In theory, President Wilson advocates unpreparedness, and in the actual fact he practises, on our behalf, tame submission to wrong-doing and refusal to stand for our own rights or for the rights of any weak power that is wronged. We who take the opposite view advocate merely acting as Washington urged us to act, when in his first annual address he said: “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means for preserving peace. A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite.” Jefferson was not a fighting man, but even Jefferson, writing to Monroe in 1785, urged the absolute need of building up our navy if we wished to escape oppression to our commerce and “the present disrespect of the nations of Europe,” and added the pregnant sentence: “A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.” As President, he urged our people to train themselves to arms, so as to constitute a citizen soldiery, in terms that showed that his object was to accomplish exactly what the Swiss have accomplished, and what is advocated in this book. In one annual message he advocated “the organization of 300,000 able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five for offense or defense at any time or in any place where they may be wanted.” In a letter to Monroe he advocated compulsory military service, saying: “We must train and classify the whole of our male citizenry and make military instruction a part of collegiate education. We can never be safe until this is done.” The methods taken by Jefferson and the Americans of Jefferson’s day to accomplish this object were fatally defective. But their purpose was the same that those who think as we do now put forward. The difference is purely that we present efficient methods for accomplishing this purpose. Washington was a practical man of high ideals who always strove to reduce his ideals to practice. His address to Congress in December, 1793, ought to have been read by President Wilson before the latter sent in his message of 1914 with its confused advocacy of unpreparedness and its tone of furtive apology for submission to insult. Washington said: “There is much due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace ... it must be known that we are at all times ready for war,” and he emphasized the fact that the peace thus secured by preparedness for war is the most potent method of obtaining material prosperity.
The need of such a system as that which I advocate is well brought out in a letter I recently received from a college president. It runs in part as follows:
What the average young fellow of eighteen to thirty doesn’t know about shooting and riding makes an appalling total. I remember very well visiting the First Connecticut Regiment a day or two before it left for service in the Spanish War. A good many of my boys were with them and I went to see them off. One fellow in particular, of whom I was and am very fond, took me to his tent and proudly exhibited his rifle, calling attention to the beautiful condition to which he had brought it. It certainly was extremely shiny, and I commended him for his careful cleansing of his death-dealing weapon. Then I discovered that the firing-pin (it was an old Springfield) was rusted immovably into its place, and that my boy didn’t know that there was any firing-pin. He had learned to expect that if you put a cartridge into the breech, pulled down the block, and pulled the trigger, it would probably go off if he had previously cocked it; but he had never done any of these things.
It was my fortune to grow up amid surroundings and in a time when every boy had and used a gun. Any boy fourteen years old who was not the proprietor of some kind of shooting-iron and fairly proficient in its use was in disgrace. Such a situation was unthinkable. So we were all fairly dependable shots with a fowling-piece or rifle. As a result of this and subsequent experience, I really believe that so long as my aging body would endure hardship, and provided further that I could be prevented from running away, I should be a more efficient soldier than most of the young fellows on our campus to-day.
I have watched with much dissatisfaction the gradual disappearance of the military schools here in the East. There are some prominent and useful ones in the West, but they are far too few, and I do not believe there is any preliminary military training of any sort in our public schools. I fear that the military training required by law in certain agricultural and other schools receiving federal aid is more or less of a fake; the object seeming to be to get the appropriation and make the least possible return.
If in any way you can bring it about that our boys shall be taught to shoot, I believe with you that they can learn the essentials of drill very quickly when need arises. And even so, however, our rulers must learn the necessity of having rifles enough and ammunition enough to meet any emergency at all likely to occur.
It is idle for this nation to trust to arbitration and neutrality treaties unbacked by force. It is idle to trust to the tepid good-will of other nations. It is idle to trust to alliances. Alliances change. Russia and Japan are now fighting side by side, although nine years ago they were fighting against one another. Twenty years ago Russia and Germany stood side by side. Fifteen years ago England was more hostile to Russia, and even to France, than she was to Germany. It is perfectly possible that after the close of this war the present allies will fall out, or that Germany and Japan will turn up in close alliance.
It is our duty to try to work for a great world league for righteous peace enforced by power; but no such league is yet in sight. At present the prime duty of the American people is to abandon the inane and mischievous principle of watchful waiting—that is, of slothful and timid refusal either to face facts or to perform duty. Let us act justly toward others; and let us also be prepared with stout heart and strong hand to defend our rights against injustice from others.
