with most important business affairs, have been called for service. The result has been ruinous to many. The burden has been inequitably distributed, and the personnel of the organizations has not been of the best for war service.

Senator Brady. You have been speaking of the reserve.

Gen. WOOD. Well, call it what you will. It will be a citizen army behind the Regular Army.

Senator BRADY. Would we or not have a regular standing Army of 250,000 all the time?

Gen. WOOD. Yes; and I will tell you about how they will be distributed. You will have approximately 20,000 in the Philippines. This should be necessary as long as we hold the islands; approximately 24,000 in the Hawaiian Islands. These islands are the key to the Pacific so far as we are concerned and must be held. They are also one of the most important defenses of the Pacific coast and the Panama Canal. In Panama, when the garrison is completed, we shall have a force of about 20,000. There should also be a regiment in Alaska, or approximately 64,000 or 65,000 men outside the country. The Alaska garrison is more for the purpose of maintaining order than anything else. It would not be adequate for the defense of the Territory. When conditions are more established public order should be maintained by a constabulary operating on the lines of the Canadian mounted police When we decide on the garrisoning of the country, we shall have to put in a force amounting probably to a division. This would bring the force outside the country up to about 80,000 men, of which we need consider only 65,000 at the present time. Assuming that 65,000 are outside the country, we will have left in the United States 185,000 men, of whom some 30,000 will be required in seacoast defenses. The balance will consist of the mobile army-Infantry, Cavalry, Field Artillery, and auxiliary troops, Signal troops, Engineers, etc. All of this force for a time at least will be needed as a training force. As I have stated above, it may be possible to somewhat reduce it when we have our system of citizen training in full operation. For instance, Coast Artillery personnel will probably be greatly reduced, keeping only that portion in permanent service which represents. the highly trained technical elements; the balance being filled up from each class of the citizen soldiery during its year of service. Generally speaking, however, the regular force should consist of long-service men. Under this arrangement you have your Regular Army of, say, 180,000 to 185,000 men, and back of it your citizen force of 500,000, and back of this the balance of the first-line citizen force of over 3,000,000. In other words, we would always have ready within the United States a force sufficient to meet promptly the first attack. At least 2,000,000 of the remaining first-group men should be assigned to skeleton organizations duly officered, so that they can be quickly mobilized and brought into shape in case of need. The balance of

the first-line men would form a reserve with which to fill up organizations and make good the wastages and losses of war. Arms and equipment for the entire first-line group, from three and one-half to four millions of men, must be always ready, and the Officers' Reserve Corps must be sufficient to officer at once not less than two and one-half millions.

Senator BRADY. That is a very satisfactory and interesting explanation, but the point I really wanted to have you make a little clearer to me is who would constitute the brigades and regiments that you have been discussing?

Gen. WOOD. They will be made up of professional soldiers-the men who are following the career of arms because they love it. Right here I should like to say that the pay of the soldier is a good deal larger than it appears to be. The pay on enlistments is $15 a month. It runs up now to $99 a month for the master signal electrician. With this goes clothing allowance amply sufficient for the man; food, shelter, transportation on all official business; medical attendance and a pension if disabled in the service; also retired pay after 30 years of service.

So you will see, sir, that the money value is only a portion of what the man receives.

Senator BRADY. And it would not be the those who are going in for this intensive training for six months?

Gen. WOOD. No, sir; you might be able to use some of these men for the Coast Artillery troops and possibly some with the units of the standing Army on duty within the continental limits of the United States, but I should rather doubt the advisability of this being done to any considerable extent.

Senator BRADY. That is a point that I think you would do well to make very plain, because I do not believe the people generally understand it. The point is this, that the men who enlist for this six months intensive training are not compelled to be permanent soldiers or make their lives the profession of a soldier unless they want to. Gen. WOOD. That is right.

Senator BRADY. But they have the privilege of doing that if they do wish to do it?

