prepare for protection, but care must be taken that our activities in this direction do not reach their acme in recrudescent savagery or in preparation for it. The perpetuation of international hatreds and brutish warfare as a purposeful feature of the education of our children cannot be allowed. If by universal training it is meant that we must turn our great public-school system into recruiting-stations or barracks for the idea that war, as illustrated in Belgium, Poland, or Servia, is the supreme expression, or the necessary school, of a nation's valors or of a virile civilization, I protest against it and oppose it. On the other hand, I can conceive a system of universal training able to release an incalculable power for the general good-a system that, even while having the national defense in mind, would discipline and organize the children and youth with the same rigor to fight the real foes of mankind, the savage instincts or latencies within ourselves, the hostile forces of physical nature, to fight for the absolute good, but to fight as nobly as the absolute good demands; and not for our individual selves alone, but for something of which ourselves are but an ephemeral, yet significant part-the state. Let them be trained to fight against the real foes of a city, a nation, a race. A camp for such purposes I should like to make every school, public and private; a place not only where children are trained to realize their individual potencies, but where all shall feel themselves a contributing part in the making of a better community, a better state, a better world, a finer race on the planet. We have too much softened our vocabulary and our spirits. We speak of "public service" and "doing good" when we ought to be making such war, fighting evil and enduring hardships. We ought, as some old militant Christian said, to put on our armor and not to take it off until we put on our shrouds. For life is not service. Life is struggle alone, struggle together. Life is war. Let us crowd out the militarism of individual valors with the militarism productive of miracles of organization; the militarism that calls into specific sacrificial service what each man has to give, even if it takes him away from his personal prospects or his personal gain or takes from him his life; a militarism that will bring us to the day when the Landsturm of fear and envy and hate will become the Landsturm of disciplined, scientific, aspiring industrial and invincible struggle for man's supremacy over earth, sea, sky, and self. It is the war department that has dug the Panama Canal, that has made some regions accessible, that has stayed pestilence, and ministered most effectively to cities overwhelmed by disaster. Doing away with ancient savageries and harsh superstitions, I would have the conservation of health and the direction of education conceived as functions of the war department, scientifically, austerely administered for the common good. It is a lofty conception, one that takes away the present ignoble emphasis upon war as the mere destruction of human beings, substituting a definition that entails militant attack upon all the evils and injustices that scar American life and rot the national character. Whether or not use is made of the educational system in connection with universal training, Dr. Finley's warnings must be heeded, and the instruction course decided upon must be the fruit of conference that will represent the ideals and aspirations of a true national democracy as well as its defensive needs. The Swiss and Australian systems, however, do not rest upon the public schools, nor does Senator Chamberlain's bill contemplate any such foundation. Stated briefly, it provides that every congressional district shall constitute a registration and training division; and it provides for the inclusion of all non-exempt males between the ages of twelve and twentythree in the Citizen Cadet Corps, and between eighteen and twenty-three in the Citizen Army, after which they are released to enter the Citizen Army Reserve. It is stated specifically that the prescribed training may be given in public and private schools, academies, colleges, and uni versities, or in boy-scout groups and similar organizations. The first years are concerned solely with the physical development of the youth; military instruction is introduced. evenly and carefully, and from eighteen to twenty-three, ten days a year in a camp of continuous training is set down as the time necessary to coördinate his knowledge, to confirm it, and to familiarize him with work in the mass in the field. It is an Americanization of the system that enables Switzerland, with its population of four million, to mobilize 500,000 trained soldiers at a day's notice, all at an annual cost of $8,000,000 as compared with the $101,959,196 that the United States spends on its regular army of 87,ooo, or the fourteen millions lavished on the organized militia of 129,000. It is a system bedrocked in democracy, for it does away with the vicious discriminations of the volunteer plan, letting the high duty of national defense rest with equal weight on every fit citizen, the highest as well as the lowest, the richest as well as the poorest. No disruption of industry is entailed, and democratic ideals are strengthened, not destroyed. The total number of American boys between the ages of ten and fourteen is 9,107,140. To give this great number a proper physical training, to heighten their patriotism, to inform them in the science of defense, is not only a guarantee of future peace and permanent safety, but an immeasurable contribution to the whole someness and virility of the race. America