Part 4 (1/2)
Such are the main elements of coast defence--guns, lines of torpedoes, torpedo-boats. Of these none can be extemporized, with the possible exception of the last, and that would be only a makes.h.i.+ft. To go into details would exceed the limits of an article,--require a brief treatise. Suffice it to say, without the first two, coast cities are open to bombardment; without the last, they can be blockaded freely, unless relieved by the sea-going navy. Bombardment and blockade are recognized modes of warfare, subject only to reasonable notification,--a concession rather to humanity and equity than to strict law. Bombardment and blockade directed against great national centres, in the close and complicated network of national and commercial interests as they exist in modern times, strike not only the point affected, but every corner of the land.
The offensive in naval war, as has been said, is the function of the sea-going navy--of the battle-s.h.i.+ps, and of the cruisers of various sizes and purposes, including sea-going torpedo-vessels capable of accompanying a fleet, without impeding its movements by their loss of speed or unseaworthiness. Seaworthiness, and reasonable speed under all weather conditions, are qualities necessary to every const.i.tuent of a fleet; but, over and above these, the backbone and real power of any navy are the vessels which, by due proportion of defensive and offensive powers, are capable of taking and giving hard knocks. All others are but subservient to these, and exist only for them.
What is that strength to be? s.h.i.+ps answering to this description are the _kind_ which make naval strength; what is to be its _degree_? What their number? The answer--a broad formula--is that it must be great enough to take the sea, and to fight, with reasonable chances of success, the largest force likely to be brought against it, as shown by calculations which have been indicated previously. Being, as we claim, and as our past history justifies us in claiming, a nation indisposed to aggression, unwilling to extend our possessions or our interests by war, the measure of strength we set ourselves depends, necessarily, not upon our projects of aggrandizement, but upon the disposition of others to thwart what we consider our reasonable policy, which they may not so consider. When they resist, what force can they bring against us? That force must be naval; we have no exposed point upon which land operations, decisive in character, can be directed. This is the kind of the hostile force to be apprehended.
What may its size be? There is the measure of our needed strength. The calculation may be intricate, the conclusion only approximate and probable, but it is the nearest reply we can reach. So many s.h.i.+ps of such and such sizes, so many guns, so much ammunition--in short, so much naval material. In the material provisions that have been summarized under the two chief heads of defence and offence--in coast defence under its three princ.i.p.al requirements, guns, lines of stationary torpedoes, and torpedo-boats, and in a navy able to keep the sea in the presence of a probable enemy--consist what may be called most accurately preparations for war. In so far as the United States is short in them, she is at the mercy of an enemy whose naval strength is greater than that of her own available navy. If her navy cannot keep the enemy off the coast, blockade at least is possible.
If, in addition, there are no harbor torpedo-boats, blockade is easy.
If, further, guns and torpedo lines are deficient, bombardment comes within the range of possibility, and may reach even the point of entire feasibility. There will be no time for preparation after war begins.
It is not in the preparation of material that states generally fall most short of being ready for war at brief notice; for such preparation is chiefly a question of money and of manufacture,--not so much of preservation after creation. If money enough is forthcoming, a moderate degree of foresight can insure that the amount of material deemed necessary shall be on hand at a given future moment; and a similar condition can be maintained steadily. Losses by deterioration or expenditure, or demand for further increase if such appear desirable, can all be forecast with reasonable calculations, and requirements thence arising can be made good. This is comparatively easy, because mere material, once wrought into shape for war, does not deteriorate from its utility to the nation because not used immediately. It can be stored and cared for at a relatively small expense, and with proper oversight will remain just as good and just as ready for use as at its first production. There are certain deductions, a certain percentage of impairment to be allowed for, but the general statement holds.