Gen. WOOD. Yes, sir; on the general lines which I have already explained. It might be that we should find it advisable, after we had sent through a number of classes and had a reasonable reserve of trained men, to permit men during their year of obligatory service to enlist in the Regular Establishment within the limits of the continental United States under a one-year enlistment. These are matters of detail which would have to be worked out once the system is in effect. Generally speaking, the men who make up the regular organizations should be regulars serving under an enlistment of several years with the present privileges of furlough to a regular reserve if they desired after a year's service. They would be liable for service, as would any other citizen, during a certain period of their lives, but inasmuch while serving in the Regular Army they give up their entire time and energy to the service of the Government and are at all times on duty, they should, of course, be paid. The average citizen soldier, excepting the brief period of training, is allowed to pursue his regular business. The Regular gives all his time to the Government, and is not allowed to engage in any business, and is liable to be sent anywhere at any time. The citizen soldier will only be paid for periods when he is actually under arms (on duty requiring all his time).

Senator BRADY. In my judgment it is a very important question. Gen. WOOD. Yes. I think you can assume with perfect safety when we have a large trained reserve, a citizen army in being, we

can somewhat reduce our Regular Army at home. In some of the arms a considerable proportion of the men can be very quickly trained. Take the Coast Artillery, for instance. A certain percentage of the personnel must have a high degree of technical training. Perhaps 60 per cent of it could be replaced by men of short training. They are the men who handle the shot, bring out the powder-do the heavy work that does not require a high degree of technical skill. All these places can easily be filled from the citizen soldiery. In the citizen soldiery will be found men of high intelligence for special equipment for Coast Artillery work; also service in the auxiliary troops, such as troops of the Signal Corps, Engineers, etc. It may be possible to carry a certain proportion of these men in the organizations of the mobile army, but as this force must be held always ready for expeditionary work as well as for training, I do not believe the replacements in this portion of the force will be very large-perhaps 25 per cent of full war strength. Switzerland carries this skeletonizing of the regular organization to the extreme. In fact, practically all that is maintained constantly in service is a corps of officers and a very small body of troops, the balance of the organizations being filled up from the class of the trained citizen soldiery. We shall have to feel our way along gradually and see to just what extent we can carry the filling up of our regular regiments with the citizen soldiers during their one-year period with the colors. I doubt the wisdom of this measure, except in a very limited way.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there anything further you desire to say, General ?

Gen. WOOD. I think that is all.

The CHAIRMAN. We are very much obliged to you for appearing before us.

Gen. WOOD. I regard this whole question of national preparedness as one of such vital importance that anything I can do I shall always be glad to do.

Senator BRADY. I hope we shall have the advantage of further information from you, General.

Gen. WOOD. I shall be very glad to fill out my answers as fully as I can. I think the important thing is to accept the basic idea of universal training of some sort. It will be easy enough to work out the details.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Wadsworth is present. Senator, do you desire to ask any questions?

Senator WADSWORTH. I was going to ask, General, if it is not your opinion that no matter under what system or name it was organized, any volunteer system of recruiting in time of peace will fail in aiding the reserve force that would be available.

Gen. WOOD. Absolutely. The volunteer system can not be depended on. It is a system which will not give us either trained officers or men. It leaves everything until the moment of war. puts the burden upon the best portion of the population. It is not only undependable but it is undemocratic.

Senator WADSWORTH. If I may interpose this remark-so much. has been said about the failure of the federalization of the National Guard, or rather that the federalization of the National Guard is responsible for the evident defects, my suggestion being that no matter whether they had been National Guard or Continental Army or Federal volunteers, the same defect would be very apt to appear.

Gen. WOOD. The volunteer system would fail us, judging from the experience we have had. In the Revolutionary War we had 89,000 men in 1776; 42,000 Militia and 47,000 Continentals, or short-term regulars. In every succeeding year of that war there was a smaller force with the colors.

Senator THOMAS. You mean 1776?

Gen. WOOD. Yes, sir; in 1776. Every year of that war the number of men with the colors diminished, and in 1781, although bounties were worth in land and money as much as $1,200 per man, and Rhode Island had offered freedom to the negroes if they would enlist, the Government was able to secure only 29,400 men. This had been the effect of the volunteer system. Public interest had gradually diminished. During the entire war we put in the field. 396,000 men, and yet, on no single day were there 20,000 wellinstructed troops available on any field of battle. Such is the history of the volunteer system in the Revolution. The response was what Washington predicted it would be. As the excitement of the early days of the struggle passed away, interest diminished.

