Assuming the correctness of everything in those charts and reports, you can see the unfairness of the thing. In one organization its traditions, its prestige, and its honor are protected from useless criticism or ignorant criticism. In the other they are given every publicity.

The CHAIRMAN. I concede the apparent unfairness of that; but can you conceive any reason why that was done or do you know any reason why it is done?

Gen. O'RYAN. I do not think it is any personal hostility. I think it is a desire rather to stimulate the weak sisters among the guard to further efforts. But in their zeal to accomplish that they have lost sight of the fact that in their government and in their ruling of another organization they are doing something that they never would think of doing to their own organization.

The CHAIRMAN. There is no method of comparison between the Regular Department and the guard? In other words, one might be just as bad as the other, and there is no way of comparison? Gen. O'RYAN. Such a thing might be.

Senator BRADY. The public has access to it as to one and not as to the other?

Gen. O'RYAN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you find much difference between the efficiency of the guard generally and the same units of the Regular Establishment?

Gen. O'RYAN. We did not have very many Regulars in the sector we were in, and I do not believe it would be fair to the Regular Army for me to make any comments about the Regular organizations that I saw as indicating a sample of the Regular efficiency. I will say this. that the Regular officers there were outspoken and frank in their comments concerning the National Guard organizations— favorably so, I mean. It was quite a surprise to National Guard officers to read these things that have been published about the mobilization, in view of the facts as we and the Regular officers on the border knew them to be.

The CHAIRMAN. There was a great difference between the organızations from the different States. Take your own State, where you had had larger units for training, etc.; you must have had a better organization than the smaller ones?

Gen. O'RYAN. I went down there with the idea that we had about as fine a machine as we can get under the conditions, and that the guard from most of the other States did not amount to very much. I am frank to say that now; but I was astonished to see, for instance, the Third Tennessee Infantry. That is a fine regiment. Anything those men turn their rifles loose on is gone. In the first place, they had the martial spirit. Every man in that regiment practically was a fighting man, and he looked the part. They could march and they could shoot. When they came down there, there was some absence of those little earmarks of garrison discipline that are emphasized during times of peace. They quickly acquired those things. But some individuals and some people never could acquire the God-given qualities that those men had, which are necessary in the fighting business.

The CHAIRMAN. Many of those were mountaineers?

Gen. O'RYAN. Yes; one battalion was right from the mountains of east Tennessee. Those men were the finest kind of soldiers. The CHAIRMAN. There were some from Kentucky also.

Gen. O'RYAN. I did not see the Kentucky men, but I reviewed, at Gen. Parker's invitation, troops at Brownsville and Llano Grande, and I saw a magnificent Iowa brigade there, and an Indiana brigade. The First Minnesota Regiment impressed me very much; it was a remarkable regiment. They moved like a machine. We often said then if we could only have these two committees down on the border to really see with their own eyes what we were watching, they would go back so enthused that they would think a great deal of the National Guard.

The CHAIRMAN. With reference to the treatment of the men that grows out of the system, do you not think it unfortunate that the young men with families, or who have enlisted in the National Guard, expecting to remain at home, are compelled to go off on duty that takes them away from home and away from their families? Gen. O'RYAN. That has been greatly misrepresented.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to have your views about that, because it has been discussed here to some extent.

Gen., O'RYAN. In the first place, a very large percentage of the young men who were down there on the border, and who, in the absence of excitement, wanted to come home, were the very same individuals who would be there doing the same thing under a system of compulsory service, because they were young men from 18 to 21 or 22 years of age

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). Married and having families?

Gen. O'RYAN. No; I am speaking about the younger fellows. As to the men who ought not to be in the guard, that is being corrected, because the War Department has issued a circular that no married man will be enlisted in the National Guard.

The CHAIRMAN. That will correct that?

Gen. O'RYAN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Were there many men down on the border who had families who were dependent upon them?