A very different question is confronted in the problem how to be ready at equally short notice to use this material,--to provide in sufficient numbers, upon a sudden call, the living agents, without whom the material is worthless. Such men in our day must be especially trained; and not only so, but while training once acquired will not be forgot wholly--stays by a man for a certain time--it nevertheless tends constantly to drop off from him. Like all habits, it requires continued practice. Moreover, it takes quite a long time to form, in a new recruit, not merely familiarity with the use of a particular weapon, but also the habit and working of the military organization of which he is an individual member. It is not enough that he learn just that one part of the whole machinery which falls to him to handle; he must be acquainted with the mutual relations of the other parts to his own and to the whole, at least in great measure. Such knowledge is essential even to the full and intelligent discharge of his own duty, not to speak of the fact that in battle every man should be ready to supply the place of another of his own cla.s.s and grade who has been disabled. Unless this be so, the s.h.i.+p will be very far short of her best efficiency.
Now, to possess such proficiency in the handling of naval material for war, and in playing an intelligent part in the general functioning of a s.h.i.+p in action, much time is required. Time is required to obtain it, further time is needed in order to retain it; and such time, be it more or less, is time lost for other purposes,--lost both to the individual and to the community. When you have your thoroughly efficient man-of-war's man, you cannot store him as you do your guns and ammunition, or lay him up as you may your s.h.i.+ps, without his deteriorating at a rate to which material presents no parallel. On the other hand, if he be retained, voluntarily or otherwise, in the naval service, there ensues the economical loss--the loss of productive power--which const.i.tutes the great argument against large standing armies and enforced military service, advanced by those to whom the productive energies of a country outweigh all other considerations.
It is this difficulty which is felt most by those responsible for the military readiness of European states, and which therefore has engaged their most anxious attention. The providing of material of war is an onerous money question; but it is simple, and has some compensation for the expense in the resulting employment of labor for its production. It is quite another matter to have ready the number of men needed,--to train them, and to keep them so trained as to be available immediately.
The solution is sought in a tax upon time--Upon the time of the nation, economically lost to production, and upon the time of the individual, lost out of his life. Like other taxes, the tendency on all sides is to reduce this as far as possible,--to compromise between ideal proficiency for probable contingencies, and the actual demands of the existing and usual conditions of peace. Although inevitable, the compromise is unsatisfactory, and yields but partial results in either direction. The economist still deplores and resists the loss of producers,--the military authorities insist that the country is short of its necessary force. To obviate the difficulty as far as possible, to meet both of the opposing demands, resort is had to the system of reserves, into which men pa.s.s after serving in the active force for a period, which is reduced to, and often below, the shortest compatible with instruction in their duties, and with the maintenance of the active forces at a fixed minimum. This instruction acquired, the recipient pa.s.ses into the reserve, leaves the life of the soldier or seaman for that of the citizen, devoting a comparatively brief time in every year to brus.h.i.+ng up the knowledge formerly acquired. Such a system, under some form, is found in services both voluntary and compulsory.
It is scarcely necessary to say that such a method would never be considered satisfactory in any of the occupations of ordinary life. A man who learns his profession or trade, but never practises it, will not long be considered fit for employment. No kind of practical preparation, in the way of systematic instruction, equals the practical knowledge imbibed in the common course of life. This is just as true of the military professions--the naval especially--as it is of civil callings; perhaps even more so, because the former are a more unnatural, and therefore, when attained, a more highly specialized, form of human activity. For the very reason that war is in the main an evil, an unnatural state, but yet at times unavoidable, the demands upon warriors, when average men, are exceptionally exacting.
Preparedness for naval war therefore consists not so much in the building of s.h.i.+ps and guns as it does in the possession of trained men in adequate numbers, fit to go on board at once and use the material, the provision of which is merely one of the essential preparations for war. The word ”fit” includes fairly all that detail of organization commonly called mobilization, by which the movements of the individual men are combined and directed. But mobilization, although the subjects of it are men, is itself a piece of mental machinery. Once devised, it may be susceptible of improvement, but it will not become inefficient because filed away in a pigeon-hole, any more than guns and projectiles become worthless by being stored in their parks or magazines. Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves. Provide your fit men,--fit by their familiarity not only with special instruments, but with a manner of life,--and your mobilization is reduced to a slip of paper telling each one where he is to go. He will get there.
