I

HIS country is again con-, fronted with the problem of its military defense against invasion. The militia system relied upon in the National Defense Act of last June has been shown to have substantially broken down under the test of the Mexican mobilization. More than thirty months after the outbreak of the European War, with all its terrible lessons, we have still to lay the statutory foundations of a proper system of land-defense. The situation is now further complicated by the rupture with Germany. Pressure undoubtedly will be brought to bear upon the administration in favor of half-way measures on the plea that the emergency will not admit of anything better. There is particularly the danger that such improvisation may take the form of patching up our discredited militia system, with its division of control between the central and local governments which has been our undoing throughout our history. Such an attitude is, in my opinion, fundamentally wrong. It is only at a time like this, when the attention of the people is concentrated upon the question of national defense, that proper military policy can be effected. It is a historical fact that in times of peace our citizens have habitually paid no attention to even the most self-evident necessities of military policy. At the present time, as a result of interest in the European War, now brought to a focus by the issue with Germany, a revolutionary change in public opinion has taken place toward this entire subject. The proposal to introduce universal obligatory military training, which three years ago would have met with scant consideration, has been now for many months discussed by responsible organs of public opinion throughout the country and, wherever an opportunity

has been given through straw votes, conducted by chambers of commerce, newspapers, or otherwise, for an expression of opinion upon it, the result has been uniformly and overwhelmingly in its favor. If such training is ever to be introduced as a part of our permanent national system, now is the time to do it. The present moment offers perhaps the only occasion when the resolution of this nation can be aroused by anything short of a bloody and humiliating disaster to undertake the burden of establishing this insurance of America's safety. I shall try to enumerate briefly some of the grounds upon which the proposal rests and to indicate why I believe it to be the only permanent solution of the problem of our land-defense which is both adequate from a military standpoint and consistent with our social and democratic ideals.

From the standpoint of our military history there is no more clearly established fact than the failure of the volunteer system. The United States have not yet warred with a first-class Power free to devote its entire attention to them. Nevertheless, in our wars the system has regularly broken down. The leading States of Massachusetts and Virginia were forced to resort to the draft by 1777, or only two years after the opening of the Revolution. During the course of that war, in spite of such sporadic efforts by different States, the patriot armies shrunk in number from 89,000 in 1776 to 29,000 in 1781, and our cause was only saved from failure by the timely intervention of the French fleet and army. In 1812 the volunteer system broke down in so many and varied ways as to make that war the most conspicuous example in our history of how not to carry on military operations. During the Civil War both. sides were forced to use the draft-the South within a year and the North short

ly thereafter. Even in our little war with Spain the full quota of volunteers called for by the President was never obtained. The failure last summer of recruits to appear when called for by the President to meet a national emergency, although over a million citizens were parading and shouting themselves hoarse for preparedness, is merely the latest incident of what has been a practically unbroken record in our history.

Simultaneously with these events at home war abroad has developed along lines which make the volunteer system more impossible than ever before. Prior to the development of modern democracies campaigns were carried on by professional armies of limited size. The monarch called to his standard men with a natural taste for adventure and they fought as the selected champions of a nation whose remaining citizens were otherwise engaged. The modern army has gradually grown to include the entire nation. Every citizen is either in the fighting line or at work directly supporting the military operations. In this fact lies one of the most vital changes in world development which has come with modern ideals and modern times. It represents not a recession into militarism but an advance in nationalism and democracy. It has been simultaneous with the growth of interest which the entire people take in the affairs of government. The work of the army is no longer regarded as the work of a sovereign but as the work of a nation and one citizen feels aggrieved if he is asked to do a national duty which his fellow citizen escapes. Thus the adoption of universal military training and service has not been confined to nations with aggressive ambitions or dangerous neighbors. It has occurred simultaneously in free republics, like Switzerland, France, Argentina, and Chili, and in constitutional monarchies, like Norway and Sweden. It represents the steady growth of an ideal in justice and fair play, namely, that he who has a voice in the selection of his own government is bound in honor to defend that government. It also indicates a recognition of the fact that there is a great difference between compulsion to serve a sovereign and compulsion to serve a commonwealth, and that in the