In his recent report the Secretary of War, Mr. Garrison, has put the case for preparedness in the interest of honorable peace so admirably that what he says should be studied by all our people. It runs in part as follows:
“This, then, leaves for consideration the imminent questions of military policy; the considerations which, in my view, should be taken into account in determining the same; and the suggestions which occur to me to be pertinent in the circumstances.
It would be premature to attempt now to draw the ultimate lessons from the war in Europe. It is an imperative duty, however, to heed so much of what it brings home to us as is incontrovertible and not to be changed by any event, leaving for later and more detailed and comprehensive consideration what its later developments and final conclusions may indicate.
For orderly treatment certain preliminary considerations may be usefully adverted to. It is, of course, not necessary to dwell on the blessings of peace and the horrors of war. Every one desires peace, just as every one desires health, contentment, affection, sufficient means for comfortable existence, and other similarly beneficent things. But peace and the other states of being just mentioned are not always or even often solely within one’s own control. Those who are thoughtful and have courage face the facts of life, take lessons from experience, and strive by wise conduct to attain the desirable things, and by prevision and precaution to protect and defend them when obtained. It may truthfully be said that eternal vigilance is the price which must be paid in order to obtain the desirable things of life and to defend them.
In collective affairs the interests of the group are confided to the government, and it thereupon is charged with the duty to preserve and defend these things. The government must exercise for the nation the precautionary, defensive, and preservative measures necessary to that end. All governments must therefore have force—physical force—i. e., military force, for these purposes. The question for each nation when this matter is under consideration is, How much force should it have and of what should that force consist?
In the early history of our nation there was a natural, almost inevitable, abhorrence of military force, because it connoted military despotism. Most, if not all, of the early settlers in this country came from nations where a few powerful persons tyrannically imposed their will upon the people by means of military power. The consequence was that the oppressed who fled to this country necessarily connected military force with despotism and had a dread thereof. Of course, all this has long since passed into history. No reasonable person in this country to-day has the slightest shadow of fear of military despotism, nor of any interference whatever by military force in the conduct of civil affairs. The military and the civil are just as completely and permanently separated in this country as the church and the state are; the subjection of the military to the civil is settled and unchangeable. The only reason for adverting to the obsolete condition is to anticipate the action of those who will cite from the works of the founders of the republic excerpts showing a dread of military ascendancy in our government. Undoubtedly, at the time such sentiments were expressed there was a very real dread. At the present time such expressions are entirely inapplicable and do not furnish even a presentable pretext for opposing proper military preparation.
It also seems proper, in passing, to refer to the frame of mind of those who use the word “militarism” as the embodiment of the doctrine of brute force and loosely apply it to any organized preparation of military force, and therefore deprecate any adequate military preparation because it is a step in the direction of the contemned “militarism.” It is perfectly apparent to any one who approaches the matter with an unprejudiced mind that what constitutes undesirable militarism, as distinguished from a necessary, proper, and adequate preparation of the military resources of the nation, depends upon the position in which each nation finds itself, and varies with every nation and with different conditions in each nation at different times. Every nation must have adequate force to protect itself from domestic insurrections, to enforce its laws, and to repel invasions; that is, every nation that has similar characteristics to those of a self-respecting man. (The Constitution obliges the United States to protect each State against invasion.) If it prepares and maintains more military force than is necessary for the purposes just named, then it is subject to the conviction, in the public opinion of the world, of having embraced “militarism,” unless it intends aggression for a cause which the public opinion of the world conceives to be a righteous one. To the extent, however, that it confines its military preparedness to the purposes first mentioned, there is neither warrant nor justification in characterizing such action as “militarism.” Those who would thus characterize it do so because they have reached the conclusion that a nation to-day can properly dispense with a prepared military force, and therefore they apply the word to any preparation or organization of the military resources of the nation. Not being able to conceive how a reasonable, prudent, patriotic man can reach such a conclusion, I cannot conceive any arguments or statements that would alter such a state of mind. It disregards all known facts, flies in the face of all experience, and must rest upon faith in that which has not yet been made manifest.
Whatever the future may hold in the way of agreements between nations, followed by actual disarmament thereof, of international courts of arbitration, and other greatly-to-be-desired measures to lessen or prevent conflict between nation and nation, we all know that at present these conditions are not existing. We can and will eagerly adapt ourselves to each beneficent development along these lines; but to merely enfeeble ourselves in the meantime would, in my view, be unthinkable folly. By neglecting and refusing to provide ourselves with the necessary means of self-protection and self-defense we could not hasten or in any way favorably influence the ultimate results we desire in these respects.”