America and the World War

by Theodore Roosevelt

Australia has done well in this respect. But Switzerland has worked out a comprehensive scheme with practical intelligence. She has not only solved the question of having men ready to fight, but she has solved the question of having arms to give these men. At present England is in more difficulty about arms than about men, and some of her people when sent to the front were armed with hunting rifles. Our own shortcomings are far greater. Indeed, they are so lamentable that it is hard to believe that our citizens as a whole know them. To equip half the number of men whom even the British now have in the field would tax our factories to the limit. In Switzerland, during the last two or three years of what corresponds to our high-school work the boy is thoroughly grounded in the rudiments of military training, discipline, and marksmanship. When he graduates he is put for some four to six months in the army to receive exactly the training he would get in time of war. After that he serves eight days a year and in addition often joins with his fellows in practising at a mark. He keeps his rifle and accoutrements in his home and is responsible for their condition. Efficiency is the watchword of Switzerland, and not least in its army. At the outbreak of this terrible war Switzerland was able to mobilize her forces in the corner of her territory between France and Germany as quickly as either of the great combatants could theirs; and no one trespassed upon her soil.

The Swiss training does not to any appreciable extent take the man away from his work. But it does make him markedly more efficient for his work. The training he gets and his short service with the colors render him appreciably better able to do whatever his job in life is, and, in addition, benefit his health and spirits. The service is a holiday, and a holiday of the best because of the most useful type.

There is no reason whatever why Americans should be unwilling or unable to do what Switzerland has done. We are a far wealthier country than Switzerland and could afford without the slightest strain the very trifling expense and the trifling consumption of time rendered necessary by such a system. It has really nothing in common with the universal service in the great conscript armies of the military powers. No man would be really taken out of industry. On the contrary, the average man would probably be actually benefited so far as doing his life-work is concerned. The system would be thoroughly democratic in its workings. No man would be exempted from the work and all would have to perform the work alike. It would be entirely possible to arrange that there should be a certain latitude as to the exact year when the four or six months’ service was given.

Officers, of course, would need a longer training than the men. This could readily be furnished either by allowing numbers of extra students to take partial or short-term courses at West Point or by specifying optional courses in the high schools, the graduates of these special courses being tested carefully in their field-work and being required to give extra periods of service and being under the rigid supervision of the regular army. There could also be opportunities for promotion from the ranks for any one who chose to take the time and the trouble to fit himself.

The four or six months’ service with the colors would be for the most part in the open field. The drill hall and the parade-ground do not teach more than five per cent of what a soldier must actually know. Any man who has had any experience with ordinary organizations of the National Guard when taken into camp knows that at first only a very limited number of the men have any idea of taking care of themselves and that the great majority suffer much from dyspepsia, just because they do not know how to take care of themselves. The soldier needs to spend some months in actual campaign practice under canvas with competent instructors before he gets to know his duty. If, however, he has had previous training in the schools of such a type as that given in Switzerland and then has this actual practice, he remains for some years efficient with no more training than eight or ten days a year.

The training must be given in large bodies. It is essential that men shall get accustomed to the policing and sanitary care of camps in which there are masses of soldiers. Moreover, officers and especially the higher officers are wholly useless in war time unless they are accustomed to handle masses of men in co-operation with one another.

There are small sections of our population out of which it is possible to improvise soldiers in a short time. Men who are accustomed to ride and to shoot and to live in the open and who are hardy and enduring and by nature possess the fighting edge already know most of what it is necessary that an infantryman or cavalryman should know, and they can be taught the remainder in a very short time by good officers. Morgan’s Virginia Riflemen, Andrew Jackson’s Tennesseans, Forrest’s Southwestern Cavalry were all men of this kind; but even such men are of real use only after considerable training or else if their leaders are born fighters and masters of men. Such leaders are rare. The ordinary dweller in civilization has to be taught to shoot, to walk (or ride if he is in the cavalry), to cook for himself, to make himself comfortable in the open, and to take care of his feet and his health generally. Artillerymen and engineers need long special training.

It may well be that the Swiss on an average can be made into good troops quicker than our own men; but most assuredly there would be numbers of Americans who would not be behind the Swiss in such a matter. A body of volunteers of the kind I am describing would of course not be as good as a body of regulars of the same size, but they would be immeasurably better than the average soldiers produced by any system we now have or ever have had in connection with our militia. Our regular army would be strengthened by them at the very beginning and would be set free in its entirety for immediate aggressive action; and in addition a levy in mass of the young men of the right age would mean that two or three million troops were put into the field, who, although not as good as regulars, would at once be available in numbers sufficient to overwhelm any expeditionary force which it would be possible for any military power to send to our shores. The existence of such a force would render the immediate taking of cities like San Francisco, New York, or Boston an impossibility and would free us from all danger from sudden raids and make it impossible even for an army-corps to land with any prospect of success.

Our people are so entirely unused to things military that it is probably difficult for the average man to get any clear idea of our shortcomings. Unlike what is true in the military nations of the Old World, here the ordinary citizen takes no interest in the working of our War Department in time of peace. No President gains the slightest credit for himself by paying attention to it. Then when a crisis comes and the War Department breaks down, instead of the people accepting what has happened with humility as due to their own fault during the previous two or three decades, there is a roar of wrath against the unfortunate man who happens to be in office at the time. There was such a roar of wrath against Secretary Alger in the Spanish War. Now, as a matter of fact, ninety per cent of our shortcomings when the war broke out with Spain could not have been remedied by any action on the part of the Secretary of War. They were due to what had been done ever since the close of the Civil War.

We were utterly unprepared. There had been no real manœuvring of so much as a brigade and very rarely had any of our generals commanded even a good-sized regiment in the field. The enlisted men and the junior officers of the regular army were good. Most of the officers above the rank of captain were nearly worthless. There were striking exceptions of course, but, taking the average, I really believe that it would have been on the whole to the advantage of our army in 1898 if all the regular officers above the rank of captain had been retired and if all the captains who were unfit to be placed in the higher positions had also been retired. The lieutenants were good. The lack of administrative skill was even more marked than the lack of military skill. No one who saw the congestion of trains, supplies, animals, and men at Tampa will ever forget the impression of helpless confusion that it gave him. The volunteer forces included some organizations and multitudes of individuals offering first-class material. But, as a whole, the volunteer army would have been utterly helpless against any efficient regular force at the outset of the 1898 war, probably almost as inefficient as were the two armies which fought one another at Bull Run in 1861. Even the efficiency of the regular army itself was such merely by comparison with the volunteers. I do not believe that any army in the world offered finer material than was offered by the junior officers and enlisted men of the regular army which disembarked on Cuban soil in June, 1898; and by the end of the next two weeks probably the average individual infantry or cavalry organization therein was at least as good as the average organization of the same size in an Old-World army. But taking the army as a whole and considering its management from the time it began to assemble at Tampa until the surrender of Santiago, I seriously doubt if it was as efficient as a really good European or Japanese army of half the size. Since then we have made considerable progress. Our little army of occupation that went to Cuba at the time of the revolution in Cuba ten years ago was thoroughly well handled and did at least as well as any foreign force of the same size could have done. But it did not include ten thousand men, that is, it did not include as many men as the smallest military power in Europe would assemble any day for manœuvres.