latter case such action represents the deliberate voluntary choice of the people themselves. The slowness with which this democratic ideal has been realized by the English-speaking countries is due at once to their conservatism of character and the fact that both England and America have hitherto developed their institutions in comparative isolation and freedom from national danger. It is now nearly nine centuries since England has suffered from a successful foreign invasion; the military views and policies embodied in the Bill of Rights date back to a time when standing armies were composed of professionals and when England's geographical isolation was very different from to-day. Several years ago the great English-speaking commonwealth of Australia, in the face of assumed danger from the Orient, adopted universal obligatory training,* and, now that the changed world conditions have been brought home to her population by the war, Great Britain has at last abandoned the volunteer system and adopted conscription.

There can be no more curious inversion of fact than the fear that universal military training makes nations more likely to go to war. Such training has, on the contrary, been the very means by which the professional soldier-the man who spends his life in planning and thinking about war-is reduced to the lowest possible number in the community. Under the old system such professionals constituted the entire army, and their presence in the nation constituted a disturbing element whose aims and ambitions were at variance with those of their fellow citizens. Under the new system their place is taken by men who learn the art of national defense as part of their regular education and then, after the period of training is over, at once become merged in the general citizenship of the nation. These men thereafter have no special leaning toward war. Their subsequent ties, habits, and ambitions lead in the same peaceful direction as those of their fellow citizens. It is just as much of a personal

of Australian home defense has been in force in that common

Universal obligatory training and service for the purpose

wealth since 1911. The conscription bill which was defeated in the autumn of 1916 went farther and provided that Australians might be drafted to serve in Europe.

wrench for them to pull themselves loose and go to war as for men who have not been trained, and the effect of their training is to make more vivid to them the dangers and discomforts of warfare. Under the new system the only body of professional soldiers left in the nation is the comparatively small group of officers and non-commissioned officers who perform the function of instructors to the others. Whether such a nucleus can become a source of militarism in a nation or not depends far more upon the attitude of the nation toward that nucleus than on any other consideration. If they are treated as a privileged and ruling caste, as in Germany, the danger may become real; if, on the contrary, they live constantly under the Anglo-Saxon tradition that the military authority is ever subject to the civil, as here, the danger, in my opinion, is wholly imaginary. Certainly there is no class of our present citizenship of my acquaintance which maintains more consistently and intelligently, in thought and behavior, the traditions of our free institutions than the officers of our regular army.

As a matter of fact, there are, in the case of the American Republic, special and peculiar reasons for the institution of universal military training which do not exist in other democracies. In the first place, there has been pouring in upon us, during the past half-century of our national life, a great stream of immigration, composed of men who have never had the lesson in loyalty to American institutions which was instilled into our fathers by the wars, the privations, and the common experiences of our national growth. Many of these have come here not to assume but to escape national duty; many of them have come with a very imperfect appreciation of any responsibility toward the state, let alone the duty of sleepless vigilance required for the preservation of liberty. Of late we have had ugly revelations of the imperfect way in which our existing institutions have performed the duty of assimilating these immigrants. No better way could be found to bring home to these men and their children the fact that free government has responsibilities as well as privileges, or to amalgamate them into our present population,

than to have them learn, shoulder to shoulder with our native-born youth, the duty of defense of the flag.

Nor would the lesson come amiss to the native-born. Under whatever test, we are a lawless nation. The murder rate of New York is double that of Paris, triple that of Berlin, and more than seven times that of London. Most other large American cities have a far higher murder rate than New York. Memphis multiplies it by nine. Crime in general is seven times more prevalent to-day in this country in proportion to the population than it was sixty years ago.* What a lurid light these figures cast upon the fear sometimes expressed lest a little military training would destroy the freedom or the initiative of the American! Practice for six months in the rapidly decaying art of obedience would teach our undisciplined youth more that was useful toward the self-control which is essential to leadership among men than almost any other education.