In the War of 1812-1814 we followed the same haphazard lack of system and policy. We had short-term volunteers, bounties and subsidies, and, as you know, few successes on land. We had enough troops to have carried out our mission to the North, but, owing to our defective system, we had hard work to hold what we had. The largest British regular force in the war at any time was 16,800. We put into this war 527,000 men.

The Mexican War was a war with a weak people. We were successful, but it was not a war with an organized and prepared nation. Again, we had our troops far enough away from home and long enough in hand to give them reasonable training. A relatively small number of troops were employed and a very small proportion of them were militia. You all remember what happened to Gen. Scott at a critical stage of the campaign. He had some eleven regiments of volunteers. The enlistment period of seven of them expired. They were given an opportunity to reenlist or go home. They went home, and he remained there with a handful of troops to await reinforcements.

In the Civil War the South went to the draft the 19th of April, 1862, a year after the war began. The North followed with the draft order of August, 1862. This was accompanied by riots in various States, and we had to send troops to New York to regain possession of the State. With the draft went the bounty and that most damnable of all practices, the purchase of substitutes. According to Charles Francis Adams, we had something over 504,000 desertions out of a total of 2,763,000 enlistments. There were many professional bounty jumpers, some with records of successful bounty jumping covering years. I doubt if anywhere has desertion been more rampant than among the certain class of men who were in the service during the Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of good men responded, and it was their example and their character which carried the war through to a successful finish. We fought a people as unprepared as ourselves. It was almost two years before the outlines of well-organized and wellled armies appeared. It was nearly nine months after the battle of Bull Run before operations of importance followed in the East. We were unorganized. We scrambled through the war and eventually

built up a good Army, and at the end of it were for once, and only once in our history, organized and prepared for war.

In the 1898 campaign (the Spanish War) we did not fill our complement, as you know, and in this mobilization the militia from the Eastern Department is about 35 per cent under strength-short of the full quota. I presume it is about the same in other departments. The Regular Army is short of men. We are unable to fill either one of them up. Organizations are without the necessary equipment. No soldier could hope for success with organizations of this kind if confronted by good troops. We are confronted squarely with the question of preparedness. Just ask a soldier what would happen if we had to meet a well-trained enemy. You can imagine what would have happened in the War with Spain if that country had been a strong, well-organized power.

Our military preparedness must be founded upon a sense of individual obligation for service upon universal service. The weak point in our military system is that we have depended upon militia. We have trusted to militia and volunteers. We have never yet been called upon to meet promptly a thoroughly equipped and wellorganized force. If we had had this experience, we should long ago have abandoned these systems, which are wholly undependable under conditions of modern preparedness and organization and will not give us a force adequate in quality or promptly available. Dependence upon these systems means a wanton waste of life and treasure.

In conclusion, I wish to emphasize the necessity of prompt preparation of an adequate force of trained men with the necessary arms, equipment, and supplies for 4,000,000 men. In my opinion, there is nothing of more vital importance than that we should take measures to this end and take them immediately. We are absolutely unprepared in artillery guns and ammunition for war and will continue to be so for many years under present rate of progress. There is a more or less general misconception of the idea of the universal military training. Many appear to believe that it means large numbers of men standing in uniform-an enormous standing army. It means quite the reverse. It means the maximum number of men trained so that they may be efficient soldiers if needed. Its effect, when the system is in full operation, will be a relatively small force under arms but an enormous force of men available in case of necessity-men who are following their normal occupations but with the necessary training to be efficient soldiers if needed. Our population is increasing rapidly, and by the time the system is in effect the first line group, the men from 21 to 28 inclusive, will number, when trained, at least 4,000,000 of men. The second line group or class, to include the men from 29 to 38 inclusive, and the third line group, the men from 39 to 45. It is probable that when the system shall have been in effect long enough to reach the men of 45 that our population will be in the neighborhood of at least 120 millions. The number of men who have been trained will be very large, perhaps 17 or 18 millions. It is highly improbable that all this force should ever be called to the colors, but whether they are called to the colors or not, the training will have been of great value from every standpoint: economic, moral, and from that of good citizenship, which means national efficiency. A condition of real preparedness will have been created. The best possible insurance of