UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 BULLETIN 
 
 THE 'HT OF IHt 
 APR 12 1220 
 8JNJV£RSJTy OF IL;j?jC 
 
 UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 A' DEBATE BULLETIN 
 J. W. SCROGGS, Editor 
 
 This bulletin is prepared for the Oklahoma High School 
 Debating League. The Extension Division of the University 
 never sends out materials on only one side of a question; it must 
 furnish information on both sides or none; it will not be 
 a propaganda for anything, not even the Multiplication Table; 
 its sole purpose is to furnish information impartially to citizens 
 of the State who are in need of it. 
 
 PUBLIC INFORMATION AND WELFARE 
 UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 EXTENSION DIVISION 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 A new feature introduced in this bulletin is a number of 
 questions the object of which is to aid in getting at the 
 essential issues. No attempt has been made to arrange them 
 in any logical order; in fact such an order has been avoided in 
 order to keep from prejudicing the reader for or against either 
 side of the question. The sole object of the questions is to 
 compel full investigation of both sides of the subject, and to 
 bring out more clearly the main issues and chief clashes of 
 opinion. 
 
 The student is especially advised against one-sided study 
 of a question. Even if the purpose of the study reaches no 
 farther than merely winning the debate, it is best to know 
 and do full justice to both sides. Debating should not develop 
 partizanship. The debater should first of all be fair. He 
 should scorn to use an argument which he believes to be un- 
 true. To press arguments which you believe to be false not 
 only reacts upon your own moral nature but must weaken 
 your power to talk convincingly. To acquire facility in simu- 
 lating conviction which you do not have is making you a skill- 
 ful hypocrite, even if it be of some minor advantage. Be- 
 lieving that the arguments on the opposite side are superior 
 to those for the side you are appointed on does not perclude 
 your stating yours with all possible clearness and force. 
 Knowing both sides may make you less a partizan, but a better 
 debater. 
 
 University of Oklahoma J. W. SCROGGS , 
 
 Extension Division Dept. Public Information and Welfare 
 
 QUESTION ADOPTED BY THE OKLAHOMA HIGH 
 SCHOOL DEBATING LEAGUE FOR 1919-20 
 
 Resolved: — That Universial Military Training should he 
 adopted in the United States. 
 
THE EFFECT ON AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS OF A 
 POWERFUL MILITARY AND NAVAL 
 ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 BY HERBERT CROLY, 
 
 Editor, The New Republic, New York City 
 
 Of ail the novel and perplexing problems which have been 
 fastened on the American nation by the proposal to make a very 
 arge increase m its military and naval armament, there is none which 
 mstles with more difficulties than the subject on which I am 
 addressing you this morning. What will be the effect on American 
 domestic life and institutions of a more efficient, expensive, and 
 powerful military and naval establishment? 
 
 Americans who are opposing “preparedness” are basing their 
 opposition largely upon the havoc which it is expected to work in 
 our traditional internal order. Americans who are advocating 
 preparedness are basing their approval larg^ily upon the better 
 
 lertnl '^h T '™Pose upon our time-honored in- 
 
 ternal chaos. Americans who are hesitating are basing their 
 hesitation largely upon misgivings as to the wisdom of exposing 
 American institutions and life to the corrosive effect of such f 
 
 Wrk " n" ' .i™°vation. These are the questions which 
 ^ erican public opinion is considering most anxiously and with 
 the smallest prospect of future agreement. The country is not 
 ' inking so much about what we can and should do with a larger 
 army and navy. It is thinking rather about what a larger army and 
 navy may or will do to us. “ 
 
 Preoccupation with the domestic effects of military prepared- 
 ^ss presided at its official birth. Last summer when Resident 
 Wilson decided to include in the legislative program of the admin- 
 i^ration provision for a large army he ordered his Secretary of 
 War to make the plans for an increase conforming to the ebst- 
 
 clear. He had decided that more soldiers must be enlisted and 
 rained presumably because they might be needed for certain 
 
 chwi” "“f*" *’‘‘''‘"8 i-cached this decision, he was 
 
 chiefly occupied, not with the number and kind of soldiers de- 
 manded by these practical needs, but with the effect of any increase 
 upon the opinions and traditions of his fellow-countrymen 
 
4 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 He knew his proposals would meet with lively opposition based 
 chiefly on the presumptive un-Americanism of large armies, and 
 he preferred to bestow on the plans of the administration not so 
 much the positive merit of careful adaption to the practical need 
 as the negative merit of conformity to a prevailing tradition. In 
 order to make them politically acceptable the administration plans 
 should look unoffensive and not too unfamiliar. The American 
 aimy had always been the creature of domestic political policy 
 and so it must remain. 
 
 In adopting this course, President Wilson was behaving like 
 a shrewd and cautious political leader. It was the course cal- 
 culated to effect a certain result with the smallest friction. He has 
 been rewarded by the practical collapse of the opposition to his 
 program. It has been an adroit achievement and an important 
 success. But the fullest possible recognition of the achievement 
 should not blind us to the disadvantages of the method. The suc- 
 cess was purchased by a lack of thoroughness in framing the de- 
 tails of the plans and by a lack of frankness in explaining their 
 meaning and consequences. The technical obstacles to adequate 
 preparation and its political penalties .and dangers have been under- 
 estimated and evaded rather than courageously confronted and 
 definitely overcome. As a result the American people are acting 
 in a grave national crisis without any sufficient understanding of 
 the bearing of the new policy on their past and its probable effects 
 on their future. 
 
 The American tradition of military organization and policy 
 which President Wilson wisht to preserve was not on its merits 
 worth so much anxious solicitude. It called for a small standing 
 professional army which was really no more than a national police 
 force. Its members, organization and equipment were not adjusted 
 to a foreign policy or an international condition. Invasion was not 
 considered a danger against which any elaborate precautions needed 
 to be taken. In the event of war the navy would act as a screen, be- 
 hind which could be trained around a nucleus furnished by the 
 state militia a volunteer citizen’s navy. The aspect of this sys- 
 tem which Mr. Wilson probably considered most precious was its 
 underlying and almost complete civilianism. It included a pro- 
 fessional army, to be sure, but only in insignificant numbers. The 
 United States depended ultimately for its soldiers upon its citizens 
 and it had consequently no reason to fear the corruption of its 
 democratic institutions and ideals by a military caste or spirit. All 
 this is true, but it is also true that the system was a tissue of 
 inadequacies and contradictions. It evaded every difficulty and 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 5 
 
 ignored every serious responsibility involved by military prepar- 
 edness. 
 
 A democracy should depend ultimately for its soldiers on its 
 citizens ; but our traditional system only pretended to create an 
 armed citizenry. Its trained soldiers were prevented from being 
 citizens ; its citizens were never sufficiently trained to be good 
 soldiers. The American people had no reason to fear their army, 
 but neither had the possible enemies of the American people. It 
 was not intended to be dangerous to anybody but a few foreign or 
 domestic marauders. Congress always refused to incorporate in 
 it a coherent formative idea. It was partly professional and partly 
 amateur, partly under national and partly under state jurisdiction, 
 partly based upon the idea of service and partly upon an appeal 
 to mercenary motives. But above all it was wholly and inten- 
 tionally innocuous. It was essentially an attempt to assure civilian 
 control over the military machine less by making the civil authority 
 strong, clear-sighted, able and worthy, than by making the army 
 feeble and incompetent. 
 
 If, as President Wilson decided last summer, the American 
 democracy was finally faced by the necessity of seriously preparing 
 during peace for the possibility of war, this national tradition in 
 military organization needed to be radically modified rather than 
 loyally cherished and preserved. The traditional military sys- 
 tem can be fairly characterized as organized unpreparedness. Am- 
 ericans had believed themiselves immune from the grim necessity of 
 anticipating and providing either against social evils at home or the 
 defense of national policies abroad. America was the promised 
 land precisely because it was delivered from such moral and phy- 
 sical stresses and from the structural reenforcement, necessary to 
 withstand j them. Some years ago, one-half of these expectations 
 began to be abandoned. It became only too apparent that American 
 domestic economy is not a stream which purified in the running. It 
 had developed the same social disorders as the older European 
 societies and similar precautions must be taken against them. The 
 decision to increase the army and navy means the abandonment 
 also of the other half. The organized unpreparedness of our 
 military system had been based upon a conception of interna,tional 
 relationships and of ensuing American dangers, opportunities and 
 responsibilities which had ceased to be true. The indispensable 
 condition of any effective military preparation was a declaration 
 of war against an essential aspect of the very tradition which the 
 President was seeking so sedulously to preserve. 
 
 In so far as the American tradition in military organization 
 
6 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 consisted in the strict and absolute subordination of the military 
 and naval machines to ultimate civilian control and their employ- 
 ment for valid political purposes, everygood American will at- 
 tach the utmost importance to its preservation. But in so far as 
 the civilian control was obtained by paralyzing the army rather 
 than by organizing the nation, strengthening its government and 
 clarifying its policy, the existing tradition manifestly constitutes an 
 insuperable obstacle to effective military preparation. The larger 
 army and navy must be intended and made ready for actual definite 
 service. In so far as it is ready for specific service, the army 
 must be a dangerous weapon. It must be dangerous to the possible 
 enemies of the United States ; and it must be dangerous to our 
 traditional internal equilibrium. Unless the American people arc 
 willing and ready to create a powerful weapon, which if misused 
 would prove to be harmful to them no less than their possible 
 enemies, the money and energy spent on military preparations will 
 continue to be a colossal waste. As a matter of fact the American 
 people proved more willing to create a powerful weapon than its 
 chosen leaders imagined. The original program of the administra- 
 tion was indeed framed to look innocuous rather than dangerous. 
 It was based chiefly upon the principle of amplifying our defici- 
 encies. But the original program has been radically modified, and 
 every modification has tended to make it less innocuous and more 
 dangerous. A reluctant Democratic administration and Congress, 
 which had every disposition to keep down the scope and cost of 
 military “preparedness”, have been forced by the logic of their owii 
 decision to build very much more than they intended. The final 
 legislation is likely to provide for a really formidable fighting 
 force — one which will be measurably adjusted in size, training and 
 equipment to the probable needs of national policy. 
 
 The outstanding fact in the proposed military re-organiza- 
 tion is the increase in the professional standing army. In the 
 original plan little attempt was made to convert the regular army 
 into a force which was capable of defending the territory of the 
 United States against invasion or promoting its policies abroad. 
 That task was reserved for a body of national militia which was 
 subsequently modified by the House Committee into a body of 
 “federalized” state militia. But the more these bodies of militia 
 were examined the more untrustworthy they looked ; and the 
 more .public opinion came to favor an increase in the regular 
 army as the one really dependable military force. The regular 
 army is being increased until, with its own automatically created 
 reserve, it may, if it can be recruited, afford a sufficient protec- 
 
U N I V E R S A L M I L I T A R Y T R A I N I N G 
 
 tion against invasion, and protection against invasion is what the 
 public and the military experts have on the tops of their minds. 
 lUit merely as a consequence of organizing an effective army for 
 defense Congress has done very much more. It has organized 
 an army which may also constitute a formidable aggressive force. 
 Instead of creating as the President and the Democratic leaders 
 intended, a safe and sane army, they are being driven to create 
 a really dangerous army — a professional force, as far as possible 
 removed from the conception of an armed citizenry. 
 
 The new American army will be unsafe for two reasons. An 
 army of this kind is really adapted chiefly to service abroad and 
 consequently to something more than a defensive foreign policy. 
 It is also the kind of an army which will have a profound re- 
 action on American domestic life, because as a consequence of its in- 
 creased size and authority, it will be constantly making imperative 
 demands upon the civil authorities which they will be reluctant to 
 grant and which will raise the issue between civil and military 
 control over American policy. These are prescisely the questions 
 which the President wished to avoid, as they have been avoided in 
 the past, but from now on they will wax increasingly troublesome. 
 The new army could not be made serviceable, without becoming 
 unsafe, because in the opinion of too many American citizens, a 
 safe army meant an imperiled country. In truth there was no way 
 in which the domestic life and institutions of the nation could 
 be guaranteed against far-reaching modifications as a consequence 
 of substituting organized preparedness for organized unprepared- 
 ness. An efficient new military and naval establishment is bound in 
 the end to do something important to the American people, and the 
 certainty of a drastic result should be recognized in advance. Con- 
 fident prophecies are being made as to what this drastic result will 
 be. Many good Americans predict that our democracy will be 
 ruined by their new and dangerous servant. Others predict with 
 equal confidence that a more powerful army and widespread mili- 
 tary training is necessary not merely to save the nation from its 
 possible foreign enemies but to preserve it from its domestic 
 infirmities. Neither of these predictions need to be taken too 
 seriously. They are the expression of fears and hopes rather 
 than a disinterested estimate of the action of social forces. Al- 
 though drastic result will certainly follow, what that result will be 
 is by no means so certain. It will depend less upon the size and 
 organization of the army and the navy than upon the way in which 
 the nation decides to use them. 
 
