Training of our young men in field manœuvres and in marksmanship, as is done in Switzerland, and to a slightly less extent in Australia, would be of immense advantage to the physique and morale of our whole population. It would not represent any withdrawal of our population from civil pursuits, such as occurs among the great military states of the European Continent. In Switzerland, for instance, the ground training is given in the schools, and the young man after graduating serves only some four months with the branch of the army to which he is attached, and after that only about eight days a year, not counting his rifle practice. All serve alike, rich and poor, without any exceptions; and all whom I have ever met, the poor even more than the rich, are enthusiastic over the beneficial effects of the service and the increase in self-reliance, self-respect, and efficiency which it has brought. The utter worthlessness of make-believe soldiers who have not been trained, and who are improvised on the Wilson-Bryan theory, will be evident to any one who cares to read such works as Professor Johnson’s recent volume on Bull Run. Our people should make a thorough study of the Swiss and Australian systems, and then adapt them to our own use. To do so would not be a stride toward war, as the feeble folk among the ultrapacificists would doubtless maintain. It would be the most effectual possible guarantee that peace would dwell within our borders; and it would also make it possible for us not only to insure peace for ourselves, but to have our words carry weight if we spoke against the commission of wrong and injustice at the expense of others.
But we must always remember that no institutions will avail unless the private citizen has the right spirit. When a leading congressman, himself with war experience, shows conclusively in open speech in the House that we are utterly unprepared to do our duty to ourselves if assailed, President Wilson answers him with a cheap sneer, with unworthy levity; and the repeated warnings of General Wood are treated with the same indifference. Nevertheless, I do not believe that this attitude on the part of our public servants really represents the real convictions of the average American. The ideal citizen of a free state must have in him the stuff which in time of need will enable him to show himself a first-class fighting man who scorns either to endure or to inflict wrong. American society is sound at core and this means that at bottom we, as a people, accept as the basis of sound morality not slothful ease and soft selfishness and the loud timidity that fears every species of risk and hardship, but the virile strength of manliness which clings to the ideal of stern, unflinching performance of duty, and which follows whithersoever that ideal may lead.
CHAPTER VIII
SELF-DEFENSE WITHOUT MILITARISM
The other day one of the typical ultrapacificists or peace-at-any-price men put the ultrapacificist case quite clearly, both in a statement of his own and by a quotation of what he called the “golden words” of Mr. Bryan at Mohonk. In arguing that we should under no conditions fight for our rights, and that we should make no preparation whatever to secure ourselves against wrong, this writer pointed out China as the proper model for America. He did this on the ground that China, which did not fight, was yet “older” than Rome, Greece, and Germany, which had fought, and that its example was therefore to be preferred.
This, of course, is a position which saves the need of argument. If the average American wants to be a Chinaman, if China represents his ideal, then he should by all means follow the advice of pacificists like the writer in question and be a supporter of Mr. Bryan. If any man seriously believes that China has played a nobler and more useful part in the world than Athens and Rome and Germany, then he is quite right to try to Chinafy the United States. In such event he must of course believe that all the culture, all the literature, all the art, all the political and cultural liberty and social well-being, which modern Europe and the two Americas have inherited from Rome and Greece, and that all that has been done by Germany from the days of Charlemagne to the present time, represent mere error and confusion. He must believe that the average German or Frenchman or Englishman or inhabitant of North or South America occupies a lower moral, intellectual, and physical status than the average coolie who with his fellows composes the overwhelming majority of the Chinese population. To my mind such a proposition is unfit for debate outside of certain types of asylum. But those who sincerely take the view that this gentleman takes are unquestionably right in copying China in every detail, and nothing that I can say will appeal to them.
The “golden words” of Mr. Bryan were as follows:
I believe that this nation could stand before the world to-day and tell the world that it did not believe in war, that it did not believe that it was the right way to settle disputes, that it had no disputes which it was not willing to submit to the judgment of the world. If this nation did that, it not only would not be attacked by any other nation on the earth, but it would become the supreme power in the world.
Of course, it is to be assumed that Mr. Bryan means what he says. If he does, then he is willing to submit to arbitration the question whether the Japanese have or have not the right to send unlimited numbers of immigrants to this shore. If Mr. Bryan does not mean this, among other specific things, then the “golden words” in question represent merely the emotionalism of the professional orator. Of course if Mr. Bryan means what he says, he also believes that we should not have interfered in Cuba and that Cuba ought now to be the property of Spain. He also believes that we ought to have permitted Colombia to reconquer and deprive of their independence the people of Panama, and that we should not have built the Panama Canal. He also believes that California and Texas ought now to be parts of Mexico, enjoying whatever blessings complete abstinence from foreign war has secured that country during the last three years. He also believes that the Declaration of Independence was an arbitrable matter and that the United States ought now to be a dependency of Great Britain. Unless Mr. Bryan does believe all of these things then his “golden words” represent only a rhetorical flourish. He is Secretary of State and the right-hand man of President Wilson, and President Wilson is completely responsible for whatever he says and for the things he does—or rather which he leaves undone.