Part 5 (1/2)
Whatever we do for national defense should be done primarily to _prevent_ and _safeguard against_ the breaking out of war. Every plan for national defense should, like the plan proposed in this book, be formulated with that end in view. That should be its clearly defined objective. There should be no possibility of any mistake about that. It should be made so plain that there never could be any misunderstanding as to that being the primary purpose of the plan.
A national force should be organized primarily for civil duty in time of peace. It should be organized in such a way that it could at a moment's notice be converted into a military machine for national defense in case of war. But that conversion should be a secondary object. The necessity for such a conversion should be regarded as a remote possibility, to prevent which every human power would be exerted, but which might occur, notwithstanding all that could be done to prevent it.
An ill.u.s.tration of this situation might be drawn from the case of an aeroplane constructed for aerial service. It would be needed and built for work in the air. But if it were possible that it might be needed for use over water, then it might be so constructed that in the event of falling on the water it could still keep afloat and propel itself. Aerial navigation would be the primary purpose of its construction. Water navigation would be secondary, and not intended to be resorted to except in case of accident.
It would serve as a safeguard against death which might otherwise be caused by an event only remotely possible.
If the necessity for making our system for national defense primarily an instrument of peace is constantly borne in mind, it will make progress easier and more rapid and certain. It will eliminate many complications that would result if we should undertake to look to the military establishment to formulate plans for a system of national defense that would be operative for peace as well as for war. In the past the whole matter of national defense has been left to the Army and Navy. That is the reason why no satisfactory system has been evolved. Naturally the Army and the Navy can see nothing in any plan which does not involve simply a greater army and a greater navy.
If it is now left to the War Department to make plans for a military system that will be adequate for national defense, there are many reasons why a satisfactory system will never be devised. The idea would be incomprehensible to a Regular Army man that a national organization, available for civil duties in time of peace, could in time of war be automatically expanded into a military machine strong enough for the national defense.
Men educated and trained in the military profession do not comprehend conditions outside of the purely military environment in which they live.
They do not understand humanity or the temper of the people in civil life.
They have been trained in an atmosphere of social exclusiveness and educated to believe that they belong to a superior caste. They live in a world of their own, separate and apart from their fellowmen. This is every whit as true in America as it is in Germany. The only difference is in the relative size of the armies.
The Militarists have no real sympathy with any peace movement. They say that we always have had war and that we always will have war. They look forward with enthusiastic antic.i.p.ation to the next war as an opportunity for activity and promotion. War is their trade, their profession. They regard with patronizing pity all who have risen to the higher level that regards war as an anarchistic anachronism, and are willing to make any sacrifice to end it forever. They have never read the chapter ent.i.tled ”The Iron in the Blood” in ”The Coming People,” by Charles F. Dole.
They are devoted to their duty, as they understand it, and are as brave and loyal _soldiers_ as ever existed on the earth. But really it is unreasonable to expect a soldier to be anything but a Militarist. He is bred if not born to war, trained to fight and to study the war game, the war maneuvers, to fortify, to attack, to repel, to figure out a masterly retreat if it becomes necessary. You cannot expect him to be a peace advocate or to work out plans which will prevent or abolish war. It is no part of his duty as he sees it to undertake to devise plans for peace that would render the professional soldier obsolete and relegate him and his brother soldiers to a place by the side of the chivalrous Knights of the Middle Ages, or the Crusaders who fought the Saracens to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from the infidels--picturesque and romantic but expensive and useless.
Moreover, Army officers are hampered in all planning for constructive work by their rigid adherence to precedent. They have a medieval contempt for everything non-military, and for all civil duties and affairs. All this results from the existence of a military caste in this country which is as supercilious, self-opinionated, and autocratic as the military aristocracy of the most military ridden nation of Europe.
They lack initiative and originality because their whole education has operated to drill it out of them, and to make men who are mere machines, doing what they are told to do, _and doing it well_, but doing nothing else. That is the exact opposite of the type of mind demanded in an emergency requiring initiative and the genius to originate and carry out new and better ways of doing things than those that have prevailed in the past.
