Professional soldiers still needed.
It would be a national loss for me to fail to record in this place a just estimate of the value to the Nation of these training camps for officers. They disclosed an unsuspected source of military strength. Nobody will suppose that, with the growing intricacy of military science and the industrial arts related to it, a country can dispense with trained professional soldiers. The fundamentals of military discipline remain substantially unchanged and, in order that we may assemble rapidly and effectively adequate military forces, there must always be in the country a body of men to whom the life of a soldier is a career and who have acquired from their youth those qualities which have, from the beginning, distinguished the graduates of the Military Academy at West Point: the disciplined honor, the unfaltering courage, the comprehension of sacrifice, and that knowing obedience which proceeds from constant demonstrations of the fact that effective cooperation in war requires instant compliance with the command of authority, the sort of obedience which knows that a battle field is no place for a parliament. Added to these mental and moral qualities, the body of professional soldiers must devote themselves unremittingly to the development of the arts of war, and when the emergency arises must be familiar with the uses of science and the applications of industry in military enterprise. But these training camps have taught us that, given this relatively small body of professional soldiers, the Nation has at hand an apparently inexhaustible body of splendid material which can be rapidly made to supplement the professional soldier.
Athletes from the colleges.
Adaptability of American youth.
Atmosphere of industrial and commercial democracy.
Many officers assigned to training of troops from their homes.
When the first camp was opened, the colleges, military schools, and high schools of the country poured out a stream of young men whose minds had been trained in the classroom and whose bodies had been made supple and virile on the athletic field. They came with intelligence, energy, and enthusiasm and, under a course of intensive training, rapidly took on the added discipline and capacities necessary to equip them for the duties of officers. They have taken their places in the training camps and are daily demonstrating the value of their education and the adaptability of the spirit of American youth. A more salutary result would be impossible to imagine. The trained professional soldiers of the Army received this great body of youthful enthusiasm and capacity with hospitality and quickly impressed upon it a soldierly character. The young men brought to their training habits which they had formed for success as civilians, but which their patriotic enthusiasm rendered easily available in new lines of endeavor for the service of the country. They brought, too, another element of great value. They were assembled from all parts of the country; they were accustomed to the democracy of the college and high school; they recognized themselves as new and temporary adventurers in a military life; and they, therefore, reflected into our military preparation the fresh and invigorating atmosphere of our industrial and commercial democracy. This has undoubtedly contributed to the establishment of a happy spirit which prevails throughout the Army and has made it easy for the young men chosen under the selective service act to fall in with the training and mode of life which the military training camp requires. An effort was made by the department as far as possible to assign these young officers to the training of troops assembled from their own homes. By this means, a preexisting sympathy was used, and admiration and respect between officer and man was transferred from the home to the camp.
The three divisions of the Army.
Enlistments may be for the period of the war.
Men anxious to get to France soon.