defense can be adequate against attacks from the air as they will be con'ducted in the future. It would seem at least that the military protection of our cities in the wars that yet lie upon the lap of fate must be extraordinarily subtle and far-reaching. Perhaps in some not too remote conflict city dwellers, from grandmothers to schoolchildren, will all be provided with gas masks and go about armed with hand grenades, lest they might encounter some division of the enemy newly landed from the air.

But I must leave all discussion of purely military defense to the able and unflinching minds of experts. The consideration which I take for my province will suffer much less at the hands of an amateur, and yet its importance must be instantly evident to all seriously minded men. I strongly feel that a new and universal conception of morale must begin to take root in the public consciousness before we can boast anything like intelligent preparation for modern war. It is upon this notion of morale, and the means of arriving at it, that I wish to throw some light. Its high importance, on military grounds alone, not to mention any other, may be derived from good military authority. Let me quote the words of Major General Sir Frederick Maurice, sometime Chief of Field Operations of the Imperial General Staff of Great Britain:

'In future wars the prime object of the contending nations will not be the destruction of the opposing forces, but what the Germans call the will to victory of the opposing peoples. The immense extent of the increase of the zone of danger due to the introduction of aircraft has, it is generally admitted, brought the civilian population into a jeopardy almost, if not quite, as great as that which confronts those who bear arms. The morale of the nation is

therefore likely to be as important a factor in war as the morale of armies has always been. The defeat of the enemy's main forces, hitherto held to be the first aim of strategy, becomes only a means to an end which may be obtained without those means. For a people may find the continuance of war to be intolerable.'

General Maurice's last sentence would of course be obviated by a right system of training, for training and habit are sufficient to inure men to any condition, and even to bring a degree of satisfaction in it. During the years since the World War some, if insufficient, attention has been given to preparing the nation for the struggles of the future by revising and developing its military equipment in the light of the lessons and innovations of recent history. But it is remarkable that neither our own nor any other country seems to have considered how the problem of preparing those who are to fight the next wars has changed with the changing methods and incidence of modern warfare. Indeed the failure to conceive of even the existence of such a problem seems almost complete. Officers of the army, with experience of war and the fresh memory of what must be accomplished to convert a peaceful into a military people, do not spare urging universal service upon us or recommending military camps for students and military courses for colleges throughout the land. But the truth is that universal military training for males of an age to bear arms, even if it were feasible in this country, would not touch the heart of our problem at all. At best it would provide us with a vast body of troops at a time when armies equipped to fight on the battlefield promise to play a subordinate part in military conflicts. And the ablebodied male of an age to bear arms

Our problem is much more serious. It is nothing less than to bring up abreast of the trained military class what has hitherto been the unarmed and unexposed horde of noncombatants. Women, children, workers, old men, and grandmothers- these too must be prepared for the direct acts of combat which will be brought against them in the next war. We cannot, after all, leave them to die in their blood, even if we would. They are necessary to the armies in the field, necessary to the nation's will to victory. If we are to face the problem of preparation for future warfare they must be trained to bear their full part both in morale and in the actual conflict. And if imagination is beggared by the scope of this task, it had best lose itself in the practical effort to accomplish whatever can be accomplished of such a Cyclopean labor. For, if no effort should be made, it might prove, as General Maurice has threatened, that war will become intolerable.

II

Obviously the study of means to prepare an entire industrial, professional, and domestic society for the extreme unction of modern warfare is an infinitely subtle and exhaustive inquiry. Such a study would formulate a programme for the fit training of all trades, all classes, all citizens of whatever age or degree of helplessness. For, since military writers have assured us that all classes must expect direct acts of combat, it will be at evident peril that any group of our people should be left unprepared to meet the tests which even now are incubating in the dark womb of the future.

To our children, it will be generally

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If it is considered a crime to send into the trenches troops improperly equipped or too briefly instructed and disciplined in the use and understanding of their weapons, is it not a more surpassing crime to pit children, easily bewildered and frightened by so small a mishap as a bloody head, against the effects of high explosives or of lethal gases such as may be employed in attacks from the air? If practical limits did not forbid, training for war ought to begin during gestation, or, at the latest, in the cradle. Otherwise, merely by bringing babes into the world, we shall be opposing the most unarmed and defenseless of all populations against the most destructive and terrifying weapons of war. Quite literally

and a worse military principle cannot be imagined-we shall be throwing into battle our most precious untrained troops, from whom the country's future legions must some day be recruited, without so much as a gas mask or a trench helmet for their protection. Consider how we might mollify the shame of launching our babes into the world unable to use so much as a finger in their own defense, if we could only give them military capacity with their milk, or make their rattles and teething rings an initiation into war! But thought pines in vain after such expedients.