 At present the American people have not made up their 
 
8 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 mind how they will use their new army and navy, and anti- 
 militarists are insisting that the creation of the larger army and 
 navy should be postponed until they do. I cannot agree with 
 them. We shall have to take the risk of preparing first and of 
 deciding later just what we are preparing for. To have refused 
 to prepare would under the circumstances have been an indication 
 of inertia and weakness. To have begun to prepare is on the 
 whole a symptom of self-confidence. It indicated that the country 
 is not afraid to plunge forward even though somewhat blidndly 
 and to risk the assumption of a perilous and costly responsibility 
 which before it is redeemed may diminish many prescriptive 
 rights, damage many vested interests and perhaps change the 
 whole outlook of the American democracy. 
 
 The American nation needs the tonic of a serious moral adven- 
 ture. It has been too safe, too comfortable, too complacent and 
 too relaxed. Its besetting weakness is the prevalence of individual 
 and collective irresponsibility, based on the expectation of ac- 
 complishing without effort. Living as it did in a favored land 
 which was not exposed to attack from without and which of- 
 fered to good Americans surpassing opportunities to satisfy their 
 own special and individual purposes, our democracy has not been 
 required to pull itself together. It has depended for its 
 cohesion upon loyaltc’ to an achieved and essentially complete con- 
 stitutional system, and upon a suppositious harmony between indi- 
 vidual or local, and public or national interests. Unlike European 
 countries, it could afford to leave the satisfaction of many public 
 objects to the results of an accidental concern among individuals, 
 groups of individuals, or local political units. It has been reluc- 
 tant to create powerful political or economic organs for the ac- 
 complishment of its national purposes, and when instruments of 
 this kind came into existence as the result of automatic and poli- 
 tical forces, the instinct of the democracy was to dissolve rather 
 than to discipline its unmanageable servants. It has not 
 liked the responsibility af turning such potentially dangerous agents 
 as a centralized administration, an authoritative legislature, an 
 efficient army or any concentrated embodiment of industrial power 
 to beneficial public use. 
 
 The European war has proved sufficiently the impossibility of 
 seriously preparing for a possible war without calling upon the 
 whole industrial system for assistance. If the American industrial 
 system is not prepared to render that assistance promptly and com- 
 pletely, the country would be unprepared for serious military or 
 naval operations — no matter how well its soldiers were trained and 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 0 
 
 equipped. 
 
 Of even more importance to adequate preparedness than these 
 measures of political, financial and industrial reorganization is an 
 effective method of securing for the new military and naval pro- 
 gram the support of the wage-earners. In the event of a war which 
 involved the national safety they could be counted on to volunteer 
 in sufficient numbers ; but that is not the question. Assuming that 
 the United States is to have an army, which even in the timics 
 of peace will require of an increasing proportion of the wage- 
 earners of the country a certain share of their time and labor, how 
 can they be induced to give what is needed? It is the answer to 
 this question which will arouse in the near future the most lively 
 controversy, and upon the way it is answered will largely depend 
 the reaction of a larger military and naval establishment upon 
 .Am.erican dom.estic institutions and life. In the past the govern- 
 ment has relied for the recruits to the army and the navy upoii 
 the expedient of tempting men to volunteer, but if this expedient 
 is to succeed in the future, the temptation will have to be very 
 much increased. It is doubtful whether the new army can be re- 
 cruited, save at an excessive cost. For this and for many other 
 reasons an aggressive and insistent element in public opinion is 
 demanding the substitution of compulsion for the volunteer prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 The agitation for compulsory military service bears parti- 
 cularly hard on the subject under discussion, because the argu- 
 ments in favor of compulsion are derived from social and pobticil 
 rather than military sources. It is not pretended that the nation 
 needs the military serivee of all the young men of America; !an 
 it is claimed that the young men of America need the benefit of 
 military service. Instead of as at present paying some young men 
 to enter an essentially public occupation, they wish the burden an 1 
 the opportunity of the cmploym.ent to be imposed on all alikg 
 without fear and without favor. That is the way really to demo- 
 cratize the American arniy. Universal service raises American citi- 
 zens of all classes and sections, if not of both sexes, to the level of 
 an irksome common obligation ; and this obligation brings with it 
 to an extent which political and social obligations do not, the oc- 
 casion for com.mon association. The experience would enable the 
 young soldier to realize how far he is a member of a community 
 and how m.uch fellowship in the community means. It is tlie 
 real solution of the ideal in an armed citizenry. The nation would 
 obtain soldiers who were citizens and citizens who were soldiers. 
 
 The argument of those Americans, vrho are seeking to give a 
 
10 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 positive social value to the military system and convert it into a 
 source of national unity, culminates in the foregoing contention. 
 Instead of consdering the army as a troublesome excresence on 
 American life, they propose to work it into the very fabric of the 
 nation. It is to be made the heroic remedy for the insidious dis- 
 ease of national incoherence. By being universalized, military 
 service is converted into a most effective form of compulsory 
 national education. American citizens will be pulled together by 
 the force of active comradeship in common labor and genuine 
 sacrifices for the national welfare. 
 
 The idea of making the military system contribute something 
 of positive value in the domestic life of the country is sound, but 
 it breaks down when worked as hard as it is by the advocates of 
 com.pulsory service. They are following the bad example of the 
 traditional American dem.ocrats in insisting that the size of the 
 military establishmient should be determined by its expected re- 
 action on American domestic life. The traditional democrats w^ere 
 reluctant to let the nation have as many soldiers or as much 
 military training as might be needed, because they presupposed a 
 necessary antagonism between demiocracy and military prepara- 
 tion. The contem.porary advocates of universal service seek the 
 enlistment and training of more soldiers than are needed, because 
 they believe that the .American who has undergone m litary train- 
 ing will constitute a better rather than a w'orse citizen. Both 
 of them are falling into the mistake so common to golf players of 
 keeping their eye too mmeh upon the hole and not enough upon 
 the ball. The former have more fear of military training than 
 they have confidence in democracy ; the latter have more confidence 
 in military training than they have confidence in democracy. Both 
 need to understand that an army is one thing and a democracy is 
 another. An army is a delicate and dangerous instrument which 
 may be called upon to perform the terrible work of killing and 
 submitting to being killed and which needs to be adjusted to the 
 probable nature and amount of this w^ork. A democracy is a 
 form of political and social organization, which, because it fas- 
 tens on the whole people ultim.ate responsibility for the public wel- 
 fare, depends for its fulfillment upon the ability of men to rise to 
 higher opportunities. The two are not divided by any necessary 
 incompatibility, and it would be a timid and rudimentary democracy 
 which tied itself to a policy of mis-armament merely because it is 
 afraid to let enough of its citizens become properly trained sol- 
 diers. But if the two are not divided by an incompatibility neither 
 are they tied together hy mutual dependence. While a democracy 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 11 
 
 may obtain incidental educational benefits from universal military 
 training, only an impoverished democracy would rely upon com- 
 pulsory military training service for the education of its citizens 
 in the essentials of citizenship. The American army will never be 
 brought into wholesome relations with the American democracy 
 until we cease to consider it either as a bogey or as a vehicle of 
 civic grace. It is primarily a machine, planned and prepared 
 to accomplish some desperately important and extremely hazardous 
 practical work. 
 
 The usual explanation that the United States is preparing only 
 for defense, which is a policy on which all good citizens can agree, 
 merely begs the question. A nation like Switzerland may arm 
 purely for defense, because a sm^all nation even if armed to the 
 teeth is incapable of aggression, and because it cannot have an 
 enemy of any size, which would not be large enough to threaten its 
 independence ; but, in the case of a wealthy, populous and geo- 
 graphically isolated nation like the United States no sharp line can 
 he drawn between defensive and aggressive armament. As has 
 been frequently pointed out, the new army and navy will be re- 
 qu'red to defend a policy rather than merely a coast line. If the 
 United States is invaded the invasion will originate not in a 
 wanton attack from a strong military and naval power, but in a 
 clash with a similar power over a difference of opinion about 
 neutral rights at sea, the Open Door in China or the Monroe Doc-, 
 trine in South Amierica. In the event of such a quarrel there is 
 really little difference between fighting to defend a policy and 
 fighting to promote it. The Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door 
 are from certain points of view aggressi\e policies, about the 
 meaning and justice of which v/ide differences of opinion may ex- 
 ist both in this and inother countries. Hence what we need most 
 of all to understand is the nature and scope of the policies in the 
 interest of which we shall organize an efficient and dangerous army 
 and navy. Until this is known not only can we not cauculate how 
 many and what kind of sailors and soldiers we may need and 
 what sacrifices the American people m.ay fairly be asked to make 
 for them, but we shall be equally at a loss to estimate the moral 
 and political reaction of the military preparations upon American 
 domestic life. 
 
 Thus the dubious aspect of the existing situation does not con- 
 sist in the fact or in the cost of preparedness but in the am- 
 biguity of its underlying purposes. The American people are being 
 asked to pay heavily in labor and money for a new army and navy 
 as a weapon of self-defence, because only in this way can con- 
 
12 
 
 thp: university of Oklahoma 
 
 tcntious matters be avoided and a sufficiently general measure of 
 popular support be frightened into existence. Vet there is a 
 very real probably that the new army and navy will be used 
 chiefly for positive and for aggressive as opposed to merely de- 
 fensive purposes. These positive purposes can be m.ade in my 
 Opinion even more justifiable than a negative defensive policy, but 
 their value and meaning is obscured because they are not frankly 
 admitted, fully discussed and sufficiently defined. As long as 
 lh<y remain ambiguous and obsucre, they create and encourage 
 a dangerously suspicious and evasive attitude towards the ques- 
 tion of preparedness . The socialists are already declaring that 
 tile new army and navy are intended as the instruments of im- 
 I)erlalistic exploitation in Mexico and Central Amierica, and the 
 accusation cannot be answered either by silence or abuse. As a 
 matter of fact if the soldiers which will be recruited and trained 
 for the new army see active service anywhere, they are m.ore 
 likely to see it, just as the old army has, outside rather than inside 
 the United States. The service beyond the seas may be susceptible 
 of complete justification as a miatter of democratic national policy, 
 but it cannot be justified as a matter of self-defense, and only 
 gradually will it be met with the same general approval and sup- 
 port its would an exclusively defensive service. 
 
 So we get back to tlie consideration which has been implicit 
 in this whole discussion. The probable reaction of military pre- 
 paredness upon America domestic life and institutions will be de- 
 termnned finally by the ability of the nation to assimilate the 
 dangerous, unm.anageable and exciting intruder into its moral or- 
 ganization. The work of assimilation depends in part upon our 
 ability to create an armiy and a navy whose officers and enlisted men 
 do not cease to participate in the civilian occupations and interests, 
 yet who at the same time are not prevented by civilian meddling 
 from doing thoroughly well their own special work. But it de- 
 pends still more upon the national policy of which the new army 
 and navy will be the chief instrument. In creating such an instru- 
 ment the Am.erican nation is not submitting itself passively to the 
 benign influence of a militaristic Saint Michael. Neither is it sub- 
 mitting itself passively to the malign influence of a militaristic 
 dragon. Neither is it pursu'ng a course which like the menace in 
 the army and the navy after the Spanish American w^ar, will leave 
 its domestic life and institutions practically unchanged. What it 
 is doing is to adopt a new and hazardous course, which in case it is 
 ,to be successfully carried through will require certain radical 
 changes in the intellectual and normal make-up of the American 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 L5 
 
 (leir.ocrac'y. 
 
