and one quarter million votes were cast for it at the last election -has often frightened German reactionaries, because they know that an ever-increasing number of recruits must be socialists. They have realized that an army containing a large percentage of socialists would no doubt do its duty at the front, but it could never be used for the suppression of the civil liberties of the people. Though all this may be granted one question remains: Does not the subjection of every man to two years of strict discipline kill self-reliance and initiative in the individual citizen?

Americans are very fond of praising German efficiency. In doing so they compare it to the clockwork of some dead piece of machinery. They loudly proclaim that the spirit of the pioneer which made America cannot exist side by side with it. They are quite right in pointing out that the spirit of the western pioneer does not flourish in Germany; it did flourish in the olden days when German colonists settled the Slavic East under circumstances not unlike those which accomplished the opening of the West. There is no room today for the pioneer spirit in the crowded lands of central Europe. To breed it would be to breed people fit for emigration only. But the spirit of the West is not the only form of resourcefulness and initiative. To build up big modern industries in a crowded land, to push commerce into foreign countries ruled by foreign governments, are tasks which demand a large share of initiative, when it has to be done against the competition of old established rivals. It is not denied that the Germans have done this. It is openly acknowledged that German push and German adaptability are responsible for it. Where did they come from if military discipline deprived the Germans of the capacity for individual action? Where does that intellectual acerbity "come from which no doubt makes German life much" less pleasant that the life of competing nations? And how can it be accounted for that the German socialistic party, many members of which have been in the army, has been the pioneer all over the world, in radically constructive socialism? It has truly been said that it owes part of its discipline to the military training of its members. That training did not stifle their intellectual ac

tivity; it did not prevent them from reasoning and acting in a very individualistic way.

Discipline does teach people the capacity for co-ordination; it does not deprive them of the gift for individual action provided they ever possessed it. And modern military training no longer tries to stifle individual effort for the sake of standardized action. Modern warfare depends on the combined action of masses composed of highly trained individuals, many of whom must be capable of individual initiative, whenever there is an opportunity for such. If discipline alone was decisive, an uneducated mob of men would have the greatest chances of victory. For they can be most easily organized in a machine-like way. The armies employing the greatest percentage of African savages would be best fitted for victory. Such assumptions are purely fanciful. The objects of modern organization must be achieved by the combination of standardization and individualization. The nation which produces the greatest number of individuals and can teach them the the elements of well-thought-out co-ordinations will be victorious on the battlefield as well as in the markets of the world. The present war has shown that the German people possess this gift to a considerable degree. It is not the outcome of their military system only; it is the result of their national genius, of their history, of their civil and military training. Their system is adapted to their qualities and to their wants. It is good for them and for them only; if it were blindly imitated by other nations, it might produce very different results.

(492)

SPECIAL TRAINING AS A FACTOR IN SCIENTIFIC PREPARATION FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE

ROBERT M. JOHNSTON

Assistant Professor of Modern History, Harvard University; Lecturer U. S. War College; Editor of the Military Historian and Economist

A

MERICAN civilization is an improvisation; and to that method we are wedded. So do we expect to create an army. But I do not believe that improvised armies will force a decision in the present and even less in future wars. However loudly the statesmen and pressmen may shout the contrary, an immense disproportion of power between trained, semi-trained, and untrained armies, is one of the outstanding features of the present conflict. And training tells in geometrical ratio as we climb the ranks from soldier and corporal, to sergeant, lieutenant, captain, and upwards. The greatest asset of a brigade is one trained brigadier-general; of a division, one trained divisional general. And this is the lowest rank officer who actually handles problems in combined tactics. Above him, special training becomes enormously diffi

cult and valuable.

Columbus found out how to stand an egg on end; von Moltke perceived the equally patent fact that it was far more important, and much more difficult, to train generals than sublieutenants. But we, knowing little of von Moltke, still cherish the notion that generals are produced at West Point; as if one could grow elm-trees under earthenware pots!

At bottom, what it all comes to is that military success is not achieved in the field. It is attained by a long, arduous, and scientific preparation for war during peace time. Whatever emergency measures we may adopt as passing expedients, whatever may be in immediate store for us, whether of good luck or bad fortune, we must sooner or later get down to the scien

1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science on May 18, 1916.

tific study of and, following that, to the scientific preparation for war.

Every national problem of defense is composed of factors so various that for one country to copy another argues insufficient knowledge and skill. Switzerland and especially Russia, whose cases present most military analogies with that of this country, would yet be futile models to set up for imitation. The threats that face us, the densities of our population districts, the distribution of our economic areas, the power of our railroad systems all these are among the factors that govern in the most immediate sense the solution of the problem of defense. Hard work, hard study, of the details of the problem, are necessary before correct solutions can be found.

(494)

THE BUSINESS MAN AND UNIVERSAL

MILITARY TRAINING

I

IRVING T. BUSH

President Bush Terminal Company, and Trustee Academy of Political Science

HAVE been asked to speak briefly from the standpoint of

a business man on the question of universal military training. I shall not talk "preparedness" along the lines that discussion usually takes, but I shall endeavor to give you a few concrete, perhaps homely, thoughts concerning the effect of military training upon the youth of this country, in their preparation for the battles of peace-the battles of life. I am not talking about fitting our boys to do their part in war, if war should come; I want to visualize for you some things which military training does for peace.

I was a boy who was fortunate, I think, in going to a military school; and I remember, in the fall of the year when the boys assembled from all over the country, they gathered in groups about the campus and about the school. Some of them were dressed in well-cut clothes which showed them scions of wealthy parents; some wore lurid neckties and ill-cut clothes from the country tailor. Soon the military tailor appeared upon the scene, and in a few weeks we were all clad in the same clothes, and you couldn't tell, as far as appearances went, the rich boy from the poor boy.

Then the military instructor began his work, and started the setting-up exercises and the rudimentary drills. Some of the boys, when they came in the fall, were slouchy and slovenly, but as the year went by and as we finally gathered for the last dress-parade on the campus and marched with our eyes straight ahead and with the most precise bearing we could muster, those boys had all been whipped into shape during the year. They

1 Address as presiding officer at a meeting of the Academy of Political Science, May 18, 1916.