is not by any means a fit nation. Of the thirty million wage-earners in the United States, each loses an average of nine days a year through sickness, a wage loss of $500,000,000 alone, not to take account of the millions spent in medical attendance and the diminution of productivity. Even with comparatively low. standards, and despite the fact that those who present themselves are the physical elect, one out of every six applicants for the army and navy is rejected as unfit. Fifty per cent. of all volunteers fail to pass tests, and of the remaining fifty per cent. one half die before the firing-line is reached because they have too much chalk in their bones. The time to remedy these defects is not after manhood has been reached, but in youth. Even should the vital matter of national defense be thrown out of consideration, compulsory military training of the young would still stand justified by reason of its physical value. With proper regard for the right sort of emphasis, the same preparation that makes the true defender will also make the true citizen. The distinction between militarism and citizen defense is the difference between the ambition of kings and the voice of a people. Compulsory military training, substituted for the outworn, outgrown volunteer system, would mean economy as well as adequacy. It might almost be said that its cost could be cared for out of the funds that are now poured into the rat-holes of failure and inefficiency. The regular army is huddled to-day in forty-eight posts, crazy relics of Indian. warfare perpetuated by the congressmen in whose districts they are. These pork'barrel products devour taxes and paralyze utility. At least six millions, now squan dered annually in maintenance, could be saved by the abolition of forty of these posts, and another $10,626,518 is squandered every year on the transportation of troops from one God-forsaken station to another. Universal military training would compel intelligent concentration of the regular army, not only gaining sixteen millions a year, but bringing officers and men themselves into touch with democracy and efficiency. Additional millions could be saved annually by the withdrawal of federal support from the state police forces now masquerading as a national guard. The militia pay-bill, introduced in Congress in 1914, asked a federal appropriation of $26,000,000 annually for the 129,000 troops then enrolled. With the militia recruited to 400,000, as proposed, the annual cost to the taxpayers would be close to $100,000,000. Then, too, there is the four or five millions that the Federal Government spends annually on the fifty-odd colleges that maintain military departments. It has been money wasted from the first, for save in exceptional instances like the state universities of California, Ohio, and Illinois, these institutions have regarded their cadet corps as mere subterfuges to obtain national appropriations. The total enrolment of males in these colleges, at the last report, was 81,097, and of this number a bare twenty-three per cent. made any pretense of drill. As General Wood has pointed out, the question of instructors is not such a bogy as appears at first. Regular army officers are now assigned to instruction duty with the militia of every State, and in the sparsely settled Western States the change would mean nothing more than the transference of duty. Lieutenant Steever, instructor-officer with the Wyoming militia, for instance, organized cadet corps in the high schools of the State in his spare time, and brought the lads to a degree of efficiency that invites comparison with the trained troops of Europe. It is also true that call can be made upon such officers of the militia as may demonstrate competency, and there are also the retired lists of the army that could be drawn upon with profit. The United States is now paying $3,000,000 a year to officers on the retired list, and $2,482,000 to soldiers on the retired list. The great majority have years of good service left in them, a truth proved by the fact that many take important places in private employment, and the adoption of a system of compulsory military training would permit the utilization of their services as in structors. When one adds together the millions. that have been wasted in the past and the millions that will be wasted if Congress decides to base national defense upon a militia that is paid for attending armory drills, one will see that compulsory military training is not only more efficient, but far cheaper. When all is said and done, however, the great value of universal military training does not lie principally in its adequacy or in its economy, but in its far-reaching and lasting effects upon the nation itself and the national character. Brag and bluster and hysteria, when analyzed, are seen to be the natural consequences of unpreparedness or semi-preparedness. The country that does not know whether it can fight or not is always a country that lends itself. to extremes of bravado and alarm; and did the United States know itself to be ready for any emergency, it would be more difficult for a yellow press and yellower politicians to work up emotional debauches by preaching a religion of valor. There are also the advantages of a finer, firmer physical base, the result of youthful training; an improved national health; a nobler conception of patriotism; a keener understanding of civic obligations and the meaning of fraternity; and a far saner, more wholesome outlook on life in every possible way. Compulsory military training must come. Then why not now? What is the point of making numberless toothless bites at the cherry of national defense? |