 The good American shouhl conseou iu\v ne'ihcr denounce n t 
 glorify military preparedness. He sirould rather do what he can to 
 make the country equal to its newly assumed respem.sihilitics. Tlie 
 probability is that the effect of the adventure will l)e disastrou.s un- 
 less the American people can im.prove their polit’eal and economic 
 organization, socialize their industries and convert their educational 
 system, into a source of democratic citizensh’]). Efficient and ela- 
 borate military preparations will neither prevent us from making 
 these iirprovcmicnts nor assure their attainment. They must be 
 o!)tained, if at all, em their own merits and by a sufficient concentra- 
 tion of purpose and eftVrt upon special job.s, each in their turn. 
 What the work of military preparation inay do is to help the Ameri- 
 can people obtain the habit of concentrated attention upon their 
 own collective tasks. As a result of an increase in conccntratir)n 
 they should be able to rise m.orc completely both to their obliga- 
 tions and opportunities, but no such result necessarily fedlows. It 
 all depends upon the national policies, domestic and foreign, in 
 the interest of which the fruits of concentration are used. 
 
 The decision to prepare, consequently, decided very little. The 
 larger army and navy will of itself bring neither ruin nor re- 
 generation to the American people. It will not even bring ad- 
 ditional security, for security is a matter of comparative rather 
 than actual armament. By deciding to prepare the American' nation 
 has issued a challenge to itself to use more foresight, more in- 
 telligence, and more purpose in the mianagement of its affairs. Its 
 more powerful army and navy like its more energetic and efficient 
 government must be made the organ of a policy, which will con- 
 sciously and tenaciously make for individual and social betterment. 
 Such a policy has not yet been completely formulated, but the ex- 
 periments and the discussions of the past year have indicated 
 the direction in which it must be sought. All Americans who wish 
 the national military and naval establishment to be a boon rather 
 than a curse to their country should turn their attention to the 
 business of formulating it. The foreign policy of a democracy can 
 be democratized only as a result of a sufficient measure of popular 
 understanding and goodwill ; and upon the democratizing of 
 American foreign policy will depend the democratizing of its most 
 dangerous organ, — a large and powerful military and naval estab- 
 lishment. 
 
14 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 THE DEMOCRACY OF UNIVERSAL MILITARY 
 SERVICE 
 
 BY FRANKLIN H, GIDDINGS, LL. D.. 
 
 Professor of Sociology and History of Civilization, Columbia 
 
 University 
 
 This topic is resolvable into propositions of the indispen- 
 sable science of guess work. There is no way of knowing 
 what the effect of a large military and naval establishment on 
 our domestic institutions and policy will be. The factors of 
 causation are many, and the contngencies are uncertain. Never- 
 theless, we must guess as well as we can. Marvellous as 
 the achievements of experimental science have been, and great 
 as the accumulations of verified knowledge are, mankind yet 
 goes on its daily way, in matters social and political, by guess- 
 ing. It becomes important, therefore, to guess well. For 
 practical purposes the difference between good guessing and 
 bad guessing is incalcuable. The social and political sciences 
 are attempts to establish principles and methods of good guess- 
 ing, in these domains. 
 
 The fundamental principles of good guessing are no other 
 than those of scientific method in general and perhaps this fact 
 offers as good a reason as any that could be found in justifica- 
 tion of our temerity in speaking of social and political sciences. 
 A careful discrimination of facts, qualities, and kinds of things, 
 one from another, is the first requirement. Painstaking mea- 
 surement, or estimate, of qualities is the second requirement. 
 In attempting to guess what the effect of a large military and 
 naval establishment upon our domestic institutions and policy 
 will be, we shall plunge wildly unless we keep these requisites 
 of method continually in mind. 
 
 The area of Europe, which its 25,000,000 to 30,000,000 sold- 
 iers are expected to defend or to devastate, as occasion arises, 
 is 3,754,282 square miles. The area of the United States, plus 
 the area of Alaska and the area of our island possessions, is 
 3,743,306 square miles, or only 10,979 square miles less than 
 the total area of Europe. 
 
 If We had a peace-footing army of one million men and 
 trained reserves of five million men, we should have for the 
 protection of our continental area, Alaska, and island possess- 
 ions, less than one fifth of the military establishment main- 
 tained upon the equal area of Europe; Japan and all other na- 
 tions being left out of the reckoning. It is permissible to any 
 free born American to call such a measure of prepardness “mill- 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 15 
 
 tarism” if he wants to. There are intellects, here and there, 
 that function that way. 
 
 So I offer my first contribution to our guessing match 
 upon the probable effect of a large military establishment in 
 the United States. My guess is that a peace-footing army of 
 one million men, and a trained reserve force of five million 
 more men w’ould have, so far as any reaction of mere magni- 
 tude is concerned, absolutely no effect whatever upon our 
 American domestic life. It would be neither more or less 
 appreciable than a police force of 15,000 men in this city of 
 F’hiladelphia, with its population of more than one million and 
 a half inhabitants. 
 
 The magnitude, however, of a military establishment is 
 by no means the only or the most important factor to be 
 regarded when forecasting its probable reactions. Far more 
 important than any dimensions that we are likely to have to 
 consider, is the character or type of the army that we might 
 create in the United States. Like England we have been, and 
 are now, committed to a hired or professional army which, next 
 after monarchy and hereditary rank, is the most undemocratic 
 thing that man has so far invented. A hired army does not 
 have to be large to establish undemocratic standards and to 
 cause mischievous irritation. When the European war is 
 over, the class struggle will break forth afresh, with fourfold 
 energ3^. I think that we may confidently anticipate that the 
 forces of organized labor and of socialism will actively oppose 
 professional armies. Rightly or wrongly, they will insist 
 that a professional army may, at any time, be used by a domi- 
 nant capitalism to quell strikes and to put down an industrial 
 revolution. 
 
 International so''’.alism, to its honor, is opposed to all 
 preventable war, bul it does not feel about universal military 
 service as it feels about a hired and professional army. Uni- 
 versal military training puts all citizens on the same footing. 
 The proletarian, like the man who hires him, is taught the 
 manual of arms, and, in the event of war, the man who hires 
 him is equally liable V'ith other men to take his chance in the 
 trenches. 
 
 Many of you here present doubtless remember, as I do, 
 the bitterness engendered by that form of conscription to 
 which the federal government resorted to in our Civil War. My 
 father was a minister ^f a Congregational church in a country 
 village, and I vividl" recall my impressions of scenes in 
 
16 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 our home when women of ’humble circumstances came for a 
 word of comfort, holding in trembling hands the tear-blotted 
 scrap of paper that told of the death of husband or son, and. 
 child as I was, I felt their smarting sense of injustice that their 
 loved ones had to go to the battle field while the relatively 
 well-to-do manufacturer and the merchant could buy sub- 
 stitutes. I do not need to argue, for you all know, that the 
 worst of England’s troubles in the present war have been 
 directly attributable to her initial reliance upon an inadequate 
 professional army, helped out by volunteers; while the superb 
 democratic solidarity of France is attributable to the equality 
 and justice of a universal training requirement, which puts all 
 men of high or low degrees on the same footing in the face of 
 suffering and fate. 
 
 So I make my second guess, which is that if we create a hir- 
 ed army of more than half a million men, and do not back it 
 up by some form of universal military training and require- 
 ment, we shall engender irritation and distrust; we shall un- 
 necessarily intensify the class struggle; and we shall disin- 
 tegrate such democratic solidarity as we yet enjoy. Whereas, 
 if we follow the examples of Switzerland and of France; re- 
 cognize the responsibility of every able bodied citizen for the 
 defense of his country; give every man a good, but not to© 
 exacting military training, we shall inspire all citizens with the 
 conviction that our institutions are founded in justice and 
 duty, and shall thereby invigorate our democracy. 
 
 These possible reactions of a larger military establishment 
 are, I conceive, the most important ones to take account of. 
 There are others' not to be ignored. I will content myself 
 with a brief consideration of two. 
 
 It is . generally acknowledged by unprejudiced persons that 
 military training may have an educational value. I count my- 
 self fortunate that in my college days I enjoyed such training 
 for a time, under the instruction of Captain, afterwards Gen- 
 eral, Thomas Ward of the Regular Army. I learned many val- 
 uable things, that, as it turned out, I should have had no other 
 opportunity in my life, to learn, and that the whole have con- 
 tributed to my physical health, my sense of social duty, and 
 my comprehension of the importance of efficiency in team 
 work. Incidentally I learned, I think, the moral no less 
 than the marching distinction between guiding right and guid- 
 ing left, and I have since been trying to “guide right.” 
 
 It is urged by men whose intelligence and distinction 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 17 
 
 carry great weight that all of the educational advantages of 
 military discipline may and should be obtained through other 
 means. Cannot setting up exercises, cooperative activity, 
 accuracy, regular habits, and all the rest be taught apart from 
 their associations with war? Undoubtedly they might be, 
 and they should be. Nevertheless, they are not, in our schools 
 or in our colleges. After lifelong association with educational 
 interests, I regret to have to say that I see very little reason 
 to expect that these disciplines will be effectively developed in 
 America unless the demand for them have come from the same 
 source that has demanded and obtained them in continental 
 Europe and in Australia. It is a thing one would rather not 
 say, but is is true; we are a loose-minded and a loose manner- 
 ed people. Money making, and fads invented by lunatics are 
 the only things we take seriously. I share the conviction 
 which has been growing in manj'- minds, that this deplorable 
 state of mind, and of behavior is in no small measure the 
 consequence of our fatuous custom of letting our young people 
 “go on the loose,” instead of holding them to tasks, duties, 
 discipline, and achievement. 
 
 As a fact of experience it seems not to be true that the 
 average man will do the things that he should do merely be- 
 cause they are expedient and right. He does them under 
 economic or social pressure. Economic pressure in the 
 United States by comparison with economic pressure in the 
 old world, has been relatively light; and our social pressure 
 is formless and relatively inefficient because, in cutting loose 
 from the aristocratic traditions and conventions of an older 
 world community we have, at the same time, cut loose fropi 
 a priceless heritage of human wisdom, in the vain thought that 
 the laws of the universe are suspended in the Western Hemi- 
 sphere. 
 
 Among the precepts of wisdom that we have been trying 
 desperately to ignore is the truth that human beings do not do 
 things for their health, bodily or spiritual until their health 
 is gone. They do things in the day’s work because they 
 have to; they do things for fun because they like to. The 
 well-set-up “cop.” the fireman, the middy, and the soldier, do 
 not take their exercises and their drills because they have 
 reasoned that such exertions are good for them; they take them 
 under social pressure, because they have to, on penalty of los- 
 ing their jobs. 
 
 Here we have the crux of the whole question of the edu- 
 
18 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 cational value of military training. Education as education, 
 school boys and college boys do not take seriously in this 
 country, and they will not take it seriously until they feel a 
 social pressure more effectively organized than any we now 
 have. Young men do take military training seriously, they 
 are set up and disciplined by it because they feel that it is 
 linked to tremendous realities, because it is a recognition of 
 the solemn fact that nations have been obliged to repel in- 
 vasion and put down insurrection, and that the necessity may 
 arise again. It is associated with convictions of obligation, 
 with love of country, with loyalty, and obedience. 
 
 Yes, with obedience. I am well aware that one half at 
 least of that opposition to preparedness which parades as 
 pacifism is neither more nor less than an anarchistic re- 
 volt against the teaching of obedience. I should be in sympathy 
 with it if obedience were now, as in other days it was, sub- 
 mission to irresponsible power or authority. But obedience 
 today, in America at least, as in Switzerland and in France, is 
 another thing. It is a loyal and rational acquiescence in the 
 general will; it is the act of being republican; it is the act of 
 being democratic as distinguished from the verbal democracy 
 of the humbug and the blatherskite. And this democracy of 
 act, of loyal obedience to the general will, of willing sacrifice 
 for the general good, is the republicanism that we need; it 
 is the democracy that we must have if we are to be a nation 
 respecting ourselves, and worthy of the world’s respect. 
 
