Do you know what a company commander must do in the day’s work? He must enroll and recruit his company to a strength of one hundred and fifty men. He must get them clothed, equipped, and fed, and he must keep them clothed, equipped, fed, doctored, sanitated, cheerful, and amused.
Any woman who has tried to do all of these things for one stirring lad may multiply these by a hundred and fifty, and no maternal instinct to help out, and see that the company commander has a full day even in peace times.
Then he has to drill his men, and in war he has to lead them. He must give them every chance for life if he can. He must die with them if it be necessary. But he must do with them the thing he has been assigned to do.
Is that work for the amateur?
In the Mexican and Civil Wars our professional fighters were Indian fighters and frontiersmen, splendid and hardy men accustomed to hardship. But they were not conversant with modern military methods. The result was civilian officers, taken from shops and offices, and the further result, in the Civil War, that a struggle which might have ended in a year took four.
But we did not learn anything from that lesson. For we are about to commit again the same folly, and from the same necessity.
Then, again, we have the right to demand enough time. Because we have wasted two years is no reason for hurry now, when haste means sending our boys untrained against a highly trained enemy.
Do you know that McDowell was urged to take his volunteers into action by popular clamor and against his better judgment before their three-months’ enlistment expired, and that the result was the unhappy battle of Bull Run?
All this means but one thing to me, a mother. It means time to train our boys and properly equip them. And it means professional military leaders.
And this is pertinent now, because what we have done before we may do again. In the Civil War each State was called on for a certain number of regiments. Prominent men then raised these regiments, and they were officered by local civilians. That was not such a hardship then, because our boys were to face other regiments recruited and officered in the same way.