III THE CIVIL OBLIGATION OF THE ARMY It is always an inspiration to meet a body of enthusiastic youngsters who have the world ahead of them, and if one can do anything to make more clear the responsibilities and obligations which confront them and suggest a way to meet and overcome them, it is a duty which should be performed. What I wish to say to you may sound a bit harsh and inject an element of seriousness into this occasion which will tend a little to take from it the spirit of joyousness. I am going to say something you about your obligations to the country as soldiers, for you come of the stock to and represent a class whose responsibility to the country in time of war has always been generous. I noticed today your fine soldiers' monument, erected in honor of the graduates of the school who gave their lives in the nation's service in the Spanish War. Among them are the names of men of my regiment. The response of these men is indicative of the response which is going to be made by men of their kind in the future. You are going to respond whether you are trained or not. What I want to bring home to you is that to be a really good citizen of a republic which is dependent upon its citizen army you must be not only willing but prepared, and I want to say to the parents and friends assembled here tonight that they must remember that these youngsters are going to respond to the call of the country whether they wish it or not; that it is a duty which the great majority of right minded boys will not attempt to shirk, and the question I want to ask them is-Are they going to send these boys to us prepared to be efficient soldiers or are they going to send them to us untrained and unprepared to make such sacrifice as they may have to make effective? This subject was brought home to me very forcibly the other day by a letter received from a friend in the West, who had just lost his boy in the battle at Ypres. He said: "You remember the last time we met that I told you of my 17-year-old boy at school in England. Well, he left school and went into the Home Defense force, but this was not enough, and he transferred and joined a regiment at the front -one of the new regiments—and was killed at Ypres. It was sad enough and hard enough to lose the boy, but I shall never be able to get rid of the feeling that neither he nor his mates had a sporting chance; they were unprepared and untrained." Before going into the details of this subject I want to impress one fact upon you, and that is that our country has never yet in its entire history met single handed a first-class country prepared for war. The shrinkage in enlistments and steady diminution in the strength of our military establishment during our struggle for independence points out clearly and conclusively to any fair-minded person the invaluable assistance of France in the Revolution. In the War of 1812-1814 we were, from a military standpoint, a minor issue, for Great Britain was engaged in that tremendous struggle with Napoleon -a struggle which required the great bulk of her forces on sea and land and prohibited her from concentrating her efforts upon the war in America. The question is-Shall we drift on, regardless of the teachings of history, making no adequate preparation for the possibilities of the hour, or shall we take heed from the experiences of the past, not only of our own country, but of all lands since history was written, which is, that preparedness is the best insurance against war, or shall we accept as our guide for the future the theory of those deluded people who tell us that wars are over and that this is the last great war, forgetful of the fact that these same people, or people of the same type of intelligence, announced that the Russo-Japanese War was the last war, then that the Balkan War was the last war? The answer is no. We must judge the future by the past and make wise preparation to protect and safeguard those rights which our forefathers handed down to us. It seems to me that no rightminded person can hesitate in deciding |