 Upon the second of the possible minor reactions of a larger 
 military establishment than we have hitherto had in the United 
 States, I shall be still more brief. Is there danger that by 
 recognizing the importance of general military training, and 
 by adopting it, we shall become interested in miltary operations 
 for their own sake, and insensitive to the dreadfulness of 
 war? Granting that the maintenance of an adequate army 
 of defense, and a powerful navy would not in itself be mili- 
 tarism, should we, nevertheless, by creating such establish- 
 ments be entering upon a perilous course leading to militarism 
 in the end? My answer to this question is like the answers 
 that I have given to the questions already considered: I call 
 your attention to certain facts and discriminations. Where, 
 in all human history, do you find that republican and demo- 
 cratic populations have become militaristic? Where, in all 
 human history, do you find monarchies that have not become, 
 or tended to become militaristic? Militarism is not a simple 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 19 
 
 phenomenon; it is a highly complex product of many factors 
 intricately combined. Monarchism harks back to ancient days, 
 to reactionary instincts; it is intrenched in privilege; it resists 
 change. But mankind progresses. Progress endangers mon- 
 archy; it threatens it with overthrow. Monarchism as such 
 cares nothing for the populace, except as a base of supply and a 
 fighting force. Monarchy is excited by progress; it casts about 
 for policies to turn progress to its own account; militarism is 
 the sum of* the policies that it adopts. Militarism is, in fine, 
 a policy of monarchy excited by progress. Democracy has 
 nothing to gain by aggressive w’ar — but everything to lose. 
 Both instinctively and rationally democracies realize that such 
 is the truth. Their danger lies not at all in a possible drift 
 toward militarism; it lies rather in a failure to grasp the com- 
 plexities of international interests and relations as they stand 
 in the world today; in a failure to realize that good behavior 
 by the well-intentioned is no protection against aggression by 
 the ruthless. The danger of republics and democracies lies 
 in the immense difficulty of arousing democratic masses to 
 an appreciation of the importance of forecast, of preparation, 
 of timely organization, of the development of efficiency to 
 meet contingencies not only possible but, in the imperfect and 
 by no means righteous world of today, in the highest degree 
 probable. 
 
 What I have said about the probable reactions of a 
 larger military establishment on land applies, I think, in the 
 main to the question of the probable effect upon our domestic 
 life and institutions of a large naval establishment. We may 
 safely assume that the United States does not need the largest 
 navy in the world, or even a navy as large as that of Great 
 Britain. But we have long lines of coasts to protect, and the 
 outlying possessions of Alaska and our Pacific Islands. By 
 creating a navy second to that of Great Britain, and larger 
 than any other, we should merely measure our naval strength 
 according to the amount of work that it may be called upon 
 to perform. And I offer as my final guess in this discussion 
 that neither individual nor nation can undermine character or 
 endanger free institutions by foresight of events, evidence, 
 provision of applicances, and discipline of strength according 
 to the measure of responsibility and of obligation. It w'as not 
 an alarmist who said: “He that provideth not for his own. is 
 worse than an infidel.” 
 
20 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 UNIVERSAL MILITARY SERVICE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 By George Nasmyth, Ph. D., author of “Social Progress and the 
 Darwinian Theory; A Study of Force as a Factor in 
 Human Relations.” 
 
 If any person had predicted two years ago that the people 
 of America would be seriously discussing the adoption of universal 
 military service in 1917, he would have been looked upon as a 
 visionary. Put since the outbreak of the war in Europe, the rising 
 tide of reaction which resulted from the international reign of 
 terror; the increasing, power of militarism in the world; and the 
 great preparedness campaign which was carried to a successful con- 
 clusion in 1915 and 1916, have led step by step, to an increasing 
 agitation for universal m.ilitary service, as an essential part of the 
 system of national defense. 
 
 The advocates of universal military service are not limited to 
 military officers like General Leonard A. Wood or to i)artisans of a 
 "big stick” policy in dealing with other nations, like Colonel Roose- 
 velt. The grem'ing importance of the subject is witnessed by the 
 recent accession to their ranks of President Emeritus Charles W. 
 Eliot, widely known as a protagonist of democracy, and of Prof. 
 Ralph Barton Perry, who has attempted to show that democracy 
 has nothing to fear from universal military service. 
 
 Moreover, laws have actually been passed in the closing hours of 
 the session of the legislature in New York State providing for 
 military training in the high school and universal military service 
 for all young men between the ages of 18 and 21. Finally the 
 national defense act passed by the United States Congress in July, 
 1916, gives to the military authorities the power to “draft” men 
 into the army whenever voluntary enlistments shall be insufficient, 
 so that universal military service or conscription, to use a more 
 convenient term for the same idea, has been established as a legal 
 principle in the Empire State and in the nation. 
 
 The fact that these laws were passed in the closing hours of 
 legislature sessions, without adequate discussion and without com- 
 plete understanding on the part of the people on the issues in- 
 volved, makes it inevitable that the debate shall be re-opened in 
 the near future. The principle at issue is fundamental, in a democ- \ 
 racy, and the most widespread discusson of the subject should be^ 
 welcomed by all who believe in the power of an enlightened public 
 opinion to decide rightly on fundamental principles. 
 
 Universal Military Service and Preparedness 
 
 The case for universal military service rests on entirely dif- 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 21 
 
 fercnt grounds than does the general case for preparedness. If 
 vve did not have our other five lines of national defense which 
 protect us from any attack from European or Asiatic powers, 
 there might be some justification in this universal military service 
 in America. But with two oceans, one 3000 and the other 5000 
 miles in width ; the navy, the second largest in the world ; sub- 
 marines, which make the transport of large bodies of troops 
 across great distances a most hazardous undertaking ; automatic 
 and electric contact mines and coast fortifications, such as have 
 made it impossible for the Allies successfully to land troops on the 
 shores of Germany or even Turkey, even when the Allies were 
 backed by a naval force three or four times greater than that of 
 the Central European Powers — with all these first lines of defense, 
 not even the most fearful and extreme of our militarists pretend 
 that an army of seven to ten million men, which the system of 
 universal military service would give us after a few years of 
 building up reserves who had passed through the military machine, 
 would be necessary to repel an actual invasion on American soil, 
 IN'cn Roosevelt docs not demand an army of more than 250,0(X) 
 men and a reserve army of 400,000 men to meet his requirements 
 for an “adequate” national defense, and no one has seriously urged 
 that our preparedness needs require an army of universal service 
 proportions. 
 
 But the volunteer system will fail, it is argued. Even the 
 standing arm.y of 250,000 men and the militia of 400,000 provided 
 for in the national defense act cannot be raised by the voluntary 
 method. 
 
 An Army of Social Service 
 
 If this force is needed, it can be raised by the right kind of an 
 appeal to the American people. This involves a fundamental trans- 
 formation of an army from its old-world character of a machine 
 trained solely for wholesale murder, to a new world army of 
 social service. An army of labor trained in the work of refore- 
 station, of building great highways, instructed in methods of camp 
 sanitation and effective cooperation; from which every man would 
 come out a more useful member of society and a more productive 
 economic unit, would make a far different appeal to American 
 young men than the standing armiy on the present system, or even 
 a National Guard of the socially elite. With this employment in 
 useful production should go adequate compensation, just as there 
 goes adequate compensation for police work, for the work of fire- 
 men and life-savers. Under a really democratic system of social 
 service such as this, tliere will be no difficulty in finding all the 
 
22 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 men that are needed, without resort to conscription. 
 
 But since the case which can be made out for compulsory ser- 
 vice is so weak from the point of view of military necessity, its 
 advocates fall back on other arguments ; it will unify the nation ; 
 it will increase patriotism ; it wdll form greatly needed habits of 
 obedience and discipline. These arguments constitute, in brief, the 
 case for conscription, around which the great debate will rage, 
 and they are so important that they should be subjected to the most 
 searching analysis. 
 
 Democracy 
 
 Does universal military service involve equal sacrifice on the 
 part of rich and poor alike? If both are killed, of course, both have 
 made the last sacrifice, and so far as their individual live.s 
 are concerned, it is equal. But for the families of the two men 
 the difference is very great. For the family of the poor man, the 
 loss of the breadwinner means that the widow must go out to 
 work, that the children must be deprived of an opportunity for edu- 
 cation, that their whole lives must be limited because they did not 
 have the opportunities they would have had if their father had lived. 
 For the rich man, on the contrary, no such sacrifice on the part of 
 his family is involved. His wife in not compelled to go out and 
 work, his children are not deprived of the opportunity of receiving 
 a liberal education. If. a conscription of ivealth were advocated as 
 a companion measure to a conscription of lives, there might be 
 some justification for the argument on a basis of democracy. But 
 a conscription of lives alone, such as is advocated by the believers 
 in universal military service', is fundamentally unjust, if the 
 family, instead of the individual, is considered as the real unit 
 and the foundation of the nation’s life. 
 
 Even if the sacrifice of life is not involved, the sacrifice of time 
 required for universal military service imposes an unequal burden 
 upon the rich and poor. For the rich man, Plattsburg is an en- 
 joyable vacation, and a longer period of military service would not 
 be any great hardship, but for the poor man it means a definite 
 interruption of his economic life, the stopping of his earnings, a 
 postponement of the time when he can afford to marry, an inter- 
 ruption of his difficult task of getting foothold in his trade or small 
 business. In Germany, it is estimated that the economic loss in- 
 volved by taking a young man from the farm, for example, is 
 equivalent to about $5C0 a year, and the father has to hire Polish 
 or Italian laborers to take the place of the son who goes to serve 
 for two years in the Kaiser’s army, but for the rich man, military 
 service offers a career, an entrance to the ranks of soicety, the 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 23 
 
 opening of positions in* the government service and educational 
 advantages of technical training in the officers’ college. No element 
 of equality of sacrifice can be discovered in the two cases. 
 
 Those who believe that class distinctions can be broken down 
 and democracy created by regimenting men into masses and forcing 
 them to drill together, have missed the central idea of democracy 
 which is based on the principle of voluntary cooperation, of equality 
 of opportunity, and the abolition of caste privileges. Those who 
 believe that dem.ocracy can be imposed from without by force and 
 point to the examples of France and Switzerland, should analyze 
 the condition in those countries more deeply. As soon as we 
 penetrate below the surface, we find in each of them a great con- 
 flict between the forces of militarism and democracy. This con- 
 flict rages in all countries where universal military service is 
 established, and it has been revealed in all its bitterness by the 
 vivid, lightning flashes of the Dreyfus affair in France, the 
 Zabern incident in Germany, and the Ulster crisis in the British 
 Army — all parallel instances of successful struggles for the sup- 
 remacy of the military over the civil powers of governm.ent. In 
 France the revanche movement which brought al)out the Russo- 
 French Alliance, the three year conscription law of 1912, and the 
 outcome of the Morocco crisis of 1911, all represented victories of 
 the military caste over the forces of democracy and the popular 
 government. 
 
 Switzerland has not had an aggressive militarism of the Pan- 
 Germ.an type, it is true, but this is not due to any lack of desire 
 on the part of the Swiss military officers who are like military 
 officers the world over. It has been due to the fact that Switzer- 
 land is a small country and any propaganda for a career of 
 “national destiny”, or the conquest of the world would render its 
 advocates ludicrous. The military spirit, hov^ever, and its funda- 
 mental opposition to democracy is essentially the same in Swit- 
 zerland as in Germ.any or France, as is witnessed, for example, by 
 the testimony of Swiss Social Democrats at the International 
 Socalist Congress in Stuttgart and other centers. 
 
 Everywhere militarism has been the most formidable enemy of 
 democracy. For every million soldiers you must have at least 
 30,000 officers, and these 30,0C0 officers must make the military pro- 
 fession their life work. They must cultivate an iron will and a 
 .spirit of domination as essential elements of success, and neces- 
 sarily they chafe with impatience at the discussions and restraints 
 of democracy and the civil powers of government. Altogether 
 they constitute a source of ever present danger to the peace of a 
 
24 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 nation which is powerful enough to be a menace to the world. 
 
 The testimony of representative British and German state- 
 men — Viscount Bryce, former Ambassador to America, and of 
 Bismarck himself, is illumunating in this connection. 
 
 The reason why we have had one hundred years of peace in 
 the English speaking world, according to Viscount Bryce, is be- 
 cause we have had so little militarism in America in the past. In 
 the introduction to Prof. Dunning’s book on “The British Empire 
 and the United States”, Bryce says the during a number of years 
 the American masses would not have opposed war with England 
 
 but “fortunately the country was free from a 
 
 pernicious military caste which v/orked such frightful evil in 
 Europe, being indeed driven to desire opportunities for practising 
 the work for which the profession exists.” 
 
 This is the testimony of a British statesman. On the other 
 hand Bismarck in his “Reflections and Reminiscences,” Chapter 
 XXH, tells us definitely how the Prussian militarists tried to push 
 him into war, how he used this militarist pressure to throw the 
 country into war with Austria in 1866 and with France in 1870. 
 and how he had to resist the powerful militarist pressure towards 
 war in 1867, in 1875 and on other occasions. Bismarck says on page 
 102, volume II: 
 
 It is natural that in the staff of the army not only younger 
 active officers, but likewise experienced stratgeists, should feel the 
 need of turning to account the efficiency of the troops led by them, 
 and their own capacity to lead, and of making them prominent iti 
 history. It would be a matter of regret if tliis effect of the military 
 spirit did not exist in the army ; the task of keeping its results 
 within such Lmits as the nations’ netd of peace can just'y claim 
 is the duty of the political, not the military, Iieads of the state. 
 