Gen. O'RYAN. There were; yes, sir. There was quite a percentage. It would be hard to say how many there were. The records, I think, showed there were 700 people who qualified for relief.

The CHAIRMAN. In your division?

Gen. O'RYAN. In our division, out of 19,000 officers and men. The CHAIRMAN. What was the age of those men generally?

Gen. O'RYAN. Those men, as I think, were all married men who had families, some of them two or three or four children.

The CHAIRMAN. It is very much better for the service if those could be eliminated before they go, is it not?

Gen. O'RYAN. Undoubtedly they should be elitinated from the first-line force. I think, if we are going to limit the National Guard in the first enlistment to the men who are unmarried, it is going to cut our field of recruiting down so appreciably that we will have to come to some form of mandatory service.

The CHAIRMAN. But you think that ought to be done?

Gen. O'RYAN. Yes, sir. I think ultimately, as we go forward in this march toward idealistic conditions-and that is what we are

coming to-we have got to adopt the necessary additional means to accomplish what we are seeking.

The CHAIRMAN. Is this mobilization going to impair your ability to recruit up the National Guard and keep it recruited?

Gen. O'RYAN. It is hard to say that, Senator, now. Some of my colonels report-for example, the colonel of the Second Infantry, which is a pretty good regiment to mention, because it is largely made up of one-company stations-informs me that most of his companies are approximately at war strength, some of them at full war strength, and he tells me the numbers of young men are applying for enlistment, and there is no room for them in the companies. That regiment was on the border, and is now back home. The ardor of the younger men has been stimulated by seeing the home return and all that, and they want to join, but there is no room for them. In other cases the reverse is reported. They find it very difficult to get recruits in some instances.

The CHAIRMAN. One reason for the difficulty is that when they federalized they really changed the contract of enlistment that they had in the State.

Gen. O'RYAN. There was no question raised in our State. There were one or two individual men out of eighteen or twenty thousand who raised the point about that. Our men adopted the change and took the consequence, and they have no kick coming.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you not think it would be beneficial to the National Guard, as well as to the Army, to have a short-term enlistment, an enlistment period of a year, for instance, taking men in and letting them go out if they want to go after a short period of service?

Gen. O'RYAN. I think that theoretically there is a good deal in its favor, but I can see objections to it. I was reading Gen. Wood's testimony and Gen. Scott's testimony before this committee, in which one recommended six months, and the other said that the results could not be accomplished in six months. I think, so far as manual dexterity is concerned, so far as knowledge of routine military matters is concerned, an ordinarily bright man can be developed as a satisfactory private soldier in six months' training.

The CHAIRMAN. Under the national defense act he can get it in a

year.

Gen. O'RYAN. But when it comes to inculcating in the mind of that young man habits that bring about changes in his state of mind, so that he has been modified psychologically, and even biologically, that is a process that takes time. We find some things very interesting in that connection. I had no idea, for example, that National Guard training as we have it in New York produced such a marked change in the mental state of a solider. I did not realize that a year of training in the National Guard produced so marked a change upon his mentality as was developed there. As indicating this we had in the first five months of our border service a little over 2,000 cases of men tried by summary court-that is, for any delinquency at all that was other than a proper subject of company discipline. Something like 80 per cent of those men thus tried were recruits. In other words, the men who had had any substantial training in the guard did not get into the summary courts. The same comment applies with even

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greater force to the men who were tried by the general court-martial. The CHAIRMAN. That was the effect of discipline?

Gen. O'RYAN. That was the effect of discipline; yes. We found the men who had had a year of National Guard training were men who had become habituated by the atmosphere and by the drill and instruction and lectures in the schools, and by the general military régime, even though they were not at it day in and day out, and that they had undergone a mental development that had changed their point of view. They had become habituated to obeying orders with very little question. So these men kept out of trouble, but these other young men who enlisted to save the country in answer to the President's call were the chaps who were getting into trouble continually. They were self-willed and wanted to know the reason why and complained that this did not seem sensible to them, etc. Many of these matters were regulations to protect them in their health and in their morals, but they chafed under these restrictions and had trouble about them.