That a navy, especially a large navy, can be kept fully manned in peace--manned up to the requirements of war--must be dismissed as impracticable. If greatly superior to a probable enemy, it will be unnecessary; if more nearly equal, then the aim can only be to be superior in the number of men immediately available, and fit according to the standard of fitness here generalized. The place of a reserve in any system of preparation for war must be admitted, because inevitable. The question, of the proportion and character of the reserve, relatively to the active force of peace, is the crux of the matter. This is essentially the question between long-service and short-service systems. With long service the reserves will be fewer, and for the first few years of retirement much more efficient, for they have acquired, not knowledge only, but a habit of life. With short service, more men are shoved through the mill of the training-school. Consequently they pa.s.s more rapidly into the reserve, are less efficient when they get there, and lose more rapidly, because they have acquired less thoroughly; on the other hand, they will be decidedly more numerous, on paper at least, than the entire trained force of a long-service system. The pessimists on either side will expound the dangers--the one, of short numbers; the others, of inadequate training.
Long service must be logically the desire, and the result, of voluntary systems of recruiting the strength of a military force.
Where enrolment is a matter of individual choice, there is a better chance of entrance resulting in the adoption of the life as a calling to be followed; and this disposition can be encouraged by the offering of suitable inducements. Where service is compulsory, that fact alone tends to make it abhorrent, and voluntary persistence, after time has been served, rare. But, on the other hand, as the necessity for numbers in war is as real as the necessity of fitness, a body where long service and small reserves obtain should in peace be more numerous than one where the reserves are larger. To long service and small reserves a large standing force is the natural corollary. It may be added that it is more consonant to the necessities of warfare, and more consistent with the idea of the word ”reserve,” as elsewhere used in war. The reserve in battle is that portion of the force which is withheld from engagement, awaiting the unforeseen developments of the fight; but no general would think of carrying on a pitched battle with the smaller part of his force, keeping the larger part in reserve.
Rapid concentration of effort, antic.i.p.ating that of the enemy, is the ideal of tactics and of strategy,--of the battle-field and of the campaign. It is that, likewise, of the science of mobilization, in its modern development. The reserve is but the margin of safety, to compensate for defects in conception or execution, to which all enterprises are liable; and it may be added that it is as applicable to the material force--the s.h.i.+ps, guns, etc.--as it is to the men.
The United States, like Great Britain, depends wholly upon voluntary enlistments; and both nations, with unconscious logic, have laid great stress upon continuous service, and comparatively little upon reserves. When seamen have served the period which ent.i.tles them to the rewards of continuous service, without further enlistment, they are, though still in the prime of life, approaching the period when fitness, in the private seaman or soldier, depends upon ingrained habit--perfect practical familiarity with the life which has been their one calling--rather than upon that elastic vigor which is the privilege of youth. Should they elect to continue in the service, there still remain some years in which they are an invaluable leaven, by character and tradition. If they depart, they are for a few years a reserve for war--if they choose to come forward; but it is manifest that such a reserve can be but small, when compared with a system which in three or five years pa.s.ses men through the active force into the reserve. The latter, however, is far less valuable, man for man.
Of course, a reserve which has not even three years' service is less valuable still.
The United States is to all intents an insular power, like Great Britain. We have but two land frontiers, Canada and Mexico. The latter is hopelessly inferior to us in all the elements of military strength.
As regards Canada, Great Britain maintains a standing army; but, like our own, its numbers indicate clearly that aggression will never be her policy, except in those distant regions whither the great armies of the world cannot act against her, unless they first wrench from her the control of the sea. No modern state has long maintained a supremacy by land and by sea,--one or the other has been held from time to time by this or that country, but not both. Great Britain wisely has chosen naval power; and, independent of her reluctance to break with the United States for other reasons, she certainly would regret to devote to the invasion of a nation of seventy millions the small disposable force which she maintains in excess of the constant requirements of her colonial interests. We are, it may be repeated, an insular power, dependent therefore upon a navy.