 That at the time of the Luxemlmrg question, during the crisis 
 of 1875, invented by Gortschakoff and France, and even down to 
 the m.ost recent timies, the staff and its leaders have allowed them- 
 selves to be led astray and to endanger peace, lies in the very spirit 
 of the insitution. 
 
 if the breakdown of civilization in Europe has anything to 
 teach Amierica, surely it is the danger of any increase in the forces 
 or the philosoph.y of militarism. 
 
 Discipline 
 
 The second argument for universal military service is that it 
 will promote discipline. It will teach obedience and respect for 
 authority, it is urged, and these elements are greatly needed in 
 .A.merican life. The trouble here is the kind of discipline which 
 military service provides. It is a discipline enforced from without 
 and breaks down as soon as the restraining force is removed. The 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 25 
 
 whole object of military training is to secure instantaneous obed- 
 ience without thought, to make a m:an a part of an automatic 
 military machine so that if he is ordered to sink the Lusitania or 
 destroy Louvain, he will obey instantly and unquestioningly. 
 Such unthinking obedience is far removed from that self-imposed 
 discipline, that respect for laws because they have been enacted by 
 common consent and for the welfare of the people;^ of freedom of 
 discussion, of speech, of press, of assembly, and of concience, 
 which are the foundation stones of a self-governing democracy. 
 The history of Prussia illustrates clearly the inevitable results of 
 military discipline. At first, the German people opposed conscrip- 
 tion bitterly, but after a few generations of mien had been put 
 through the military miachine and taught the right kind of obed- 
 ience, all opposition ceased. Germiany becam.e a servile state. More 
 and more power was given into the hands of the military caste, and 
 the events which have occurred since August 1, 1914, have been 
 well called “The Nemesis of docility.” 
 
 National Unity 
 
 The third argument is that it will promote Americanization, 
 it will heal all our divisions of race and nationality, eliminate the 
 hyphen, and unify the American people. 
 
 The experience of European nations which have tried to meet 
 similar problems by this method is in flat contradition to such an 
 assumption. In Austria militarism has reigned with undisputed 
 sway, but universal military service for generations has failed to 
 unite Germ^ans and Bohemians, Poles, and Czechs and Slave in the 
 ideal unity which our militarists picture for us as the inevitable 
 result of conscription. In fact, it was a matter of coimmon know- 
 ledge that the death of Emiperor Franz Joseph was to be the 
 signal for a simultaneous revolution in which all the races of 
 Austria should seek freedom from the unity thus imposed upon 
 them by conscription and force, and only the outbreak of the great 
 war has prevented the disintegration of the Austria Empire. It 
 may be that war has a unifying influence and that the Austrian 
 Empire will be solidified by the terrible ordeal through which it is 
 passing. That rcm.ains to be seen. But in any case, I do not 
 understand the advocates of universal military service to be urg- 
 ing war as a remedy for the lack of unity in our national life. 
 The history of Poland, of the subject races and nationalities of 
 Russia, and of Turkey is a refutation of the claim that national 
 unity can be secured by universal military service. 
 
 America needs unity, a national consciousness, and a national 
 
26 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 will, but no reactionary, militaristic, obsolete, old world instru- 
 ment, such as conscription, can unify the American people. 
 
 Patriotism 
 
 A fourth argument for universal military service is that it will 
 promote patriotism, it will teach a man to be ready to sacrifice 
 himself for others and to lay down his life for hiscountry, in the 
 service of a great idea. The difficulty with this plan is that there 
 are various kinds of patriotism and the tendency of militarism is 
 to em.phasize the wrong kind — the patriotism which corresponds to 
 a narrow nationalism and to Jingoism and the patriotism which is 
 based upon the hatred of other parts of the human race who hap- 
 pen to live the other side of a boundary line. Patriotism and 
 nationalism of the wrong kind are defeating their own ends in 
 Europe. For the sake of our country, as well as for humanity, 
 we must develop another type of patriotism than universal military 
 service has given us in Germany or any of the European countries, 
 a patriotism which will look upon America as a part of the world 
 and will take pride in the contributions which America can make 
 to the family of nations. Independence for the sake of independ- 
 ence, a new nation merely that there might l)e one more army and 
 navy in the world, was no part of the purpose of the founders of 
 the Republic. As Henry Adams said of the great author of the 
 Declaration of Independence: 
 
 Jefferson aspired beyond the ambition of a nationality, and 
 embraced in his view the whole future of man. That the United 
 States should become a nation like France, England or Russia, or 
 should conquer the world like Rome, was no part of his scheme. 
 He wished to begin a new era. Hoping for a time when the 
 world's ruling interests should cease to be local and should become 
 universal ; when questions of boundary and nationality should be- 
 come insignificant; when armies and navies should be reduced to 
 the work of police, — he set himself to the task of governing with 
 
 this golden age in view He would not consent to build 
 
 up a new nationality merely to create more navies and armies, to be 
 perpetuate the crimes and follies of Europe; the central govern- 
 ment at Washington should not be permitted to indulge in the 
 miserable ambitions that had made the Old World a hell and 
 frustrated the hopes of humanity. 
 
 We need greatly a rebirth of true patriotism, just as we need 
 a more fundamental democracy, deeper national unity, more self- 
 dicipline, but universal military service is not the panacea for these 
 ills. A true American patriotism can be created only by return to 
 the great principles of the founders of the Republic, a new vision 
 of America in the world, a great world task such as the establish- 
 ment of a League to Enforce Peace, calling for the sacrifice of old 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 27 
 
 p ovincialisms and outworn traditions in the service of humanity, 
 as a whole. In this way, under the great constructive leadership 
 of a world statesman, America can be unified. li this way we may 
 recover our vision of democracy and we may lead the world into 
 a higher patriotism, purified in the very furnace of this world cri- 
 sis. By these new paths which lead out into a future full of hope 
 and service, it may be that in the coming years the soul of 
 America will be born again into a new and larger life, but never by 
 the path of conscription, of fear and servile obedience, and the 
 mechanical methods of militarism. 
 
 A much deeper principle is involved than is usually discussed 
 in connection with universal military service : What kind of a 
 society do we wish to live in? For, if the principle of compulsion 
 is accepted in the case of military service, it must logically be ac- 
 cepted for service in munition factories, on the railroads, in coal 
 mines and in all the industrial and economic life upon which modern 
 wars depend. In other words, once having granted the principle of 
 compulsion on the ground of military necessity, all the fundamen- 
 tal principles of dem.ocracy must be sacrificed and our country 
 must be “Prussianized” from within. Freedom of speech, freedom 
 of thought, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press are well 
 opposed to military effectiveness and must disappear step by step 
 if freedom of conscience, the advance trench of democracy, is 
 carried by the militarists ; for in the last analysis, universal military 
 service means conscription of conscience. 
 
 The new political perseuction represented by the adoption of 
 conscription differs from the old religious persecution in this: 
 whereas, in the Middle Ages the heretic could save his life by 
 keeping his mouth closed and his opinions to himself, in the 
 modern political persecution of Twentieth Century militarism, the 
 heretic who may believe an aggressive foreign policy is unjust, or 
 a war which his country has declared is unprovoked, is compelled 
 not only to keep his opinions to himself, but is forced to go out 
 and kill his fellowmen against whom he may have no cause for 
 enmity whatever. 
 
 America is the only great nation left in the world in which 
 militarism is not enthroned and the principle of conscription 
 established. In order to defend our institutions and our democ- 
 racy from imaginary dangers from without, we are urged to sur- 
 render to this much more real and formidable enemy of militarism 
 and conscription from within. Upon the outcome of the great de- 
 bate on “Conscription vs. Democracy” depends the question of 
 whether the last fortress of democracy in the world and the 
 
28 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 greatest adventure in human history shall go down in failure. All 
 patriotic Americans, all who believe that America has a mission 
 and a great message of democracy to give to the world should en- 
 roll themselves in defense of America’s freedom and domestic in- 
 stitutions presenting a united front against this attempt to militarize 
 the whole American people. 
 
 Sometime in the future, if Europe remains an armed cainji 
 after this war, and if militarism is enthroned in the world, it may 
 become inevitable for America to adopt conscription, and, in 
 Jefferson’s words “to penpetuate the crimes and follies of Europe’’, 
 “to indulge in the miserable ambitions that had made the Old 
 World a hell and frustrated the hopes of humanity.” But if con- 
 scription ever docs become inevitable, let us not add blasphemy 
 to our other crimes by adopting militarism in the name of democracy. 
 No, let us do it with the clear knowledge that we are dealing a 
 death blow to the greatest experiment in democracy the human 
 race has ever tried. Let us do itwith the consciousness that we 
 have participated in a great world tragedy, and that, with the 
 triumph of militarism in the New World as well as the Old, we 
 shall have seen government of the people, by the people, and for 
 the people, perish from tlie earth. 
 
 UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 H. L. SCOTT, Chief of Staff, 1916. 
 
 Universal military training has been the corner stone 
 upon which has been built every republic in the history of the 
 world, and its abandonment the signal for decline and oblitera- 
 tion. This fact was fully recognized by the makers of our 
 Constitution and evidenced in our early laws. A regular army 
 was regarded as inconsistent with the principles of free govern- 
 ment, dangerous to free institutions, and apart from the nec- 
 essities of the times. All were imbued with a patriotism which 
 would make them stand shoulder to shoulder in upholding the 
 laws, and in the defense of the common country, sharing equal- 
 ly the blessings of peace and the hardships of war. The law 
 required every able-bodied male between 18 and 45 years to 
 keep himself provided with rifle and ammunition and to attend 
 muster, and was in effect compulsory military service. They 
 were called together for training at muster time only, for the 
 outdoor life of the early settlers was considered sufficient 
 training for any military duty they were then liable to be call- 
 ed upon to perform. Unfortunately the doctrine of States 
 rights crept in to prevent the enforcement of Federal law. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY 'PRAINING 
 
 29 
 
 and each State was left to build up its militia. The Regular 
 Army existed as a small force to protect the western march 
 of civilization from Indian foray, and notwithstanding its 
 brilliant record, the attitude of a great mass of our people 
 continued hostile to the soldier, so much so that several States 
 and Congress have in recent times had to pass law's to insure 
 respect to the uniform and its wearers in public places. Some 
 of our States, while extending the right to vote to aliens of 
 a few month’s residence who have declared their intention 
 to become citizens, deny it absolutely to persons in the mili- 
 tary and navy service of the United States, putting them in 
 a class with the criminal and insane. 
 
 It is vital that our ideas with reference to military ser- 
 vice be regenerated. For our small army we go into the labor 
 market for recruits. When the demand for labor is lax, 
 the stipend of the soldier attracts; when the daily wage goes 
 up, recruiting is at its lowest ebb. There is no appeal to 
 patriotism, no appeal for the individual to obtain military 
 training as the highest duty of his citizenship. Enlistment is 
 held out as a job in which the individual gets small pay but 
 is well cared for, with an outdoor, wholesome life and re- 
 tirement on three-quarters pay and allowances after thirty years 
 of service, and it is accepted as a job. This view was given 
 added emphasis by the last session of Congress. The nation- 
 al defense act prohibits enlisted men from engaging in any 
 civil occupations, whether for pay or otherwise, that would 
 put them in competition w'ith men in civil life. The fine 
 
 quality of our enlisted men is due to the care in accepting 
 recruits and to the development of character which service 
 under the flag directed by competent leaders gives men, when 
 the realization comes that their lives are committed to the 
 upholding of the laws of the Union. The generally accept- 
 ed idea that the annual per cent of desertions is a serious 
 
 reflection upon the discipline and training in the Army is 
 in serious error. The Army will show a smaller per cent of 
 men leaving their contract and job than any business enter- 
 prise in the country. The annual return of civil life of 
 
 thousands who have completed their enlistments with their 
 views of life settled, to become successful citizens is a superb 
 testimonial to the efficiency of the machine, as well as are the 
 thousands who are inspired by the life as to take up the duty 
 of a soldier as their vocation. 
 
