"During the last few years of peace, from 1901 to 1907, the United States Government has expended on the army and navy over fourteen hundred million dollars: a sum exceeding the combined cost to Japan of the Chinese War and the Russian War, as well as the entire maintenance of her forces during the intervening years of peace."
And again, the same author says:
"A vast population and great numbers of civilian marksmen can be counted as assets in the combative potentiality of a nation as are coal and iron ore in the depths of its mountains, but they are, per se, worthless until put to effective use. This Republic, drunk only with the vanity of its resources, will not differentiate between them and actual power.
"Japan, with infinitely less resources, is militarily forty times more powerful.
"Germany, France, or Japan can each mobilize in one month more troops, scientifically trained by educated officers, than this Republic could gather together in three years. In the Franco-Prussian War, Germany mobilized in the field, ready for battle, over half a million soldiers, more than one hundred and fifty thousand horses and twelve hundred pieces of artillery in five days. The United States could not mobilize for active service a similar force in three years. A modern war will seldom endure longer than this.
"Not only has this nation no army, but it has no military system."
We have in the United States a military establishment adequate to suppressing riots, controlling mobs, preventing local anarchy, and protecting property from destruction by internal disturbance or uprisings in our own country. As a national police force, our army is an entirely adequate and satisfactory organization. But policing a mining camp and fighting an invading army, are two widely different propositions. So would fighting a Japanese army be from fighting a few Spaniards or Filipinos.
When it comes to a "military system" adapted to the needs of a foreign war with a first-class nation, we have none; and thus far none has been proposed. A system that depends on creating the machinery for national defense by any plan to be undertaken after hostilities have begun, is no system at all, and cannot be classed as a system for national defense. It is a system for national delusion. A Volunteer Army belongs in this class, and so in fact does the State Militia.
The question of national defense involves two separate and distinct problems:
First, the defense of the nation against invasion by another nation.