Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace

by George Hebard Maxwell

This would necessitate the employment of an ultimate total of a million men, scattered throughout every State of the Union. Every dollar paid to them in wages, and every dollar expended in connection with their work, would prevent devastation or create values for the nation immensely larger than the total expenditure. The values created and benefits assured in time of peace would alone justify the expenditure. The value to the nation of such a great Reserve Force of trained and hardened men in time of war would again justify the expenditure. But in the initial expenditure both ends would be attained.

What we pay out from year to year for the support of our Standing Army and our Navy, after each year has passed, is wasted and gone. It is too high a rate to pay for insurance, which in fact is no insurance at all against a possible war. If such a war should come, the Standing Army and the Navy would be hopelessly inadequate for our protection.

The system must be changed. The Standing Army, without any increased expenditure, must be made a training school for all the officers needed for a Reserve of at least a million men. This should be done immediately! The day is at hand when the nation must take time by the forelock and in time of peace prepare for war, in a sane, intelligent, adequate, and effective way. If it is not done we run the grave risk, with the possibility of war always facing us, of being subjected by our national indifference to the fearful cost of such a conflict if we were forced into it unprepared.

Shall we do this, and get back the full value of every dollar expended, or shall we face the ever growing possibility of a war of one or two or three years duration, costing us in cash outlay two or three billion dollars a year?

It will be argued against this plan for an enlisted National Construction Reserve that the men would have no military training in the event that the need should instantly arise for utilizing them as soldiers. That objection should be removed, by applying to the entire Construction Service, the Swiss system of military training for a fixed period during each year, long enough to train a man for the work of a soldier, but not long enough to demoralize or ruin him as a man or as a citizen by the life of the barracks or the camp.

The men enlisted in the Construction Service, and entirely under civil control in all the work they would do for ten months of the year, could be given military instruction during the remaining two months. That would not bring upon the people of this country any of the evils that would result from maintaining a standing army large enough to serve as an army of defense in the event of a foreign invasion. And yet, with such a trained Reserve Force already enlisted, the United States would be prepared to instantly put into the field an army of trained and hardened soldiers. Its Reserve Force would be so large that the mere existence of that force would make this nation one of the strongest nations of the world in any military contest. We might then rest assured that other nations would hesitate to attack us or invade our territory. That possibility of danger would be absolutely removed if the plan which will be later outlined for the creation of a National Homecroft Reserve were adopted as an additional means of national defense.

It will again be argued that we have no system of training officers for an army of any such magnitude. This is quite true. It is an objection that must be met and overcome. The War Department should be required to train and provide these officers. The military posts on which such great sums have been spent for political reasons, and so few of which are located where they should be for real military reasons, should be turned into military training schools for officers.

The rank and file of the regular army should be drawn from a class of men who could be trained in those schools in all the necessary knowledge of military science to qualify them to be officers. They might be private soldiers in the regular army, and at the same time commissioned or non-commissioned officers in the Reserve. A regular army of 50,000, if established on a proper basis, would be able to supply officers for a Reserve of 1,000,000 men.

Every private soldier in the regular army should be a man fit to become an officer, and in process of training with that object in view. And when that training had been completed, he should be assigned to his detail or his command in the Reserve. A private soldier in time of peace in the regular army, he would instantly become an officer in the Reserve in time of war.

The system should contemplate the retention in the government service, in some constructive capacity, of every man once trained as an officer and capable of rendering service as such in case of war. It is wrong to expect such men to return to private life with a military string tied to them, and take up the complicated duties of a commercial career, with the family obligations that they ought to assume resting upon them, without providing for the contingencies that a call for an immediate return to active service would create.