 A few years ago w'e reached across the seas and assumed 
 
30 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 reponsibilities of insular possessions and alien races. In the 
 interest of advancing civilization we have built the Panama 
 Canal. We have given a fiat to the world that on this 
 hemisphere at least must survive the principle that rulers derive 
 their just powers from the consent of the ruled. We claim 
 an enlightened civilization of over a hundred million people 
 and stand the richest country in the world. As a nation we 
 are devoted to the peaceful vocationas of industrial and com- 
 mercial life. We treat others as we desire to be treated. 
 Few have knowledge of war and fewer still any training 
 of its rigors. We are entering fully into the affairs of the 
 world and as the greatest of nations we must be ready to up- 
 hold and protect our institutions. 
 
 It is fundamental with a free people that equal opportuni- 
 ties and protection under the law brings equal responsibili- 
 ty in upholding and maintaining the law. Each owes to the 
 body politic his duty not only in civil affairs but also in the 
 defense of the nation. But with us thousands have been in- 
 culcated with the belief that wars were to be ended and that 
 the United States should, as the exponent of the highest 
 civilization, set an example in a minimum military prepared- 
 ness, and some even advocated the Army and Navy be dis- 
 banded. The country became apathetic in the training of its 
 people for national defense. But the awful cauldron of war 
 into which Europe was suddenly plunged has served to awaken 
 us in a measure to a realization that we must believe in our- 
 selves, and as the exponents of a democracy that should regen- 
 erate the political system of the world, we must be ready 
 to hold our place in the councils of the world, and to do this we 
 must be physically fit, or we shall be brushed aside by the vig- 
 orous manhood of other races who sacrifice self that the 
 nation may live. 
 
 During the months of Many and June hundreds of thous- 
 ands marched in socalled preparedness parades to the plaudits 
 of onlookers. But when the militia was called out in June to 
 protect our border, it was with the utmost difficulty that its 
 units were recruited to the small number required, and some 
 were never filled. The spirit was rife to let somebody else 
 do it. Not only is there evidence of the volunteer spirit be- 
 ing moribund, but the States have for 3^ears been unable to 
 make an efficient showing with the militia, even with the gen- 
 erous assistance of the General Government in qualified in- 
 structors and supplies. It would seem that the self-reliance 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 31 
 
 of the individual, like that of the States, had given way to de- 
 pendence upon others. The fine volunteer spirit of the 
 States militia was injured in the demand for Federal pay in 
 time of peace. It sounded the knell of patriotic military train- 
 ing for individuals and commercialized the highest duty that 
 a State can demand from its people. We have fallen away 
 from the teaching of the Fathers, for there is no longer in- 
 stilled into our people the fundamental doctrine that every 
 man owes a military as well as a civil obligation to his gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 A young man between 18 and 21 is at the least earning 
 capacity of his career. It is a time of anxiety to the parent 
 and uncertainty for the son. During these years few settle- 
 into their life’s vocation. They are an expense to their- 
 parents; their average earnings will not pay for their board and 
 clothes. They can be given military training without the 
 slightest disruption of business. The stabilizing effect of 
 military discipline and intensive training upon such young men; 
 would be of utmost value in forming character, and thereby 
 a foundation for their life’s work. They would become an 
 asset of incalcuable value to the nation, not only in time of 
 emergency, but in the recruitment to industrial life of the 
 thousands returned from military pursuits improved mnetally, 
 morally, and physically by the training. The hundreds of 
 military schools in the country are evidence of the faith of 
 thousands of parents that their boys are better fitted for the 
 responsibilities of life by the elementary discipline and drills 
 therein received. The most important function of our regular 
 establishment should be to make it a real training school for 
 our young men, and thereby inspire them with the spirit of 
 patriotism and sense of duty and responsibility with which each 
 generation must be imbued if we are to continue our high 
 mission as a nation. 
 
 I shall not attempt in this report to evolve a system to 
 carry out so important a work. It is believed that the aver- 
 age parent would gladly welcome the opportunity for mili- 
 tary training for their boys between the ages of 18 and 21. As 
 the training would be educational, there should be no re- 
 muneration for service, but the Government should stand all 
 the expense. 
 
 If we are to continue to compete with the wage of labor 
 for our soldiers the cost will be enormous if we are to get 
 the men. We hire police, we hire firemen, but there is a 
 
32 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 repugnance to the idea that we must continue to commit our- 
 selves to no military resource other than that of hiring citizens 
 to accept military training and to commit our future to such 
 inadequate defense. 
 
 The justice of, as well as the necessity for, universal 
 training is recognized in section 79 of the national defense 
 act, which prescribes that in time of war, “If for any reason 
 there shall not be enough voluntary enlistments to keep the 
 reserve battalions at the prescribed strength, a sufficient num- 
 ber of the unorganized militia shall be drafted into the ser- 
 vice of the United States to maintain each such battalion at 
 the proper strength.” This provision is intended to keep the 
 National Guard units that have been sent into the field at war 
 strength and is one of the best provisions regarding the Na- 
 tional Guard in the bill. What I am contending for is 
 that the principle recognized as applying to time of war should 
 apply equally to time of peace, so that all of the youth of the 
 country who are physically qualified for military service should 
 be given thorough military training and discipline under com- 
 petent officers, and noncommissioned officers, so that on the 
 outbreak of war they will be able without much additional 
 training to render efficient service. To send men into battle 
 who have not been given this thorough training and discipline 
 is not only a useless waste of our resources in men but, to 
 anyone who understands anj^thing of the realities of modern 
 war, convicts the people of the country who are responsible 
 for such proceeding of criminal neglect. 
 
 MILITARY TRAINING IN THE MAKING OF MEN 
 
 FREDERICK J. LIBBY 
 
 (Note: Arguments as to the value of universal military 
 training for making men are being vigorously pressed to- 
 day as to require us to take notice of the effort now being 
 made in certain influential quarters to fasten upon us a per- 
 manent policy of conscription after the war. We must espe- 
 cially be on our guard against the danger of arguing from the 
 apparent consequences of the selective draft in time of war to 
 the probable consequences of that system in time of peace. 
 Obviously in war time there is an idealism and devotion that 
 go far to transform the drudgery, autocracy and mechanical 
 rigidity of the military machine. The writer of this article 
 deals only with conscription as a permanent policy and not 
 with the wisdom of the selective draft in time of war.) 
 
 Those who advocate the adoption of universal military 
 training as a permanent policy for the United tSates have not 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 33 
 
 based their contention solely on the necessity of building up 
 a powerful military machine^ a question which the outcome of 
 our “war to end war” may settle forever. They have ad- 
 vanced also certain claims as to the value of military training in 
 the making of men which have gained apparently wide ac- 
 ceptance. 
 
 It has been affirmed first that military training includes 
 patriotism, secondly that it teaches obedience, third, that it 
 fosters democracy, and fourth that it develops the physical 
 well-being of youth. Inasmuch as our youth need more 
 patriotism, more obedience, more democracy ,and better phy- 
 sique, many Americans would be willing to give military train- 
 ing a permanent place in the new world order if they were 
 assured that it is the best teacher of these great virtues. 
 Consequently, speeches upon the subject have been largely 
 taken up with the presentation of these virtues as by-pro- 
 ducts of a military system. That they are important could 
 not be disputed; and that they are by-products of military 
 training has been accepted almost without discussion by the 
 unthinking American public. Let us consider them one by 
 one and see how far they bear scrutiny. 
 
 Does Military Training Make Good Patriots 
 
 First of all, does military training inculcate patriotism? 
 From the confidence with which this assertion has been put 
 forward one would suppose that it cannot be denied. In a 
 superficial sense it does inculcate patriotism. The recent 
 draft has made men who never before had been conscious 
 of their obligation to America realize that they were its citi- 
 zens and that as citizens they owe their country a debt. 
 Poles, Lithuanians, Englishmen, Germans, Italians, Greeks, all 
 have been forced to choose between conflicting loyalties and 
 to confess their true allegience. Outwardly, at least, they 
 have renounced all nationalities except that which made them 
 .A.mericans. Those between twenty-one and thirty-one have 
 entered the army. This sacrifice, itis assumed, has trans- 
 formed all who were indifferent into patriots. 
 
 Now it is probable that such a transformation has taken 
 place in very many instances, but it must not be forgotten 
 that this was in time of war. The newspapers of the country 
 have united to impress upon the minds of the doubtful the 
 urgency of the need. But remove the urgency, let peace 
 once more descend upon us, and is it supposed that this forced 
 
34 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 Americanism would have similar results? Is it not well 
 known that hundreds of thousands of our immigrants left their 
 native lands through hatred of this very service? They hated 
 it because in time of peace it seemed to them an unwarrant- 
 able interference with their normal lives. Clearly in them it 
 did not at that time breed patriotism. It led to their ex- 
 patriation. They preferred to become exiles from home for- 
 ever rather than submit to it. Consequently, is it not safe to 
 conclude that in a time of universal peace the great major- 
 ity of the American people would not give cheerful service to 
 a country whose urgent need of it' they failed to see? In 
 the case of many, military training would kindle not patriot- 
 ism, but the fires of discontent. 
 
 Quite as serious an objection to military training as a 
 teacher of patriotism is found in the narrowness of the 
 patriotism that it engenders. I am not sure that it even 
 deserves the name of patriotism in the twentieth century. 
 It is rather a jealous, tribal sensitiveness, an intense national- 
 ism which verges on arrogance. The military patriot be- 
 comes suddenly punctilious about “national honor” defined in 
 medieval terms. Jostle me and you must fight me, provoke 
 me and I will take your life. This spirit is fertile soil for 
 breeding international suspicion. This is the patriotism that 
 fosters war. It tends to destroy the very nation that it 
 swears to defend, a fact to which Germany today bears elo- 
 quent witness. 
 
 Now true patriotism, I take it, is a broad and comprehen- 
 sive virtue. It is constructive. It is intelligent. It seeks 
 to promote the welfare of the State in all its complex life. 
 Farmer, factory worker, financier, boy scout, and college pro- 
 fessor, miner and poet and preacher, cartoonist, and nurse, 
 all serve the State within their vocations, and without military 
 training they have been proving their patriotism. More than 
 this, is not the true patriot active in the public service outside 
 of his vocation? The conscientious use of the ballot is the 
 least of his obligations as a citizen. His bank account and 
 his lime alike will always be at the command of the State 
 in so far as his means will allow. If desirable public im- 
 provements demand a higher tax rate, the patriot will pay it 
 cheerfully. He will accept public office as a public trust, and 
 far from seeking private profit in so doing, he will avoid 
 scrupulously even the appearance of fraud or simony. 
 
 This larger patriotism military training has never in- 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 •35 
 
 culcated. We have never asked that it should even try to teach 
 it. Who has ever expected a soldier to pay his taxes more 
 willingly than a civilian does? Who expects him to show in 
 civil life the humble, earnest spirit in which he entered the 
 army — as one who gives, not one who gets? Who expects 
 him to set a lifelong example of disinterested public service? 
 One has but to recall the history of pension legislation to per- 
 ceive that the soldier can learn a kind of patriotism which does 
 not cover his life as a civilian. A brave man will die for 
 his country, but he must have many other virtues besides 
 bravery if he will live for it; and it is the sum of these 
 virtues that we may call the twentieth century patriotism. 
 
 Nor can love for America on the part of our immigrant 
 population be taught by soldiering. The world is so con- 
 stituted as to admit of no short cuts. There is only one way to 
 make an immigrant love America. He must find America 
 lovable. An exploited Pole will not be made a patriot by 
 marching him up and down. A garment worker who is always 
 hungry needs proper wages to make him feel patriotic. Con- 
 ditions in the factory and the mine must breed in our immi- 
 grants love for the country of their adoption or they will soon 
 be found among the rebels, made by military training only the 
 more dangerous. True, they may be cowed into subservience 
 for a while, they may be kept under by methods which we 
 have come to associate with Prussianism, but loyal and free 
 Americans they will never be. America at her best means 
 liberty, opportunity, democracy, brotherhood, service. Only 
 he who has found these has reached the true America. Only 
 he who is experiencing here an unwonted richness of life 
 will feel the patriotic fervor which we should like every newcom- 
 er to our shores to know. 
 
 Does Military Training Teach Obedience? 
 
 Secondly, does military training teach obedience? Here 
 again the unthinking answer is that the question admits of no 
 controversy. Surely, if military training teaches anything, 
 it teaches obedience. From dawn to dawn, whether in camp 
 or out of it, the soldier is made aware of the inexorable 
 power of the military machine. To it he must yield or he 
 will be crushed under it. It knows no mercy and shows no 
 favors. It is as inflexible as Death. How, then, it is 
 asked, can a boy pass through this machine and fail to learn 
 obedience? 
 