Again, in the United States our present militia system has begotten peculiar difficulties in the field of capital and labor. The fact that our States have had constantly at hand an unpaid militia has tempted them to use it in labor troubles as a substitute for a paid police. This has been an unmitigated evil. It has resulted in every petty riot being treated as an insurrection. Upon a force of citizens, with deadly weapons in their hands, has been thrown a duty which could be much more effectively and humanely performed by a policeman with a club. As a result, we have not only failed to maintain law and order, but we have engendered among our working classes the feeling that citizen soldiers represent capital and are being maintained for the purpose of being used against labor. We have thus alienated from this first great duty of citizenship the very men of the nation who have most to suffer in case of foreign invasion and who should be the backbone of the military defense of this country. Universal training would at one stroke wipe out this evil and would do more toward restoring democratic relations between capital and labor, between rich and poor,

"Causes and Cures of Crime," by Thos. Speed Mosley, St. Louis, 1913, p. 3; "Universal Military Training," by

Lucian Howe, p. 103, authorities cited.

soldier to finish it with only one interruption of his employment. If it takes place, as suggested, in his nineteenth year, he has not yet become an economic factor of great importance in the State.

There is undoubtedly much difference of opinion in respect to the length of time necessary to make a soldier. Undoubtedly a man can be better trained in one year than in six months. But our General Staff, in 1912, after careful study of the subject, laid it down in its report on the "Organization of the Land Forces of the United States" that, assuming competent instructors and a proper staff organization, such a period would be sufficient to form a respectable army. Since that date the experience at Plattsburg, so far as it has gone, has served powerfully to confirm the views then enunciated by the General Staff and to prove the great superiority of such intensive training over all other kinds in shortening what had previously been considered the minimum time required to make a soldier. At all events, the recruit in six months would receive over one thousand two hundred hours of training as against the one hundred and ninety-two hours per year now required of the militia by our new National Defense Act, and would therefore have more than six times as much training as is received per year by the cornerstone of our citizen defense.

Again, it is often assumed that the expense would be prohibitory. Such an assumption fails to consider the immense saving to be derived by transferring the military policy of this country from a basis of pay to a basis of duty and patriotism. The item of pay for the regular army has hitherto constituted about half of our hundred-million-dollar army budget. Under the militia system of our present law we pay the National Guardsman at the same rate as the regular for field services, besides the pay which we give him for armory drills. Under the system of universal training, as carried on in February, 1917.

other countries, this item is practically wiped out. It cost us, for the six months ending January 1, 1917, over one hundred and ninety millions of dollars to mobilize the National Guard upon the Mexican border. Figures laid before the Senate Military Committee by Major General Leonard Wood were to the effect that the current expense of training for six months the estimated five hundred thousand youth of this nation who reach the age of training each year and who are physically fit, would be in the neighborhood of ninety millions of dollars, excluding from such figures the cost of permanent equipment which lasts from year to year but taking into consideration maintenance, replacements, and current expenses. Certainly such a system would eliminate the grave danger inherent in our present militia law of creating, by the use of federal pay, a new political machine in the various States which might influence or control our government.

In short, I can see no valid objection to the establishment of the system in this country. It would be a vast undertaking; it would be, in some respects, revolutionary to habits of thought into which we have drifted since our clear-sighted forefathers passed the Universal Service Act of 1792. But the consensus of thoughtful men at present is that we need such a revolution of thought, not only in respect to our methods of defense but in respect to the measure of individual duty which we owe in general to our institutions and the republic. I know of no specific reform which would so generally stimulate that sense of duty. As we face the grave and uncertain future which now lies before us in the war, when our national forces must be built up from the very foundation, let us institute that reform now and begin to train in the right way the right men, upon whose shoulders may rest the responsibility of preserving our civilization against the dangers with which it is confronted.