A standing army of 100,000 men, or even of 200,000 men, would prove utterly inadequate for our national defense in such a war. Worse than that, our whole military system is fatally defective. It entirely lacks the capacity of instant automatic expansion necessary to quickly put an army of a million men in the field. It would be imperative and unavoidable that we should do so, the moment we became involved in war with a first-class power. A million men would be the minimum size of the army we would need the instant war started with any great nation like Japan. As a system for national defense in such a war our standing army is a dangerous delusion. Its existence, and the false reliance placed on it, delays the adoption of a system that would prove adequate to any emergency.
The militia system of the United States is another delusion, and in case of war would be little better than useless. Washington had his own bitter experiences to guide him, and he warned the people of this country against militia in the following vigorous terms:
"Regular troops alone are equal to the exigencies of modern war, as well for defense as offense, and when a substitute is attempted, it must prove illusory and ruinous.
"No Militia will ever acquire the habits necessary to resist a regular force. The firmness requisite for the real business of fighting is only to be attained by constant course of discipline and service.
"I have never yet been a witness to a single instance that can justify a different opinion, and it is most earnestly to be wished that the liberties of America may no longer be trusted, in a material degree, to so precarious a defense."
In the face of all these facts, the people of the United States are groping in the dark. They may have a vague and glimmering idea of their danger, but as yet no definite and practicable plan for national defense in case of war has been suggested, except that proposed in this book.
The beautiful iridescent dream and vision of an army of a million patriotic souls hurrying to the colors in the event of national danger brings only counter visions of Bull Run and Cuba, of confusion, waste, death, and devastation, before we could possibly get these men officered, trained, equipped, and organized to fight any first-class power according to the methods of modern warfare.
As an illustration, what would our pitifully small army, and our almost raw and untrained levies of militia, do in a grim conflict with the 200,000 trained and seasoned and perfectly armed and equipped soldiers which Japan could land on our shores within four weeks, or the 500,000 she could land in four months, or the 1,000,000 she could land in ten months? We could not by any possibility get a military force of equal strength into action on the Pacific coast in that length of time or in anywhere near it.
That is where our danger lies, and therein exists the startling menace of our unpreparedness for war. It is not that we lack men or money. No nation in the world has better soldiers than those now serving under our flag. We no doubt have the raw material for a larger army than any nation or any two nations could utilize for the invasion of our territory, but any one of three or four nations could humble and defeat us several times over before we could whip this raw material into shape for a fighting force and get it armed and equipped for actual warfare.
The conclusion from this would on the surface naturally seem to be that we must have a larger standing army. The strange and apparently contradictory but undeniable fact is that a larger standing army, organized in accordance with our present military system, would merely increase our danger, and might precipitate a war that would otherwise have been avoided.