What might be done to start our children on the road to preparation for war from the time when they first put their innocent lips to the breast, I have neither the will nor the space to discuss here. Indeed it will be impossible even to attempt to outline a comprehensive training for what would formerly have been the noncombatant population against the dangers to which the future will expose it. I mean only to suggest one or two measures which seem likely to be of particular importance and

value in cultivating the national morale to meet the changing demands of warfare. These measures, in any complete, coherent scheme, might be the last instead of the first stones in the arch. They would certainly be introduced only after many simpler rudimentary exercises and instructions had been mastered by the citizen. But I hope that they may stand as a thoughtful contribution to progress in the national preparation for war, especially in the vital point of morale.

The first of the measures I have to suggest is a direct attempt to strengthen the emotions of the weaker part of our population against what are called the horrors of war. It is this character of frightfulness in warfare which is, of course, the cause of the strain that is put upon morale the cause, indeed, of the existence of that quality. It is proper, therefore, that frightfulness should be first met in considering the problem of the will to victory.

War differs from sport largely in aiming to produce fatalities as its grand purpose and object. If a cultivated foreigner, who, by some chance, did not know by what means war is carried on among civilized nations, were to watch a battalion of soldiers practising the bayonet exercises or popping at each other with blank cartridges in a sham battle, he might be excused for supposing that some elaborate kind of game was going on, especially if he knew the seriousness with which Americans take what it pleases them to call their relaxation. Of course a military camp where soldiers are being trained for the front simulates as well as it can the actual conditions of the battlefield. Trenches are dug, smoke screens conceal the movements of troops, and gas masks are donned at the appointed signal. This employment of a mise en scène is no doubt of value; but it is a poor substitute for the frank and violent

touch of reality. The skin is there, but the entrails are lacking; and a true battle, it must be confessed, is not a little brazen in its unmasking of the entrails. I have not heard that in a military camp the field is left littered with the dead, blackened by mustard gas, or with those even more disturbing corpses that have not yet yielded up the ghost, but lie kicking and writhing with truncated limbs, and screaming for the touch of mercy. It is granted, of course, that men who pass the tests of admission into the army can be trained to meet these scenes without previous experience of them, although even men so selected are not so ready for the horrors of war as to accept them with the efficiency which complete coolness would make possible. But I am thinking of our enormous civilian population, or to use the obsolete yet convenient word the noncombatants. Surely the same cannot be expected of this vast division of the people, and we must earnestly fear for the effect of future wars upon their morale unless a way can be found in advance of hardening their sensibilities to the scenes they will be called upon to endure.

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The problem at first sight appears a difficult one. It is hard to see how familiarity with frightfulness could be provided for the education of the people without also providing the tragedies to which it is due. It would be foolish, of course, however gladly our people would give their lives to their country, to call upon large numbers of them to make the supreme sacrifice at a time when that sacrifice would not be compensated by a corresponding loss to some enemy. Yet, without risk to the citizen's life, how can he be trained to regard philosophically the disconcerting spectacle which is caused by the loss of life in great numbers and by revolting means? Thorny the problem

seems indeed, at a casual view. Yet I do not believe it incapable of solution. I think that an expedient may be found to inure our people to the horrors of warfare without resorting to the actual practice of them—at least upon the citizens themselves.

My plan owes its force to the fact that shells eviscerate and frightfulness disfigures not only men but animals. Anyone who has seen, in reality, or in representation by photograph or cartoon, a landscape ravaged by artillery fire, in which horses and other live stock have not escaped the destruction which had man for its chief object, must be conscious of the depressing influence which animals of large bulk exert on the mind when they lie about dismembered or disemboweled. Looking at such a spectacle, one could hardly help reflecting that it provides an opportunity to experiment in the emotional effects of war without its dangers. Soldiers indeed have mentioned the inconvenience to the feelings of walking about among bits of animal flesh and hair displayed on walls, barbed wire entanglements, or other lodging places. That they overcome this inconvenience may be guessed from impressions of the campaign of General Sherman in Georgia. We are told that the invading Yankees distressed the citizens of that state by popping their guns all day long at cows, pigs, fowl, or any living thing which had the misfortune to show itself before the sights of the troopers' guns. If this is true, why may we not suppose that nonchalance in the presence of animals that have been subjected to shell fire is a real, if incomplete, preparation for unconcern in the presence of human beings exposed to the same trial?

