Gen. STOTESBURY. Undoubtedly, if they had had time to formulate a scheme of mobilization consistent with the terms of that act, the whole thing would have been conducted on a different basis.

The CHAIRMAN. I think, as a matter of fact, the Regular Establishment is to blame a great deal for this mobilization, but I think the Congress of the United States is to blame a great deal, too, because while the heads of these different departments or bureaus have been asking for money for equipment, they have been turned down in the amount necessary to equip either the recruits of the Regular Army up to its war strength, or the National Guard up to its maximum.

Gen. STOTESBURY. There is no doubt of that. It is generous for the Congress to assume the blame, and I am willing to go back of that. The blame is with the people; Congress would respond if the people demanded it; and the people would demand it if the situation were realized. There is no doubt that many difficulties have arisen because the War Department was not supplied with sufficient funds for the purpose.

There has not been money to enable the War Department to organize the authorized units of the Regular Army, to provide for the separate organization of the supply companies, the headquarters companies, and the machine-gun companies. In order to have these commands, it was necessary to adopt the scheme of detailing men from the other line companies to make up these units. On account of the requirement that the National Guard shall have an organization conforming to that of the Regular Army, it was necessary also that the National Guard should resort to that expedient.

The CHAIRMAN. The Regular Army had the same difficulty? Gen. STOTESBURY. The Regular Army had the same difficulty; yes; and the reason was that they did not have money enough to maintain these other units, and they had to utilize what they had.

Senator BRADY. That was because of lack of appropriations? Gen. STOTESBURY. Yes. That condition has been provided for under the reorganization act, and now we are enabled to maintain these units as separate organizations. The national defense act provided for quite material changes in organization. Undoubtedly, if a year had intervened between the approval of the act and the date of the call the result would have been very different.

The CHAIRMAN. With your knowledge of the situation, do you think the National Guard can be depended on as a first line of defense after the Regular Army?

Gen. STOTESBURY. I believe that the National Guard can not be made a first-line force unless there be unified, coordinated, Federal control and the right to govern in time of peace; that is, the Federal Government must have the right to govern in time of peace if the unit is to be used as a part of the first line. There can not be government of the National Guard by the Federal authorities in time of peace-there can not be a unified, coordinated Federal control-unless you remove the National Guard from the militia definition. As long as you retain the National Guard under the militia definition of the Constitution of the United States it can not be used as a first line, and you might just as well abandon it for any such purpose.

Senator BRADY. Do you think it should be entirely federalized? Gen. STOTESBURY. Yes; I am willing to have that federalization carried to its ultimate conclusion. I am ready to assume that from the standpoint of efficiency the best force for the first line would be a Regular Army large enough-large enough to meet any emergency which we might be required to face, but we can not get it. The expense is too great. There is a prejudice in the public mind against maintaining a force large enough for that purpose. We must, therefore, supplement the Regular Army of the size the Congress is willing to provide by some other force as nearly like the Regular Army as it is possible to make it on a basis that the people will accept. If you will proceed under the army clause of the Constitution there is no difficulty. As Congress has the right to raise and maintain a full-time army such as the Regular Army, they have the right also to raise and maintain a half-time army on the basis of the National Guard, a force of which the personnel, for the greater part of the year, is engaged in ordinary commercial and industrial pursuits, but which devotes enough time to training and discipline each year to make it a useful and available adjunct to the Regular Army, which devotes all its time to military service.

The CHAIRMAN. You would not do that under the National Guard system as at present organized?

Gen. STOTESBURY. No; not as at present organized. If you are going to make the National Guard useful for that purpose, it must first be completely federalized and brought under unified Federal control, and you can not do that without taking the National Guard out of the militia definition.

Senator BRADY. Your thought in that case is to make them a second line of defense?

