Government plant. After this six months there
would be no particular difficulty in securing ammunition as rapidly as
might be needed._
"_... It is my belief that ... unless private manufacturers are now
encouraged to manufacture ammunition for our guns after war is declared,
they will not be in any condition to do so until after the war is
finished, and the supply of ammunition during the war will be limited to
what the arsenals can turn out. At present this is about 1,600 rounds
per day, running three shifts, and this ammunition, under ordinary
battle conditions, could be fired by eight guns in one day of battle. If
guns are not supplied on the battlefield with the ammunition which they
can be reasonably expected to use, they are not efficient, and when a
gun has exhausted the ammunition supplied it becomes as perfectly
useless as junk; in fact, it is worse than junk, for it must be
protected by other troops._
"_In the Russo-Japanese War the Russians expended during the war,
exclusive of the action around Port Arthur, 954,000 rounds._
"_At Mukden in nine days they expended 250,000 rounds._
"_One battery of eight guns at Mukden fired 11,159 rounds, or 1,395
rounds per gun._
"_At Liaoyang eight Russian guns fired in three hours 2,500 rounds, or
312 per gun._
"_During August 30 and 31 the First and Third Siberians, with 16
batteries of 8 guns each, fired 108,000 rounds, or 844 rounds per gun._
"_At Schaho, in a four-days' fight, the artillery of the First Infantry
Division--48 guns--fired 602 rounds per gun._
"_At this same battle in 45 minutes, 20 minutes of which were not
occupied by firing, 42 guns fired 8,000 rounds, or 190 rounds per gun
in 25 minutes of actual firing._
"_The War Department believes, after extended study, that in case of war
with a first-class power an army of 500,000 men will be needed to give
this country any chance of success against invasion, and that this force
will be needed at once. To make it efficient it must be given its proper
quota of field-artillery. To do this this artillery must be on hand, for
it cannot be supplied after war is started. A municipality might as well
talk about buying its fire-hose after the conflagration has started. A
fire department without its proper equipment is worthless, irrespective
of the number of men it has; and so would be your armies, unless you
provide in peace the material which will make them effective in
war."--Statement of facts by Major-General Leonard Wood, Hearings on
Fortifications Bill, Dec. 9, 1913._
* * * * *
IS CONGRESS TO BLAME?
The blame for our undefended condition is generally attributed to
Congress. It is true enough that the main blame rests with Congress, but
it must be remembered also that Congress represents the will of the
people.
Every Congressman goes to Washington in the interest of his
constituents. He goes there to dicker for them and to swap votes with
other Congressmen in exchanging Congressional concession for
Congressional concession. His constituents want a post-office in their
district, or a river deepened, or widened, or want a navy yard in their
state, and he is ready to vote for similar concessions to all other
Congressmen who will vote for the concessions his constituents require.
Every Congressman is mindful of the fact, and every time he returns home
he is reminded of the fact that he has not been sent to Congress for his
health, but for the health of his constituents, and if he hopes to be
returned, he must see to it that he gets what they have sent him after.
They have not sent him there to support an appropriation bill for a
larger army or a larger navy. The people are imbued with the belief that
the country as a whole is big enough and prosperous enough to be safe.
They know little or nothing, and care less, about national defenses. No
calamity has ever come upon us for lack of defenses. Why should they
worry? Also, they have been assured from the pulpit and the Chautauqua
and by circulars sent out by the peace societies that we not only do not
need more defenses, but, on the contrary, we do not need those we have;
and they are asked to write personal letters to their Congressmen urging
them to vote against any appropriations to increase our natio
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