Durable naval power, besides, depends ultimately upon extensive commercial relations; consequently, and especially in an insular state, it is rarely aggressive, in the military sense. Its instincts are naturally for peace, because it has so much at stake outside its sh.o.r.es. Historically, this has been the case with the conspicuous example of sea power, Great Britain, since she became such; and it increasingly tends to be so. It is also our own case, and to a yet greater degree, because, with an immense compact territory, there has not been the disposition to external effort which has carried the British flag all over the globe, seeking to earn by foreign commerce and distant settlement that abundance of resource which to us has been the free gift of nature--or of Providence. By her very success, however, Great Britain, in the vast increase and dispersion of her external interests, has given hostages to fortune, which for mere defence impose upon her a great navy. Our career has been different, our conditions now are not identical, yet our geographical position and political convictions have created for us also external interests and external responsibilities, which are likewise our hostages to fortune. It is not necessary to roam afar in search of adventures; popular feeling and the deliberate judgment of statesmen alike have a.s.serted that, from conditions we neither made nor control, interests beyond the sea exist, have sprung up of themselves, which demand protection. ”Beyond the sea”--that means a navy. Of invasion, in any real sense of the word, we run no risk, and if we did, it must be by sea; and there, at sea, must be met primarily, and ought to be met decisively, any attempt at invasion of our interests, either in distant lands, or at home by blockade or by bombardment. Yet the force of men in the navy is smaller, by more than half, than that in the army.
The necessary complement of those admirable measures which have been employed now for over a decade in the creation of naval material is the preparation of an adequate force of trained men to use this material when completed. Take an entirely fresh man: a battles.h.i.+p can be built and put in commission before he becomes a trained man-of-war's man, and a torpedo-boat can be built and ready for service before, to use the old sea phrase, ”the hay seed is out of his hair.” Further, in a voluntary service, you cannot keep your trained men as you can your completed s.h.i.+p or gun. The inevitable inference is that the standing force must be large, because you can neither create it hastily nor maintain it by compulsion. Having fixed the amount of material,--the numbers and character of the fleet,--from this follows easily the number of men necessary to man it. This aggregate force can then be distributed, upon some accepted idea, between the standing navy and the reserve. Without fixing a proportion between the two, the present writer is convinced that the reserve should be but a small percentage of the whole, and that in a small navy, as ours, relatively, long will be, this is doubly imperative; for the smaller the navy, the greater the need for constant efficiency to act promptly, and the smaller the expense of maintenance. In fact, where quant.i.ty--number--is small, quality should be all the more high. The quality of the whole is a question of _personnel_ even more than of material; and the quality of the _personnel_ can be maintained only by high individual fitness in the force, undiluted by dependence upon a large, only partly efficient, reserve element.
”One foot on sea and one on sh.o.r.e, to one thing constant never,”
will not man the fleet. It can be but an imperfect palliative, and can be absorbed effectually by the main body only in small proportions. It is in torpedo-boats for coast defence, and in commerce-destroying for deep-sea warfare, that the true sphere for naval reserves will be found; for the duties in both cases are comparatively simple, and the organization can be the same.
Every danger of a military character to which the United States is exposed can be met best outside her own territory--at sea.
Preparedness for naval war--preparedness against naval attack and for naval offence--is preparedness for anything that is likely to occur.
A TWENTIETH-CENTURY OUTLOOK.
_May, 1897._
Finality, the close of a life, of a relations.h.i.+p, of an era, even though this be a purely artificial creation of human arrangement, in all cases appeals powerfully to the imagination, and especially to that of a generation self-conscious as ours, a generation which has coined for itself the phrase _fin de siecle_ to express its belief, however superficial and mistaken, that it knows its own exponents and its own tendencies; that, amid the din of its own progress sounding in its ears, it knows not only whence it comes but whither it goes. The nineteenth century is about to die, only to rise again in the twentieth. Whence did it come? How far has it gone? Whither is it going?