Gen. STOTESBURY. No. They could then be called, when necessity required, to perform the same sort of duty that is performed by the Regular Army, provided the training prescribed and carried out is adequate to make them useful, or it would take a very short time to whip them into shape. But the thought is that they are a firstline force, the force that is to provide the peace-time force of the country. We must have a sufficient force to garrison our coast defenses, our oversea possessions, and a mobile force for continental United States. The average in the over-sea possessions is that for every man in the coast defense you should have 10 in the mobile army. In Continental America it takes between five and six men in the mobile army to one in the coast defense to provide the necessary support. This is some of the work that has to be performed by the Regular Army in ordinary peace time and in case of war there must be other forces ready to augment them.

We need 500,000 organized and trained men-I mean permanently organized a peace-time strength. I doubt that Congress will make provision for a Regular Army of 500,000 men. I doubt if you will provide for 280,000, which is what the General Staff believes to be the irreducible minimum requirement of a peace-time force.

The CHAIRMAN. If we get such a law through Congress, we would not get the men.

Gen. STOTESBURY. I want to speak of that, Mr. Chairman. I believe you could get the men. I want to reiterate a suggestion I made

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early in my statement, that no system of compulsion should be applied to less than all of a class. I do not believe in selective conscription; compulsion should not be applied to fill up the Regular Army or to fill up the National Guard. So long as the service in the Regular Army and so long as the service in the National Guard depend upon a voluntary enlistment, it must be made attractive before it can be made efficient. Service in the National Guard and in the Regular Army is purely upon the basis of self-interest. There are undoubtedly occasions when patriots rush to the colors; but we can not depend on that. The service must be regulated upon the basis of self-interest. Men that go into the Regular Army in times when there is no employment for them in industrial lines may be many, but just as soon as there is a wide industrial demand for labor, you can not get them to go into the Regular Army; that is, you can not get them on the present terms. But if you can not get them at $15 a month, you must try to get them at $30 a month. If you can not get them at $30 a month, you may have to meet it in some way, either by the amount of compensation or reward in some form.

In order to maintain the Regular Army and the National Guard the service must be put on a basis that will attract men in sufficient numbers to meet its requirements.

You will find much difference of opinion. Some think the Regular Army and the National Guard ought to be maintained by a system of selective compulsion. I do not believe in compulsion except when applied to all of a class. Avoid the application of a selective draft. Compulsion when equally and generally applied is subject to no just complaint, but compulsion applied only to a part of the whole, which determines one's service by chance or lot, that is the situation which leads to draft riots and all the other objectional features of the draft and conscription, bounties, and substitution.

I want to be understood in this: Discussion of the Regular Army, either as to its strength or the nature of its service, or of the National Guard as to its system of organization, does not touch at all the proposition of the common defense, in the discussion of which we are now primarily engaged. The Regular Army and the National Guard constitute the peace-time force. Call it the national police force if you will.

The larger problem is that of adequate provision for the common defense. A system that will produce millions where we have been talking of thousands or hundreds of thousands, such a system can only be carried out by a policy which compels every citizen of this great country, whether he will or not, to assume the obligations of citizenship and to recognize that his rights as a citizen are reciprocal only to his obligation of service.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much for being so patient and allowing me so much time. Unless there is some question that you desire to put to me, I believe I have nothing further to say at this time.

The CHAIRMAN. We are very much obliged to you, Gen. Stotesbury.

Senator BRADY. Mr. Chairman, I would like very much to hear from Gen. O'Ryan at this time.

The CHAIRMAN. Gen. O'Ryan, do you desire to make any statement to the committee at this time?

Gen. O'RYAN. I have no specific statement, Mr. Chairman, but I shall be glad to answer any questions any members of the committee may desire to propound.

STATEMENT OF J. F. O'RYAN, COMMANDING NEW YORK DIVISION OF THE NATIONAL GUARD, NEW YORK CITY.

Senator BRADY. General, what position did you occupy at the time of the mobilization of the troops?

Gen. O'RYAN. I commanded the New York division of the National Guard.

Senator BRADY. Have you been to the border?

Gen. O'RYAN. Yes, sir. The New York division moved to the border in the last few days of June, and most of the division is back. We have still there three regiments of infantry, one regiment of field artillery, one regiment of cavalry, and one or two sanitary units.