 I 
 
36 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 Yes, he learns it, — that is, most boys do, — although the 
 prisons and guardhouses betray its failure with an appreciable 
 number. But what kind of obedience does he learn? Is 
 it not a kind that enlightened public sentiment has rejected 
 from both school and home probably forever? Even those 
 who regard as a golden age the time when father and school- 
 master were absolute monarchs and Maintained their authori- 
 ty with rod and cane, do not seriously look for its return. 
 It was part of a system of blind obedience resting on brute 
 force which free men everywhere are challenging. The re- 
 duction of men to unthinking, irresponsible, automatic mach- 
 ines has value only for certain military purposes. From 
 every other point of view such discipline is the exact opposite 
 of what is generally regarded as desirable. Were this not 
 the case, why should we stop with a little military training 
 for our young men? Should we not all live better under 
 martial law? Belgium knows the answer. 
 
 Does Military Training Make Good Citizens? 
 
 In the third place, militarism is said to foster democracy. 
 It has been described as “the great leveller.” Rich and poor' 
 are forced to sleep in the same tent, the refined and the 
 vulgar to march shoulder to shoulder, and presto! democracy 
 has arrived! This blind juxtaposition of the uncongenial we 
 admit to be a feature of the life of the rank and file under 
 military compulsion. We grant even more. Mother’s dar- 
 ling at camp will get the sugar only after his messmates at the 
 table have licked their spoons and dipped them into it. Clean- 
 liness and health of body and mind will be inevitably ex- 
 posed to the contagion of that which is vicious and unclean. 
 No, it cannot be denied that military service in the ranks will 
 prove a great leveller, 
 
 This does not establish, however, the democracy of mili- 
 tary training. The usual difference in the status of the 
 educated and the uneducated, of the rich and the poor, of the 
 socially “superior” and the socially “inferior’ obtains just as 
 much in the army as in any other profession. College men. 
 for instance can always rise from, “democracy” in which they 
 find themselves by studying for commissions. Moreover, 
 the “paper work,” the figuring, etc., required of commissioned^, 
 officers is now so exacting that it is not easy in these days for 
 privates ever to be promoted to the coveted positions higher 
 up. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 .17 
 
 Only the self-deceived and the foolish would look tor 
 democracy in the most rigid type of aristocracy known to 
 man. The commander of an army, even under the most favor- 
 able conditions, is necessarily an autocrat, in comparison with 
 whom the Czar of all the Russias wielded a wooden scepter. 
 In time of war, he crowds even God from his throne, abro- 
 gates civil and moral laws, and becomes, to his army, mind, 
 will, and even conscience. Below him in descending scale 
 his officers share his absolutism. What place, then, in a mili- 
 tary machine is there for democracy? 
 
 Nor can it be claimed that even if all were to be privates, 
 the army would ofifer the only place where widely separated 
 classes of American society can meet. A doctor’s profession 
 brings him into close touch with rich and poor and high and 
 low, and gives him better opportunity really to know men 
 than does the loose talk of the barracks. What is true of 
 medicine is true of the law, the ministry , business, engineering, 
 politics, and many other forms of civil activity. They offer 
 better opportunities of knowing one’s fellows on sides worth 
 knowing than does military training under peace conditions. 
 The limits to the breadth of almost any reputable civilian’s 
 acquaintance are time and inclination, and this will be in- 
 creasingly true as we democratize our industrial life. 
 
 Does Military Training Insure Good Health? 
 
 In the fourth place, military training is said to develop 
 men physically. After the testimony which our drafted men 
 have brought home in their own persons, it cannot be denied 
 that military training has improved the health and physique of 
 the vast majority of its recipients under the recent draft. 
 Outdoor life with several hours of exercise will work wonders 
 though all the laws of hygiene be disregarded, and though 
 the exercise taken be the poorest that could be chosen. This 
 is true especially if only picked men are to be recipients of 
 the training and those who need it most can be disregarded. 
 No one will deny that outdoor life is beneficial, but will any 
 one affirm that military drill is the healthiest form of outdoor 
 life? 
 
 Dr. Dudley Sargent, director of the Harvard gymnasium, 
 has proven the manual of arms to offer none of the essential 
 elements of a good physical exercise. The training it gives 
 is one-sided, it lacks interest — at any rate in times of peace — 
 it does not quicken adequately the respiration or the circula- 
 
38 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 tion of the blood, it requires identically the same of all, it im- 
 pairs the tone of the muscles by prolonged tension, it has little 
 or no value as training for the central nerve system, and it 
 offers slight opportunity for the display of coolness, courage, 
 judgment, and presence of mind, for struggle, and cooperation, 
 and loyalty, qualities all of which are fostered on the other 
 hand by our national sports. Probably time could not be 
 spent out of doors in any conceivable form af activity that 
 would be productive of so little physical good as that which, 
 is devoted to military drill, using the term in the restricted 
 sense. 
 
 Regarding other features of up-to-date military training 
 such as the bayonet drill and trench construction, it is only 
 fair to say that they furnish the strong with excellent means 
 of further physical development. Little account, however, 
 can be made in the inflexible system of the army of dif- 
 ferences between individuals. Within roughly fixed limits, 
 all are forced to undergo the same physical strain day after 
 day provided, they are well enough to be out of bed. No- 
 where else in modern life is blind rigidity of requirement 
 combined with a severity that exacts the full pound of flesh 
 even from the strong. 
 
 One more factor in the situation cannot be ignored, and 
 that is the effect of military training may fairly be expected 
 to have upon the physique of the soldiers after their return 
 to civil life. Suppose, for example, that a mill-hand after living 
 outof doors for six months or a year returns to the confine- 
 ment of his former life for ten or even eight hours a day. Is 
 it not likely that after a few week either he will abandon the 
 mill and be lost to the industry that needs him, or that he will 
 gradually fall back into the unhealthly rut from which he 
 was temporarily withdrawn and be really worse off than before? 
 As a practical measure w'ould not the shortening of the work- 
 ing day of all factory workers to a maximum of eight hours 
 with a great extension of the garden movement, of sunset 
 baseball leagues, of park and playground, for the months 
 when men and boys can be out of doors, and of municipal 
 gymnasium privileges and swimming pools for winter use do 
 more to improve their health permanently than a year in the 
 army, even assuming, what is by no means promised, that 
 nearly all of them would be able to pass its physical examina- 
 tions and get in? If it is believed that this important matter 
 of physical health cannot be left to individual initiative but 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 39 
 
 must be assured another of the rapidly increasing State 
 regulations, would not a great industrial army digging sewers 
 and irrigation ditches instead of trenches, building roads and 
 bridges instead of barbed wire entanglements, and practicing 
 forestry from the scientific rather than the military view- 
 point, without the injurious and wasteful military drill, offer 
 all the physical benefits accruing from army life and at the 
 same time escape its inherent evils? 
 
 The Summing Up 
 
 Military training, like State socialism, would fain be con- 
 sidered the cure of all our nation’s ills. No such panacea 
 exists. That our boys need better physique, and better habits 
 of obedience, and more democracy, and sounder patriotisiti 
 may readily be admitted. How to lift them to this higher 
 plane of living despite the downward pull of inertia and self- 
 ishness is a question that has not yet been adequately an- 
 swered. It will not be solved by any program. It is a spirit- 
 ual program and no mechanical device will meet it. Educa- 
 tion and inspiration will solve it, but their effectiveness depends 
 upon the sincere cooperation of all Americans. Patriotism, 
 for example, can be taught by the school and the press, but the 
 factory and the mine also must engender it. In fostering 
 intelligent obedience no substitute can replace the home 
 and the school, but they need to be supplemented by wise fac- 
 tory foremen and by constituted authority in all walks of life 
 working along democratic, not autocratic lines, Democracy 
 is one of the fundamental Christian virtues and as such it can- 
 not be forced upon men by mere contiguity. To be real it 
 must be of the heart. In our public school system and in 
 the ordinary intercourse of our business, professional and so- 
 cial life, we have abundant opportunity to be as democratic 
 as we want to be. Patriotism demands that we enter into 
 our opportunity. With regard to the physical development 
 of our youths there is no doubt that much more pains should 
 be taken in the public schools. Every child ought to be given 
 a sound body as well as a reasonable mental equipment be- 
 fore he finishes his school days. To what age the State should 
 keep its hand upon him to compel him to maintain a high 
 grade of physical efficiency, future experience will have to 
 determine. 
 
 It is probably reliance on a specious materialistic phil- 
 osophy that is the cause of the collapse of the whole argument 
 
40 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 for military training in the making of men. “Not by might, 
 nor by power, but by my spirit, sayeth the Lord of hosts,” — by 
 His spirit transmitted through man to man, and through men 
 to boys, — only so can the America of our dreams find realiza- 
 tion, 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND SERVICE ARE INSEPARABLE 
 
 By Lieutenant General S. B. M. Young, U. S, A, 
 
 In countries where universal military service is employed, uni- 
 versal military training becomes part of the education of the 
 citizen. Where such service does not prevail, as in the United 
 States, dependence has been placed on the National Guard and vol- 
 unteers. Therefore, in tim.e of peace, the profession of the army 
 is regarded by our citizens as a trade by which a livelihood is 
 earned. 
 
 Since the commencem.ent of the Mexican border troubles and the 
 European War, universal military training is receiving so much 
 favor from the very best men in the land that we may look' for- 
 ward to its adoption, some time in the near future, as the only proper 
 military policy for the protection of the country. This nation, by 
 its fathers, was dedicated to the proposition that “Dem.ocracy and 
 service are inseparable.” 
 
 A democracy which does not identify itself with its army and 
 navy and which refuses to train itself for its own defense is trave- 
 ling on a dangerous trail. 
 
 Upon a citizenry trained to arms rests the power of the nation 
 to resist invasion. 
 
 Every young man in America should be compelled to take suf- 
 ficient military training to make him efficient for national defense, 
 and, at the same time, teach him physical hygiene, application of 
 sanitary science, discipline, and respect for authority. By “military 
 training” I do not mean simply the manual of arms, target shoot- 
 ing, company and regimental drills and field maneuvers, but all 
 those other and superior things which go to make thorough and 
 complete military training of mind and body. The physical bene- 
 fit to be derived from such military instruction is incalculable and 
 is alone worth all it may cost. 
 
 The charge has been m.ade that we are losing our national 
 ideals and that we have forgotten how to obey — if we ever knew. 
 If we are to overcome the onus of these charges, we must do so 
 through training of our young men in the ideals which have been 
 lianded down to us from an ancestry which was willing to fight 
 for them, sacrifice for them, and when need arose, die for them. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 41 
 
 They died that we might rest secure, as we have rested secure for 
 many generations. If we value this sacred heritage, we must qualify 
 to answer the call of our country and answer it fully equipped for 
 the task. 
 
 We are exerting every effort and expending huge suras in 
 order that the citizen of the future may be better trained for his 
 duties than they are or ever have known. 
 
 Military Training Is Democratic 
 
 The elbow touch is the thing most needed to prevent class 
 tendencies, and I know of no finer influence against this tendency 
 than that supplied through military training. It also teaches the 
 young men in all stations that the government is not an agency from 
 which somiCthing is to be had, but an institution with first claim 
 on them for the best they have to give. I do not believe we can 
 ever m.ake real men or real citizens by endeavoring to give our peo- 
 ple something they have not earned. 
 
 Then, again, can there be any doubt of the truly democratic 
 ideal of the proposal that every young man should prepare himself 
 to a reasonable degree of efficiency to defend his country? Class 
 feeling will gradually disappear before an ideal founded on service 
 to the state by all classes. In no other way may Vve hope to fuse 
 together the widely different elements of our population and instill 
 into them the conviction that this is indeed a nation. 
 
 Work for the Women 
 
 With reference to the inclusion of girls in any scheme of uni- 
 versal military training for the national service, attention is in- 
 vited to the increasinglylarge number of girls receiving vocation.al 
 training throughout the country and also to the fact that large 
 numbers of girls and women are fast qualifying for agricultural 
 pursuits. 
 
 All these activities of the women folk are steps in the rig: t 
 direction for national service for the womanhood of the nation. 
 As women cannot bear arms, any scheme adding military training to 
 the other large opportunities for boys should contemplate an in- 
 crease in the vocational pursuits for girls. 
 
