For a number of years we have been confronted by conditions which may involve the use of a considerable force of troops, a force exceeding the regular army and perhaps even the regular army in conjunction with the militia. This means that a thousand or more men would have to be added to each regular and National Guard infantry regiment to bring it to full strength. In the National Guard only a small proportion of the men have had long service and thorough training, and if brought to full strength through the injection of a thousand practically untrained men it would mean these regiments would go to the front with not over 30 per cent of well-trained men. In other words, they would be military assemblages of well-meaning, but undisciplined and untrained individuals, and unless we are to repeat the experiences of '98 it will be necessary to hold them for several months in camp and put them through a course of the most intensive training. It is probable that if they are called it will be under an emergency which will not permit such training, and we shall see again the scenes of '98, untrained, willing boys, imperfectly equipped under inexperienced officers, rushed to the front, willing but a more or less useless sacrifice.
Another great lesson should be to heed no longer those false prophets who have been proclaiming that the day of strife has passed, and that everything is to be settled by arbitration; prophets of the class who obstructed preparation in England, who decried universal military training, and all but delivered her into the hands of her enemies.
"Our culture must, therefore, not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season that he is born into a state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace; but warned, self-collected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder; let him take both reputation and life in his hands, and with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and rectitude of his behavior."—Emerson.[Back to Contents]
NAVAL LESSONS OF THE WAR
By REAR ADMIRAL AUSTIN M. KNIGHT, U. S. N.
Although the greatest war in history is not yet at an end, and none of us can even guess when the end will come, it is possible to draw certain very important conclusions from the developments to date, especially in so far as these developments are concerned with war upon the sea. The great sea fight for which the world has looked since its two greatest naval powers went to war against each other has not taken place. It may never take place, although both sides profess that they are eager for it. And until it does take place, the final word will not be spoken as to the relations between guns and armor, between battleships and battle cruisers, or between either of these types of "capital" ships on the one hand, and the destroyer and submarine on the other.
The submarine has proven its power, it is true, and against the battleship; but always where the element of surprise has entered into its attack in quite a different fashion from that which is inherent in its always mysterious and stealthy nature. The battle cruiser has shown the value of speed and long-range guns combined, but in a comparatively restricted field. The destroyer has played a part in coast patrol and has doubtless accounted for a number of submarines; but in its proper sphere of activity it has accomplished nothing. And the wonderful achievements of the airship have been practically confined to operations on land. We have waited vainly and shall continue so to wait for the one supreme lesson which the war has been expected to yield, unless it chance that on some day to be forever memorable in the annals of the world there shall sweep out upon the stormy waters of the North Sea two fleets complete in every type of craft that human ingenuity has thus far contrived, to engage in a struggle to the death—a struggle by which the issue of the war may be decided in an hour, and in a fashion incomparably more dramatic than anything which the warfare on land, with all its horrors, has presented or by any possibility can present.
Pending this one great lesson, what is it that the war has taught?
First of all, it has taught once more the old, old lesson that has been taught by practically every war in which sea power has been a factor, that where this element is a factor, it is a factor of decisive importance. The British navy may not win the war for England, but it is every day more apparent that if the British navy did not exist, or if it dominated the sea less decisively than it does, the cause for which England stands would be a lost cause. And the extraordinary feature of the situation is that the navy is accomplishing its mission by merely existing. Thus far the "Grand Fleet" has not struck a blow. From its position on the English coast it looks across to the mouth of the Kiel Canal, and—waits! Its patrols are always on guard, the coasts which it defends are never threatened, and the commerce which trusts to its protection comes and goes with practically no thought of danger. For several months during the submarine campaign against commerce, something like one-half of one per cent of the merchant vessels bound to and from the ports of England were sunk. But no industry was crippled for a moment, and neither the necessities nor the luxuries of life were appreciably curtailed. Even at the height of the submarine operations, great transports loaded with troops crossed the English Channel freely, and out of a million and a half of soldiers so transported not a single one was lost. It is safe to say that in any three months since the war began the British navy has repaid the cost of its maintenance for a century in pounds, shillings, and pence; and in the sense of security which its existence and efficiency have imparted to the English people, the return upon the investment has been beyond all calculation.
The first and greatest lesson of the war, then, is this—that the value of an effective navy, when the time comes for it to manifest its effectiveness, is out of all proportion to the sums, vast though these may be, that it has cost; that if it overmatches the opposing navy decisively enough, the country behind it may rest secure and serenely indifferent to the thought of invasion or even of attack, so far as its sea frontier is concerned; and that the navy—still assuming it to be of commanding strength—may accomplish its whole mission of defense without ever being called upon to strike a blow.
It can hardly be necessary to point out the fact that this lesson may be read in terms of "preparedness." The British navy was prepared when the war began; the British army was not. The German army was prepared; the German navy was not—in the sense of being large enough for its mission. With these facts in mind, we have only to look at the contrast between the progress of the war on land and that on the sea to read the whole lesson of preparedness in a form so concrete that it is hard to understand how any observer can fail to grasp its full significance.