Germany has definitely decided on America’s ruin. She has definitely decided that there must be an intense anti-American spirit in both Government and people. She may bide her time, and she will doubtless try to separate us from our allies, but her purpose towards us is both relentless and ruthless.
If we are true to ourselves, if we prepare our armed strength and keep it prepared, if we show farsightedness and valor of soul, we can be sternly indifferent to this foul and evil hatred. But we must keep steadily in mind that Germany respects nothing whatever except courage and prepared strength and that the pacifists and pro-Germans, the Huns within our gates, the Hearsts and the La Follettes, are playing the game of our German foes, and if they have their way will bring shame and disaster to our land.
START THE SYSTEM OF UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING AT ONCE
November 17, 1917
Lieutenant-General S. B. M. Young, U.S.A., retired, gave long, faithful, and efficient service to this country, from the beginning of the Civil War, for nearly half a century. But he never has rendered greater service than by his steady insistence upon the immediate introduction by law in this country of the system of obligatory universal military training as our permanent policy. This should be done at once; and all the young men from nineteen to twenty-one should be called out as soon as there are means of training them. They need not fight until they are twenty-one. But they are least needed as economic assets; they are most needed as military assets; and it is cruelty to them not to train them in advance.
The selective draft was far better than nothing. But let us never forget that it represented doing imperfectly after the event that which ought to have been done thoroughly long before the event. We have been at war three quarters of a year, and the drafted men, admirable material though they are, are only just beginning to be trained and as yet are not even armed and properly clothed. We are trying to train our soldiers to perform the duties of soldiers after the war has begun; and we can attempt the experiment at all only because the English and French protect us from our enemies while we make it. Hereafter let us train the man to perform the tasks of a soldier before he is called to be a soldier in war. Only thus can we be just both to him and to the country.
The present economic disturbance in the Nation was inevitable, in view of our failure at the outset of the Great War to introduce the system of universal, obligatory military training; and this failure is also responsible for the fact that our national army, nine months after our entry into the war, has only begun training, instead of being already trained. Let us now at least provide for the future. The amendment to the law above outlined, as advocated by the National Association for Universal Military Training, of which General Young is president, would add nearly two million men to our army, would cause the minimum of interference with our economic life, and would not necessitate any additional expense for training quarters.
The men thus trained will be immensely benefited from the standpoint of their success in civil life; for universal training would be of immense economic benefit to the Nation. As Cardinal Gibbons has well said, “The legislation proposed will benefit youths from nineteen to twenty-one years, morally as well as physically, and help to prepare them for their work in peace as well as for the sterner needs of war.”
This is the only democratic system. General Young himself rose from being an enlisted man in the ranks to being the lieutenant-general of the army of the United States. Under universal training let all candidates for West Point and all other candidates for commissions be chosen with absolute fairness from among the men who have served a year in the field with the colors. And in the navy let all candidates for Annapolis be chosen from enlisted men of the navy who have served at least a year as such and who are still serving.