no time to bother with such matters as armies and "left all that sort of thing to the Government"; while the mother too often indignantly or pathetically protested that she had not raised her boy to be a soldier! Alas for many a mother in both countries that they had not in fact done so. For in the opinion of the shrewdest statesmen, if the youth of both countries had been armed and equipped and ready to take the field on the instant, there would, in all likelihood, have been no war, no war widows, no mothers weeping for sons lying dead today in the fields of France.

Aside from any questions of right and justice, of manhood and fair play toward the Republic that protects and shelters us, can we not be made to see that the averting of such tragedies is one of the underlying meanings of universal military training? The stories of all commonwealths teach us that there are certain great spiritual truths which reach so far down into the life of a nation that they remain unaltered by time or events; vast basic principles are not affected by the changing prosperities, adversities or calamities of succeeding generations. But when they cease to exist the nation ceases to exist. This need of universal military training, which is preparedness and in the end means liberty, may undoubtedly be regarded as one of these.

Nor is it a matter of theory or sentiment only. It is a practical subject, a business proposition. There is an old saying that appears in more than one language, "What is worth having is worth guarding." No one will deny that this rich and beautiful country of ours is well worth having and well worth keeping. Exactly how to guard

it seems to be the rock on which we split. In the past we have rested in pleasant ease and comfort in the conviction that with the Atlantic Ocean on the one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other; with a friendly nation to the north and the Monroe Doctrine to the south, we were too remote from the armed nations of Europe to be molested. We were fond of referring to our position as one of "splendid isolation."

In those early days we generously invited the oppressed races of Europe to come and share our liberty and help themselves to our apparently exhaustless resources: and they came by the hundreds of thousands and by the million and they helped themselves. These resources have now become more limited, and the immigrants within our gates today are inclined to grumble at the paucity. We now have a total population of some one hundred and fourteen million, of which a surprising percentage are foreign-born or children of foreign-born parents. There is some crowding-not much, but enough to be apparent. There are some hard words being uttered; we have had glimpses of the red flag of anarchy but relatively furtively shown as yet; there have been mutterings such as one expects to hear only in the worst labor-congested centers of Europe. To all of this we are unused in our liberal land of freedom and plenty.

After the Civil War our Army, a force of from twenty-five to this thousand men, took care of the Indian frontier, fighting many a hard battle there in defense of the oncoming settler; it garrisoned some seacoast defenses and policed Alaska, protecting, in fact, a country of over three and a half million square miles. Then came

01.1

I43

no. 1

our possession of the Hawaiian Islands, the Spanish War with its aftermath of the occupation of the Philippine Islands, Porto Rico, the building of the Panama Canal and the Mexican Border troubles: all of which demanded an increase in the size of the Regular Army, to whom the defending of all these interests was necessarily confided.

Perhaps it was because these changes produced some little friction with European powers, or because of the pacifist propaganda; whatever the cause, there began to be perceptible a certain stir and restlessness among our patriotic and well-informed citizens, a certain anxiety regarding and protest against our weak and helpless condition. It seemed to many thoughtful men that the old, carefree and happy-go-lucky days had ended, that the nation had grown from boyhood to manhood, and that the time had come to face the cares and responsibilities of maturity. Books and essays showed this trend of public opinion, and then what is called "The Plattsburg Idea" was evolved. Men from various walks in life gathered in camps, wore the same uniform and lived under the same restraints, all in the name of patriotism and defense of country. This movement and the voices of the men responsible for it came like a bugle call to the nation to awake, to awake before it was too late!

In one sense, it was too late. The world war began. Europe became a huge battlefield. The most formidable military power on the face of the globe openly threatened us. Almost victorious at times, Germany treated this country with scorn, saying that we were too fat and rich to fight, sank our ships and murdered our citizens. For two years and a half this most terrific com

3

bat since the beginning of time raged over fronts several hundred miles in extent, in the air and on and under the seas, and yet the United States did not become aroused to the inevitableness of its participation in the war and make adequate preparation while there was yet a little time. For two years and a half, as a nation, we stood and looked on; and in the meantime England, France, Italy, Russia and other smaller states held this savage adversary at bay.

All of this seems inconceivable now but it is true; and it is true partly because of an attractive but false idealism of peace; a lazy, self-indulgent, timid man's theory that not until the enemy clamors at the gates is it time to learn the science of warfare. It is partly true because our enemies found it to their advantage to encourage by skillful propaganda this delusion and dominate us through our weakness, rather than by the more expensive method of force of arms. But it is true, first and last, because of our long years of the comfortable doctrine of "splendid isolation"; of surrender to the easy living of a happy people in a rich and prosperous land. As a nation we could not be made aware of our danger and were ignorant of the tremendous strides modern warfare had taken since the days of the Civil War. The average citizen simply Idid not know that an army cannot be created over night and, lulled by a false sense of security and an unwillingness to believe the nation threatened, did not realize the necessity of providing means to guard our land and honor. Perhaps there are many even now who, deluded by the fact that this last war is won, do not realize that the same necessity to protect our country and its ideals exists today. It is all quite human and under

standable. But it is through just such frailties that individuals or nations are made to pay the price. In this case the Allies, to some extent, paid the price for us up to our entry into the war and until we could get ready . . . not a pleasant thought for the right kind of an American!

When we did finally enter the war, seventeen months passed before the United States placed an independent army of its own in the field; and it was a remarkable achievement at that-a splendid achievement. That it was done. at all was due, in the opinion of professional military men, to the compulsory Selective Service Law. The passage of this act and its orderly acceptance by the nation came as a distinct surprise to the world and a most unpleasant one to our foes. It did much to atone for our previous failures and shortcomings and to restore confidence in the underlying patriotism and good sense of the people. Nevertheless, even with this law, all those months passed before we had at the front an army of our own. To those who had believed a soldier to be a man in a uniform with a gun in his hand, who believed the loose assertions made before the war that we could put an army of a million men in the field over night, it must have been a revelation, an unforgetable object lesson.

It has been said that modern wars are fought by nations rather than by armies, which, like many such sayings, is only partly true. Nations have to organize themselves for war. War, we have learned, is a business, conducted along the same general lines of efficiency as any other business. But the army is the instrument, the tool, the highly tempered, complicated steel mechanism which does the work and

must be manufactured beforehand. To call this organization, this military readiness, "preparation for war" is to misname it. It is preparation for defense. The day of isolation of these United States has undoubtedly passed, both physically and politically. The United States has itself shown that a huge army can cross the Atlantic. In one month alone we transported some 309,950 men abroad. If Germany had been victorious in France, if it had not been for the armies and fleets of England, France, Italy and Japan, our seacoast cities, New York, Washington, San Francisco, might have come under the guns of German battleships (except, of course, in so far as our own most efficient but then insufficient Navy could have prevented) and German troops have landed on our coasts.

Again, this war has taught us that treaties and agreements between nations, unbacked by military preparedness, prove but a flimsy defense against aggression. History is filled also with instances of this fact, and history is to a nation what experience is to a business man. Self-interest in nations prevails even as it does among individuals in the markets and on the stock exchange. Governments are, in a sense, the heads of great business firms engaged in world competition. They represent the commercial interests of all their people reaching out for trade. They will not continue a treaty that is working to their real or fancied disadvantage. They will withdraw, honorably, as a rule, but they will withdraw; and every nation will fight as a last resort provided there is a reasonable chance of winning. It may be distressing to those lovers of peace who now have all they want, but it is the way of