The test would be severe, I confess, if our women and children shared in the bombing. The sight could not be accepted easily. Perhaps no expedient

could be devised which would adequately prepare the mind for it. But some step ought certainly to be taken to fit a civilian population for its new prominence in the theatre of war, and I am doing the utmost that a citizen can do in recommending the measures which have occurred to me as most efficient and practicable. All things cannot be expected of the best of plans, and there must be a residue of endurance for the occasion itself to call forth. But what can be done to reduce this residue to its lowest terms, and thus enlarge the factor of safety in morale, I have been at utmost pains to discover and urge upon my countrymen.

My plan, then, briefly outlined, is this. The country would be divided by the General Staff into military districts, and in each district a battle area would be designated. At stated periods, each district would provide a number of horses bearing a proportion to the numbers of its population. I choose horses as the animals most fitting to the scene of war, as they are still employed for reconnoitring movements, for drawing gun carriages, and for other honorable military labor to which machines have not yet proved adaptable. The horses would be mobilized at a concentration camp, and on given days the people of the district would be called out according to mobilization orders and would proceed to the designated battle area. The artillery would then be directed against the animals, which would be enclosed in the area. The citizens would march in ranks behind the advancing wave of shell fire, and would observe its effects. They would be furnished with hand grenades to destroy any of the animals who might escape the projectiles hurled by the artillery. Hand grenades are recommended instead of rifles because their effects are more in accordance with the emotional results which it is

desired to produce, and because it seems likely that foot troops will be armed more and more exclusively with them in the future rather than with guns alone, the destructive powers of the grenades being greater and more violent. Children could participate in the exercise as far as was thought advisable by the military authorities, and might thus gain their first acquaintance with the phenomena of war in the steadying company of their elders, and perhaps buoyed up by the fine stimulation of martial music.

I am able to see only two objections to this plan, and I should like, if possible, to obviate them, as I am convinced of its usefulness, and believe that it deserves the immediate attention of the country. The first objection is that our stock of horses would be rapidly exhausted if the plan were put into execution, and a noble animal made extinct. In this I do not at all concur. I am not able to see that man is in any danger of extinction from war, and while horses in their present numbers would be put to a disproportionate strain by the conscription which I propose for them, they would soon be raised in vast quantities to meet the annual demand for their consumption. Would the herds of cattle which now thunder on our Western plains ever have come into existence if our expanding population had not caused an economic demand for them? In the same way, if a people has been decimated by war, do the mothers and fathers of the country give up producing population? Rather they at once set about repairing the damage done by the guns and providing material to be consumed by another generation of artillery. Far from destroying the horse as a species, the expedient I suggest would be the very means of encouraging its cultivation in the largest possible numbers. War requires

multiplication before there can be destruction. Populations must grow before they can be deflowered by conflict. I believe that if my plan were adopted our wayside farms and highways, which have lost a note of nobility in the gradual disappearance of so fine an animal as the horse, would again rejoice in the full-blooded, nervous life of those admirable creatures, again resound with the gallop of hoofs, and toss with the splendor of careless manes and sensitive, proud heads.

The second objection which might be offered against my proposal is a fancied barbarity in it. But from this I instantly dissent. Shall we forbid the destruction of the horse by organized means and for a well-conceived end, and allow the destruction of that even more delicate animal, man, whom it has taken an infinitely longer and more precarious course of evolution to produce, and for whom the instinctive faith of the ages declares that the earth and its other creatures were created? To state such a conception is at once to absolve my scheme of the charge of barbarity. Yet it should be pointed out that it is precisely the characteristic of war to deprive us of what we hold most precious, and if this conscription of the horse were to awaken us once more to the beauty and value of the animal, we should be additionally prepared by its loss to face even more severe losses in a time of national danger.

Again, conscientious opinion has decided that vivisection for the purpose of medical progress is a humane act. A precise analogy is presented by my scheme for the use of horses to prepare our people for war. A scheme which intensifies the national morale is the exact counterpart of a serum which prevents a devastating epidemic. What nation-wide plague could be comparable in its effects to the loss of the will to