I found we had many young men who were coming into the guard, four or five thousand of them, to bring it up to war strength, who were from 18 to 21 or 22 years of age, who were going down there, not so much actuated by patriotism as they were for love of adventure and a desire to get away from the restrictions of home and a desire for travel. My estimate of the matter is that they thought they could do things down on the border that they would not like to attempt to do in the vicinity of their homes or their home towns. I know what some of those things were, and I knew too, that history showed that prostitution and booze have always gone hand in hand. So we issued an order that no officer or man of the New York division would be permitted to have in his posession or to use any form of liquor-beer, near beer, or anything else.

Our officers had been prepared for that, because during the past three years we had prohibited them using liquor in any form in our camps of instruction and in our schools in the field. The men had been, in part, prepared for it by similar rules relating to specific organizations in the field. But there we made it general. Then we organized a military police. We found there were in our sector 4 houses of prostitution and perhaps 20 saloons in 3 towns, in a sector of about 20 miles. We put a sentinel at the front and rear of those places and allowed no soldiers of the New York division to go in there. Of course, it aroused a great deal of resentment, and many importunities were made to modify the thing, and to show that this could much better be accomplished by regulation, which, of course, meant recognition. But we held to that rule, and we drove out the last house of prostitution in about three weeks after we got there. The saloons, of course, had trade from other organizations but very little from us.

The result was that in the 19,000 men we had there, the number of venerial cases in the entire division contracted on the border up to the time we left was less than 20. There is no record in history, I believe, to equal that-nothing that even approximates it.

The CHAIRMAN. A good deal has been said of that charge in connection with universal military training and getting young men in camps, and I am glad to have your statement about it. It can be controlled, evidently.

Gen. O'RYAN. It was controlled there.

Senator BRADY. I want to ask about the general health of your brigade. I have been interested to know about that.

Gen. O'RYAN. The sick rate of the New York division was just about one-half of the sick rate of the Regular troops along the border.

The CHAIRMAN. You had a splendid body of men down there. Gen. O'RYAN. Yes, sir; we think we had.

The CHAIRMAN. I have been very much interested, General, and I think the other members of the committee have, too, in the training of the children in the schools of New York City and New York State, and in the recent act passed by the legislature for military training. Do you know anything about either of those propositions?

Gen. O'RYAN. I am president of the Military Training Commission, which consists of the commanding general of the division of the National Guard, the Commissioner of Education, and a third member appointed by the governor. That commission is charged with two general functions, one of providing for a system of military training of young men, and of girls, too, for that matter; and the other phase of their work is to make recommendations to the board of regents of the State, governing rules and regulations designed to perfect discipline among the youth of the State. By discipline we mean a sense of responsibility, a character which will cause the young to develop attention to details and habits of thoroughness, and an appreciation of cooperative effort under leadership. The commission has completed that part of its work which has to do with the physical training, and there is to-day in force in our public schools of the State, and in fact all the schools-the parochial schools, high schools, and private schools-a system of physical training which governs all children above the age of eight.

The CHAIRMAN. On their entrance to school?

Gen. O'RYAN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And physical inspection?

Gen. O'RYAN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that under a law or is it a voluntary act of the school system?

Gen. O'RYAN. Oh, no; it is under a law providing for mandatory military training of the youth of the State.

The CHAIRMAN. When you speak of military training of children of eight years of age, you do not mean training with a gun or anything like that?

Gen. O'RYAN. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You mean physical training?
Gen. O'RYAN. That is one phase of the work.

We have applied to the girls, for example, only that part of military training which has to do with the development of the body.

The CHAIRMAN. I did not want a wrong impression to get into the record about what you meant by military training, because the military training of children is denounced most bitterly.

Gen. O'RYAN. It is denounced because people think that military training contemplates only drill, whereas, of course, what we are leading up to in our work is the development of healthy physical