It is the flexibility of the standard equipment of the American railroads that today offers perhaps the largest opportunity for its successful military use. A single instance will prove this. A man—his name is L. W. Luellen—has devised a scheme for mounting heavy rapid-fire ordnance upon steel flat cars. Obviously it would be quite impossible to fire even a miniature “big Bertha” from anything so unstable as a railroad car. But Mr. Luellen has met this difficulty by arranging to have built at intervals not exceeding thirty miles along the entire Atlantic coast, short sidings flanked by heavy concrete bases.
He, too, has studied his railroad map, as a little while ago we were studying it. He has found that a comparatively small number of guns with a fifteen-mile shooting radius, could by means of these permanent bases at thirty-mile intervals protect the entire Atlantic coast, a good portion of the Pacific as well. The method of their operation is simple. The guns would be sent to any section they were needed on fast passenger schedule. It would be a matter of minutes rather than hours, for the flat cars to be run in between the permanent concrete bases and by jacks transferred to them from the cars.
The scheme is so simple that it seems absurd. But the War Department experts say that it is remarkably practical. And Mr. Luellen, who seems to know what he is talking about, says that it would not cost more than $10,000,000 to install it—guns, cars, and permanent bases, along the North Atlantic seaboard. Here is a form of railroad preparedness that would seem worth the careful attention of the national legislature.
Already the American army has what is known as the Medical Reserve Corps, made up of physicians and surgeons all the way across the land. The great national organizations of civil engineers are beginning to plan a similar reserve in the ranks of their own profession. In the American Railway Association, the railroads of this country have a common meeting ground and an organization that can quickly take definite steps toward meeting the Federal authorities in planning the military use of the transportation routes of the country. There is no mistaking the patriotism of the railroaders. Some of them have smarted in recent years under what they have believed to be an unwarranted intrusion by the Federal authorities into the affairs of their properties, but at heart every man of them is loyally American. And every man of them is not merely loyal in a passive sense, but is both willing and able to aid the government with all the resources at his command.
Take the critical situation which broke upon the country early in the present year when diplomatic relations with Germany suddenly were broken and the possibility of war loomed high. President Wilson, acting under the authority which Congress had vested in him immediately appointed a committee of seven prominent Americans—a Council of National Defense. As a member of this Council and in immediate charge of the nation’s transportation and communication in case of emergency Mr. Wilson chose Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. He chose wisely. Of the dominant quality of Mr. Willard’s Americanism as well as of his great railroad ability and executive fitness for so important a post there can be no question.
Within seven days after he had accepted this billet, Willard was at work for the government. He bespoke for it at once the interest and cooperation of the heads of the other great railroads of America. He knew that in any national crisis the interest and the patriotism of these men was never to be doubted. And so he sought their cooperation and not in vain. A full dozen of the biggest railroad executives in the United States closed their desks and at Willard’s suggestion came hurrying to Washington. When their conference was done, a definite plan for the service of the railroads in a time of great national stress had been begun—a program which the railroad executives then returned to study in detail. At the conference they were told of the great defense and offense plans of the War College for the part which the railroad must play in a national emergency. Some of the railroad presidents learned for the first time the designated mobilization centers all the way across the land, the equipment necessary for each, the movement and direction of troop and munition trains, from every one of them.
It is gratifying to know that these railroad executives already are giving much time and thought to the use of our railroads in national defense. So is Major Charles Hine, who, like Herman Haupt, came out of West Point, perfected himself in military training and organization and gave his time after leaving the army to railroad training and organization. Hine started as a brakeman on the Erie Railroad, in order that he might study railroad operation from the bottom up—that he might eventually bring to the railroad some of the really good points of the army. He has since held high executive positions in many of the great railroad systems of the land—studying the problems of each until he knows the railroad map of this country as you and I know the fingers of our hands. The value of such a man to America in an emergency is not to be figured in dollars and cents.
But to my own mind, the value of such a military reserve corps among the railroaders will be comparatively slight if its membership be confined merely to railroad executives. The qualities of patriotism and good Americanism are by no means confined to the higher-paid railroad men. Take a purely suppositious case—yet an entirely typical one:
Down in the offices of the old Cumberland Valley Railroad at Chambersburg, we will say, there is a boy who is assistant trainmaster or assistant superintendent. He is a smart boy, who has climbed rapidly in railroad ranks because of his abilities. He reads the papers. He is keenly interested in this whole idea of national defense. He reads the newspapers and the magazines and he wonders what his own part would be if Washington were taken by an enemy invader. Being a good railroader he does not have to spend much time in doubts. He knows that his little railroad—ever an important cross-country traffic link from Harrisburg down to Martinsburg and Winchester, will suddenly become part of the military base line north and south along the Atlantic coast. Over its stout rails will come the tidal overflow that ordinarily moves over the four busy tracks of the two railroad systems between Baltimore and Philadelphia. That means that his railroad, his own division, himself, if you please, will be called upon to handle a great traffic from Harrisburg south to the upreached arms of the Norfolk and Western and the Baltimore and Ohio lines.