Men with the military training appear to entirely lack the a.n.a.lytical mind that seeks for _causes_, and comprehends that by removing the _cause_, the evil itself may be safeguarded against, or may in that way be prevented from ever coming into existence.
_This fact is well ill.u.s.trated by the stupendous losses the country has suffered from floods because the Army Engineers have for years so stubbornly refused to consider plans for controlling floods at their sources._
Solid arrays of facts presented to them have contributed nothing to breaking down their stolid egotism.
They will not originate, or approve, any plan that does not center everything that is proposed to be done in the War Department and thereby enlarge its influence and prestige. They oppose every plan to coordinate the War Department with other departments, or to put the Army on the same plane with the others in working out plans for constructive cooperation.
The members of the military caste do not seem to be able to comprehend that the stamp of an inferior caste which they put upon enlisted men, and the menial services exacted from private soldiers by their officers, create conditions that are revolting to every instinct of a man with the right American spirit of self-respect. They are a relic of the barbaric period when the private soldier was an ignorant brute. Those conditions alone are sufficient to render impracticable any plan for a reserve composed of soldiers who have served out their term of enlistment.
In ”On Board the Good s.h.i.+p Earth,” Herbert Quick says:
”All inst.i.tutions must sooner or later be transformed so as to accord with the principles of democracy--or they must be abolished. The great objection to standing armies is their conflict with democracy. They are essentially aristocratic in their traditions. The officers must always be 'Gentlemen' and the privates merely men. The social superiority of officer over man is something enormous. Every day's service tends to make the man in the ranks a servile creature, and the man with epaulettes a sn.o.b and a tyrant.”
The standing army to-day represents an economic waste of labor of the entire body of enlisted men. Many soldiers are demoralized by the inactivity or idleness of the life of the camp or the barracks.
The whole conception of the military caste as to what the Army ought to be is medieval and monstrously wrong. The United States Army should be a training school for the very highest type of self-respecting, independent, and self-sustaining citizens.h.i.+p that this country can produce. It should be a great educational inst.i.tution, training every enlisted man to be an officer in the Reserve, or to be a Homecrofter after he returns to private life. Daily manual constructive labor should be a part of every soldier's duty. The relation between officer and enlisted men should be that of instructor and student. Such a relation is entirely consistent with the absolute authority that would be vested in the instructor.
The Army System should be such that an opportunity to serve a term as an enlisted man would be coveted as much as an appointment to West Point is now coveted. The Army should train men for civil life and citizens.h.i.+p, not ruin them for it as it now so often does.
The many wrong conditions above referred to result from the unfortunate att.i.tude of mind of those who compose the military caste. They would make it impracticable to ever successfully carry out any plan for useful constructive labor by enlisted men in the military service. If such a Reserve were made subject to the control of the War Department, it would be impossible to ever enlist as a Reserve a construction force composed of men who believe in the dignity of labor and refuse to recognize the superiority of any caste in American life or citizens.h.i.+p.
If this statement is not a fact, why is it that no useful, constructive work is accomplished by the fifty odd thousand able-bodied enlisted men of our Regular Army? The same men would accomplish superhuman manual labor in case of war. And the same conditions would obtain if our army was 100,000 or 200,000 or 500,000 strong.
This wasteful situation taken as a whole makes it impracticable to work out any plans which might otherwise be initiated or formulated by the War Department for creating a great reserve force that would be entirely under the control of the civil departments of the national government in time of peace. It is imperative that such civil control should prevail. Were it otherwise, the same danger of military domination in government affairs would arise that would result from the maintenance of a standing army in this country large enough to serve as a national defense in time of war with any first-cla.s.s power.
_And the establishment of a National Construction Service as a Reserve force, enlisted for work to be done under civil control in time of peace, but available for military service in time of war, const.i.tutes one of the most practicable plans for creating a Reserve from which an army for national defense could be instantly mobilized in time of war._