THE MILITARY UNPREPAREDNESS OF THE UNITED STATES

IN

CHAPTER I

COLONIAL PERIOD

IN The Seven Seas, by Rudyard Kipling, there is a poem entitled "An American," which contains the following

stanza:

"Enslaved, illogical, elate,

He greets th' embarrassed Gods, nor fears

To shake the iron hand of Fate

Or match with Destiny for beers."

These lines, unconsciously perhaps, describe to perfection the nonchalant attitude of the average American toward the United States Army and anything pertaining to the military service. The fruit of this indifference, which has persisted from the beginning of our national career until to-day with the exception of a spasmodic interest manifested during threatened or actual war- has been reaped in the most short-sighted, blundering military policy ever pursued in modern times by a great nation of supposedly intelligent people. As a matter of fact, there has existed no real military policy in this country, in the sense of the term as understood elsewhere, and, as a result, the United States was prevented by its weakness from attaining the front rank among the Powers of the world until the autumn of 1898. Even to-day, our international influence is largely due to causes other than our own strength -causes such as the existing alliances. between the leading nations which confer upon the United

States an extraordinary position by giving it control of the balance ofwer, thus investing it with an importance in world politics all out of proportion to the rôle to which it would otherwise be entitled. These facts the ordinary American in nowise realizes, and his ignorance is not in the least surprising. As a child he is taught from school-books, the authors of which have extolled to the skies the prowess of our 66 citizen-soldiery" and have painted in glowing colours the brilliancy of American military successes, while they have glossed over or suppressed with studied care the blunders and fearful cost in life and money which have characterised our past wars. As a man, his chief sources of information have been the press and the utterances of men in public life and so-called orators, all feeding him to the point of surfeit with intellectual pabulum on the subject of American invincibility. It is only natural that he has accepted these statements as absolutely true- or at least as well-founded in view of the fact that our wars have all been brought to a victorious issue—and that he has gone on slumbering under a false security in the belief that a system which has been successful in the past must necessarily prevail in the future.

Only those who have delved deep into the subject of our military history and who have studied the question of a military policy a question so vital to our very national existence know the truth; the public as a whole has been grossly misinformed and therefore indifferent all these years to our military needs. Our interest has at last been quickened by the gigantic war which has involved nearly half the world, and no man in his senses would now venture to argue that Great Britain and France with a few thousand Regular troops, supplemented by a force of "citizen-soldiery" however large, could have withstood the onslaught of the mighty German army and driven it back from the very gates of Paris as they have done. Every one realizes that their huge standing armies were taxed to the very utmost and that, had

they depended upon anything except Regular troops trained to the highest possible standard, they would have been hopelessly crushed at the start, so that all their volunteers — who require six months of training to render them fit for service in the field — would have availed them nothing. Yet our military organization since the beginning of the Revolution has been moulded upon just such specious arguments as that of placing but small dependence upon our Regular army and of entrusting our destinies in time of war to an untrained "citizenry." And, what is more, those arguments still persist.1

It may, therefore, not be amiss to examine briefly our military history in the past, taking care, as one of the greatest of American military writers, General Upton, has warned us,2

"to bear in mind the respective duties and responsibilities of soldiers and statesmen. The latter are responsible for the creation and organization of our resources, and, as in the case of the President, may further be responsible for their management or mismanagement. Soldiers, while they should suggest and be consulted on all the details of organization under our system, can alone be held responsible for the control and direction of our armies in the field."

In order to have an intelligent understanding of the method employed during the Revolution with respect to the fighting men, it must be recollected that the American Colonies possessed no Regular military force; that was supplied by England. Each colony had a force of militia of distinctly uncertain value as a military asset. It contained, however, an admirable nucleus in the shape of some excelJent Jent officers and men who had received a thorough schooling in the French and Indian wars. Many of these had participated in such important Colonial operations as the siege of Louisbourg in 1745, the struggle between the French and English for the valley of the Ohio from 1749 to 1758, and in the fighting along the Canadian border. In spite of their

repugnance to discipline, they were first-class soldiers, but the majority of the Colonial militia by no means attained such a standard, irrespective of the fact that the frontier conditions of the time developed men who were good shots and unusually self-reliant, for Indian warfare demanded men of special training, exceptional hardiness and extraordinary qualifications. The siege of Louisbourg was one of the most astounding feats in the annals of war, excelled perhaps only by Caesar's capture of Alesia, the more so since one of the mightiest fortifications ever erected capitulated after only six weeks of siege to a motley band of New England farmers and fishermen led by a lumber merchant. The moral effect

3

of this extraordinary achievement on the part of the American colonists was infinitely more far-reaching that at first blush would appear. Of the men who fought at Bunker Hill, many had been at Louisbourg and, when they saw the mud walls that General Gage had erected on Boston Neck and compared them to the mighty ramparts of the French fortress which they had so gallantly captured, they laughed them to scorn. The annihilation of General Braddock's regulars at Fort Duquesne was, in reality, a blessing in disguise for the colonists, insomuch as it shook the prevalent belief in the invincibility of British troops, bred in them a contempt by no means wholly warranted for the European method of fighting in close formation, and compelled them to rely entirely upon their own power of fighting instead of trusting supinely to the protecting ægis of England, as they otherwise would unquestionably have done. Indeed, too much stress cannot be laid upon the influence of these factors in strengthening the morale of the American colonists and in confirming them in the belief that they could make a successful opposition to the regulars of Great Britain.4

These facts and the absence of a permanent force of Regular troops left the revolting colonies no alternative except to have recourse to such militia as they already possessed,

supplemented by whatever recruits presented themselves. The beginning of the Revolutionary War thus inaugurated the system of depending largely upon raw untrained troops, for the very good reason that none others were available, except in paltry numbers.

As early as 1745 there existed in England a suspicion and in some cases a conviction that the American colonies were aspiring to independence.5 The development of this desire for separation from the mother-country need not be traced here. Suffice to say that, in 1774, several of the colonies began preparations for an armed conflict. The First Continental Congress, proposed the year before by Benjamin Franklin, convened at Philadelphia on September 5th, drew up "The Declaration of Rights," concluded "The Association," an agreement to refrain from all trade with England until the various objectionable Royal acts had been repealed, prepared addresses “to the People of Great Britain" and "to the Inhabitants of Canada," and ended by issuing "The Petition to the King," in which it rejected all allegiance to Parliament, but expressed its willingness to accept him as the general head of the British Empire, and implored him to protect them from the usurpations of Parliament and the Ministry. On October 26th, it adjourned after passing a resolution to meet in 1775 if the justice sought had not been granted. On that same day, the Colonial Assembly of Massachusetts, which had been dissolved by the Governor on September 28th, met, voted themselves a Provincial Congress, adopted a scheme for the militia, appointed several general officers, as well as a Committee of Safety to organize the militia, commission the officers and direct their operations in the field, and a Committee of Supplies to procure arms and ammunition.8

In 1775 the Committee of Safety appointed by the Second Provincial Congress was composed of eleven members, with authority to raise and support such a military force as was deemed necessary to resist the executions of the Acts of