Senator BRADY. I would be glad to have you tell the committee. what difficulties, if any, you encountered in the mobilization of the troops in New York.

Gen. O'RYAN. We did not encounter any so far as the National Guard was concerned. We got the order to mobilize on Sunday night and issued telegraphic orders for the troops to assemble clothed, armed, and equipped as required by the order at 8 o'clock the following evening. That was done. That was done. The strength was approximately 18,000 officers and men. The report on the mobilization, which was prepared by somebody in the militia bureau, will indicate that as to New York there were no shortages of property for the strength prescribed, the peace strength, with the exception, I think, of some waist belts-negligible. Those troops were than ready to go anywhere they were directed to go.

At the same time we issued orders to recruit these organizations to war strength. As a matter of fact, many of our organizations were at war strength and had been at war strength for anywhere from two months to a year at that time. Some of our organizations had few recruits in them. They were made up of trained men.

There then followed a period that was interesting, but regrettable, because it showed a lack of preparation and a lack of proper system to meet the conditions; but it was a system with which the National Guard had no connection, except to aid in trying to carry it out. Gen. Stotesbury has made some reference to these points. Briefly, they are these:

In the first place, there were not any blanks provided as required by the new act-not only that, but there was an absence of other blanks that would have been necessary had the force been one of Organized Militia.

I might say in this connection that the officers and men of the New York National Guard immediately took the new oath, and, in the absence of the forms furnished by the War Department, forms were printed by the State and distributed, and the oath taken. So that the transformation from Organized Militia to the National Guard of the United States was promptly made.

The first difficulty-and in making statements relative to these difficulties that were encountered I will summarize the views, for

we are in accord about them, the Regular officers and National Guard officers-was the so-called muster. In principle it had no application to the National Guard. We had seven United States Regular officers sent to muster these 18,000 or 20,000 men. These men, most of them, told me they knew little about their duties. Their duties were set forth in extended published regulations, some of them known as "Militia mustering regulations," "Army regulations," "Mustering regulations." It would require a man perhaps a number of days of intensive study to attempt to reconcile all these various regulations governing this subject of muster. "Muster in" really applies to Volunteers only.

To understand what is meant by "muster in" one must get a picture of a number of patriotic citizens who, when their country gets into trouble, immediately form themselves into a company, a military company, for acceptance in the military service of the United States. Such men are assembled, examined, and asked whether that is their intention; whereupon a representative of the Federal Government appears and their names are set forth on a roll, which is called a "muster-in "roll, together with their ages and other facts relating to these individuals, which are all specifically set forth. Each man signs the roll opposite his name, at the top there being a form of oath of allegiance and service. Then they are all lined up and the roll is called to see that no man is there who does not belong, and that every man whose name is on the roll is there, and then they hold up their hands and are sworn in collectively, and then they are soldiers. That had no relation whatever to our system, and yet it was applied. Here were men who became soldiers when they took the oath of enlistment, which is identical in form with that prescribed for Regular soldiers, so that our regular muster officers, some of whom had been with us for a number of years, would say to me, "What is your interpretation of this?" I would reply, "Don't ask me; ask Gen. Wood; you are responsible to him." Or a subordinate muster officer would ask the chief muster officer, and he would say, "I don't know." He might get a ruling from the chief muster officer, and then that would be reversed in the afternoon, sometimes by telegraphic order from Washington, and sometimes by telephonic communication from Governors Island. These men were nearly distracted. There was great delay, but finally the organizations were mustered in in several different ways. The Judge Advocate of the Army finally ruled that as to the National Guard of the United States no "muster in" was necessary.

The whole think was unnecessary for this reason: All that was necessary was for a muster roll to be prepared by the company commander, not by one of the muster officers, or several attempting to muster in the whole force, and then for the commands to go on about their business. This could have been done on the train going down.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you know that then, or did you see that afterwards from that experience in the mustering in?

Gen. O'RYAN. It was talked about, Senator, off and on. I served at one time on a committee at the War College in connection with the mustering regulations, and I raised that point then, but the consensus of opinion was that it was a little too radical at that time, and I am inclined to think it was.