Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace

by George Hebard Maxwell

A national force should be organized primarily for civil duty in time of peace. It should be organized in such a way that it could at a moment's notice be converted into a military machine for national defense in case of war. But that conversion should be a secondary object. The necessity for such a conversion should be regarded as a remote possibility, to prevent which every human power would be exerted, but which might occur, notwithstanding all that could be done to prevent it.

An illustration of this situation might be drawn from the case of an aëroplane constructed for aërial service. It would be needed and built for work in the air. But if it were possible that it might be needed for use over water, then it might be so constructed that in the event of falling on the water it could still keep afloat and propel itself. Aërial navigation would be the primary purpose of its construction. Water navigation would be secondary, and not intended to be resorted to except in case of accident. It would serve as a safeguard against death which might otherwise be caused by an event only remotely possible.

If the necessity for making our system for national defense primarily an instrument of peace is constantly borne in mind, it will make progress easier and more rapid and certain. It will eliminate many complications that would result if we should undertake to look to the military establishment to formulate plans for a system of national defense that would be operative for peace as well as for war. In the past the whole matter of national defense has been left to the Army and Navy. That is the reason why no satisfactory system has been evolved. Naturally the Army and the Navy can see nothing in any plan which does not involve simply a greater army and a greater navy.

If it is now left to the War Department to make plans for a military system that will be adequate for national defense, there are many reasons why a satisfactory system will never be devised. The idea would be incomprehensible to a Regular Army man that a national organization, available for civil duties in time of peace, could in time of war be automatically expanded into a military machine strong enough for the national defense.

Men educated and trained in the military profession do not comprehend conditions outside of the purely military environment in which they live. They do not understand humanity or the temper of the people in civil life. They have been trained in an atmosphere of social exclusiveness and educated to believe that they belong to a superior caste. They live in a world of their own, separate and apart from their fellowmen. This is every whit as true in America as it is in Germany. The only difference is in the relative size of the armies.

The Militarists have no real sympathy with any peace movement. They say that we always have had war and that we always will have war. They look forward with enthusiastic anticipation to the next war as an opportunity for activity and promotion. War is their trade, their profession. They regard with patronizing pity all who have risen to the higher level that regards war as an anarchistic anachronism, and are willing to make any sacrifice to end it forever. They have never read the chapter entitled "The Iron in the Blood" in "The Coming People," by Charles F. Dole.

They are devoted to their duty, as they understand it, and are as brave and loyal soldiers as ever existed on the earth. But really it is unreasonable to expect a soldier to be anything but a Militarist. He is bred if not born to war, trained to fight and to study the war game, the war maneuvers, to fortify, to attack, to repel, to figure out a masterly retreat if it becomes necessary. You cannot expect him to be a peace advocate or to work out plans which will prevent or abolish war. It is no part of his duty as he sees it to undertake to devise plans for peace that would render the professional soldier obsolete and relegate him and his brother soldiers to a place by the side of the chivalrous Knights of the Middle Ages, or the Crusaders who fought the Saracens to rescue the Holy Sepulcher from the infidels—picturesque and romantic but expensive and useless.

Moreover, Army officers are hampered in all planning for constructive work by their rigid adherence to precedent. They have a medieval contempt for everything non-military, and for all civil duties and affairs. All this results from the existence of a military caste in this country which is as supercilious, self-opinionated, and autocratic as the military aristocracy of the most military ridden nation of Europe.

They lack initiative and originality because their whole education has operated to drill it out of them, and to make men who are mere machines, doing what they are told to do, and doing it well, but doing nothing else. That is the exact opposite of the type of mind demanded in an emergency requiring initiative and the genius to originate and carry out new and better ways of doing things than those that have prevailed in the past.

Men with the military training appear to entirely lack the analytical mind that seeks for causes, and comprehends that by removing the cause, the evil itself may be safeguarded against, or may in that way be prevented from ever coming into existence.