 The natural corollary to universal militar}' training is ecjual 
 service. The duty — and it is a dutyof the first importance — of 
 national defense is an eciual obligation upon all citizens — women as 
 well as men — and unless this duty shall be assumed and discharged 
 along lines of absolute equality, the structure of democracy will not 
 endure. We do not desire a large army in America. I mean !)y 
 
42 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 this what is known as a “regular” or “professional” army, but \vc 
 do want to know that we can assemble the units — evenly balanced — 
 of all arms of the service, and assemble them quickly when needed. 
 
 With this foundation firmly laid in the national life, we may 
 build the superstructure to suit the exigencies of each moment of 
 stress and, through experience, remodel it again and again, or tear 
 it away and build anew, and still the force arising from the bed- 
 rock foundation of universal military training would endure, and 
 would be found to meet every possible strain — for it is the only 
 clastic system and the only one which can ever become a perman- 
 ent success in a democracy. 
 
 Our regular army ,though numbering less than one-fourth of 
 the mobile force necessary for our great country, has always been 
 efficient for the work assigned it to do and has been an exemplar 
 to the militia and the volunteer forces called into the service. It 
 has trusted in God and kept its powder dry. It has, in the last anal- 
 ysis, evidenced a consistent belief in the fatherhool of God and 
 the brotherhood of man, and has accomiplished results of infinite 
 value to mankind. 
 
 Wealth and Weakness 
 
 We have become rich and ease loving; weakness and wealth 
 always have been and undoubtedly always will be ; we are open to 
 attack, and therefore in great danger of a national disaster unless 
 we succeed in awakening the great majority of our citizens, and 
 especially our lawmakers, to a thorough realization of the menace 
 of our weakened condition. 
 
 With military training for one year with the colors for all our 
 physically fit boys between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one 
 and coordinate training of our young wom.en, and a standing army 
 of 250,000, we may look forward from our past to our future with 
 confidence that officers and men of both the regular and citizen 
 army will acquit themselves with credit and with honor to their 
 country, which stands for liberty, progress and the individuality of 
 man. 
 
 I believe that out of universal military training and equal ser- 
 vice will arise a new America — consecrated to the preservation of 
 national honor, international righteousness, and universal peace. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 43 
 
 UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 OUR LATEST CURE-ALL 
 by 
 
 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD 
 New York Evening Post 
 
 A Delegate-How about universal military training after the 
 war? 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George — It is my hope, and that is really what we 
 are fighting for, that we shall establish conditions that will make 
 com.pulsory service unnecessary, not merely in this country, but 
 in every country. Unless we succeed in establishing those condi- 
 tions, 1 personally shall not feel that we have achieved one of 
 the m.ost important of our war aims. 
 
 (London Times, January 19, 1918, account of conferences with 
 trade union delegates.) 
 
 In the years to come, none of the recent amazing phenomena 
 will, I am sure, cause greater wonderment than our recent dis- 
 covery that universal military service is the cure-all for every one 
 of our American ills. Do we wish to defend our country? We 
 have but to adopt the system of training every boy to be a soldier, 
 and the problem is solved. Do we wish to become industrially 
 efficient? Then let us forget all about vocational training, but 
 give every American a year under arms, and presto ! we shall outdo 
 Germany in scientific efficiency and management. Are our youth 
 lawless and undisciplined? Universal compulsory service will end 
 that once for all. Is our democracy halting? It is the tonic of 
 a democratic army that we need in which all men shall pay for 
 the privileges of citizenship by a year of preparation for poison gas 
 and of learning how to destroy other human beings. Our melting- 
 pot is a failure? Then let us pour into it the iron of militarism, 
 and it will fuse every element at once. Finally, if we need an 
 Am.erican soul-and the war has suddenly taught as that this 
 glorious country lacks a soul ! — it is the remedy of universal mili- 
 tary service that is to supply our spiritual needs and give us the 
 ability to feel as one, to think as one, to steer towards our des- 
 tiny as of one mind, imperialistically. 
 
 It is so alluring and so entrancingly easy, the wonder is that 
 we have never thought of it before. We saw it going on in 
 France and Germany and Russia, but it seemed altogether repulsive 
 in its forms. Americans to be conscripted? Heaven forbid. There 
 rose before us the unutterable cruelties of non-commissioned offi- 
 cers and some of the officers — visions of the thousands of men 
 coming to our shores with hands mutilated to avoid the barracks 
 with their open immoralities their bitter hardships, the loss of 
 three years of so many working lives. The “Red Rosa,” Rosa 
 
44 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 Luxemburg, with her 10,000 authenticated instances of cruelties to 
 German soldiers, inflicted by their own countrymen behind the 
 screen of offxial authority, explained to us why so many young 
 Germans emigrated before becoming of military age. In speak- 
 ing of the case of one soldier horribly abused at Met/., the “Red 
 Rosa” declared ; “It is certainly one of those dramas which are 
 enacted day in and day out in German barracks, although the 
 groans of the actors never reach our ears.” When the German 
 army sought to prosecute her it v/as announced that she would 
 cal IjCCO eyewitnesses to grievous abuses of military authority in 
 Germany’s “democratic” army, but she went to jail none the less. 
 
 (This particular case against her was abandoned by the prosc- 
 cut'on. Editor.) 
 
 II 
 
 in Genrary, of course, universal service is not in the least 
 democratic, save that all m.ust serve. Upon that we can surely all 
 agree. The autocrary rules the army, and the aristocracy is 
 fortressed by it. More than one debate in the Reichstag has been 
 enlivened ly tb.e bitter attacks by bourgeois orators against the 
 favoritism shown to the Imperial Guards and to other fash'onable 
 regiments. There is even a caste within a caste, for men 
 through the gymnasia need serve but one year. Those whose 
 fathers are too poor to educate them thus must give two years of 
 their lives carrying arms. The spirit of arrogance and aristocracy 
 which the military life, with its medieval code of henor, fosters, is 
 about as anti-democratic as anything in the world. Wlien men, 
 merely by reason of the coat they wear, deem themselves sacro- 
 sanct and especially priviliged, even to the extent of running their 
 swords through civilizans by whom they fancy themselves insulted, 
 or by preparing to turn their machine-guns upon their civilian 
 fellow-townsmxn, as in Zabern, it is obviously to contend that the 
 system of which they are the products smacks, save in the re- 
 motest, of anything dem.ocratic. 
 
 And never, save in Russia, was there a better illustration of 
 the truth of our own James Madison’s saying that “large armies 
 and heavy taxes are the best-known instruments for bringing the 
 many under the dominion of the few.” General von Falkcnhayn, 
 the present Chief of Staff and War Mini.ster, was not altogether 
 far from the truth when he said that but for the army “not a stone 
 of the Reichstag building would remain in place,” provided we as- 
 sume that he meant to typify by the Reichstag building the present 
 form of governmient in Berlin. No one need look further than 
 the Russian system of universal service for a complete reason for 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 AS 
 
 the failure of the first Russian revolution of this century. Tlu- 
 truth is that men of noble spirit are in every land crushed by the 
 whole system of compulsory mil'tary labor precisely as compuisory 
 servitude deadens men’s souls everywhere. 
 
 And those Americans who see in tlie Frcncli anry a perfvCi 
 model for ourselves would do well to forget neither the shock. ng 
 revelations of graft which have come to light before and s nee the 
 war, nor the depths of infamy sounded by the mil tary in tlie 
 Dreyfus case, nor the fact that General Bou’argcr cam.e witliin an 
 ace of upsetting the Republic he had taken oath to preserve. But, 
 we are told, Australia is democratic, quite like ourselves, and 
 Australia has dedicated its youth to a training in anus with much 
 resultant good in the present campaign. Why should we not be Lke 
 Australia? Surely, there is no militarism there. And look at 
 Switzerland! Does it not point the way? Well, so far as the latter 
 is concerned, it does not. There is no comparison whatever between 
 a little homogenous country of about four millions-homogenous 
 despite the use of three languages — with a small and extremely 
 mountainous country to defend, and our own vast continent. 
 
 But in one respect, the Swiss system does set an adm'rahle ex- 
 ample to the United States: It allows no general to exist save 
 after the declaration of war. Its highest ouicer is a colonel. No 
 major-generals parade ^thc country urging “preparedness”; no 
 brigadiers bewail the terrible fate that will overtake Switzerland 
 if her standing force is not doubled at once. Yet even in Switzer- 
 land, if report be true, there is an anti-army party, people who com- 
 plain that their military business has become ominous ever since 
 so many of the 3 ^ounger officers have been serving in the German 
 army and become inbued with the spirit of the Prussian General 
 Staff, just as, according to a prominent Australian, speaking in a 
 public m.eeting in London a few months ago, the feeling against 
 conscription of boys was so intense in Australia that the law com- 
 pelling this servitude would have been repealed had not the war 
 comie just when it did. Perhaps the fact that in fifteen years 
 some 22,000 Australian boys have been punished for refusal to per- 
 form military service, or for minor infractions of discipline, a 
 large proportion by jail sentences, may have had something to do 
 with the growing feeling against it. As to its merits, there is as 
 much difference of military opinion in regard to its work, as is 
 to be found in regard to the value of our own military forces. 
 
 Ill 
 
 But let us grant for the sake of argument that there is solid 
 
46 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 worth in the Australian and Swiss systems and less militaristic 
 danger than under any other. Would the same hold true with 
 us? Australia is but a colony, unable to make war by itself, con- 
 trolled and protected by the power of the mother country’s fleet. 
 Switzerland, by her geographical and ethnic situation and the 
 scarcity of her numbers, cannot dream of wars of conquest. She 
 is not a world power. She has no colonies, or oversea entangle- 
 ments, or foreign alliances. How different is our situation! We 
 have powerful military cliques, great aggregations of capital seek- 
 ing outlet abroad and engineered by the same groups of priviligcd 
 citizens who have been behind the Six-Power Chinese loan, who de- 
 sire to exploit the Phillipines for our own benefit, who have set 
 up in Nicaragua a government upheld to-day only by American bay- 
 onets, who desire commercially to conquer the remainder of the 
 hemisphere. We have seen outbursts of jingo passion in 1849 an4 
 1898 marked by the stealing of other people’s lands. The uni- 
 versal arming of the nation — what would it not mean in another 
 such period of excitement under the rule of conscienceless and time- 
 serving legislators, or administrators, or by generals gone into 
 politics, with eyes ken only for a nation’s aggrandisement and view- 
 ing every question from the standpoint of a soldier! 
 
 History shows us clearly what it all might mean. Leaving aside 
 the fate of the ancient republics, should we not recall what hap- 
 pened to the new-born French Republic? The nation rushed to 
 arms, and out of the hurly-burly emerged the imperial figure whicli 
 became the scourge of Europe. Such was the sudden transforma- 
 tion of a nation that but a few years before was imbued with the 
 spirit of liberty, fraternity, and equality, whose doctrine did per- 
 meate all Europe to its very lasting betterment. But this tide of 
 good-will, this spirit of universal brotherhood, was conquered by 
 the militaristic spirit and militarism until it became, not the great 
 leavening, leveling influence it should have become, but a menace 
 for all the world against which all the nations of Europe were 
 compelled to unite. Nov/ we Americans, of course, think that 
 nothing of the kind can happen to us — that we merely seek peace 
 and defend our own. Is it utterly without significance that our 
 most distinguished Rear Admiral goes up and down the country 
 preaching that the American flag shall be carried at once to Cape 
 Horn; that every republic to the south of us shall be conquered? 
 Does it mean nothing that the Navy League demands that we 
 shall take what they call “our rightful share of oversea trade” and 
 seize upon land which has not already been preempted by other 
 strong nations for colonies for the United States? Ts it not true v/e 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 47 
 
 iire already extending our governrnent over the Caribbean by force 
 of bayonets? 
 
 We have one hundred millions of people; we have neighbors 
 on our borders whom we could easily crush if we chose. To the 
 south of us a score of republics fear every inihtary move wc make. 
 It is an histroic fact that even before the war in Europe the menace 
 of our rapidly growing fleet was urged in the Reichstag, in the 
 British and Japanese Parliaments, as the reason for further in- 
 crease of their naval armaments. Any introduction of universal 
 military servitude in the Western w^orld would send a chill over the 
 entire American continent and be viewed with alarm by the rest of 
 the world. 
 
 IV 
 
 Assuming that we are going to think of nobody else, and to 
 blind our eyes to the obvious effects abroad of our arming — what 
 does universal service mean? If it is to he for one year, fully 
 seven hundred thousand young men wdll be annually withdrawn 
 from productive labor; if it is to be for tw'o years, and on the 
 German m.odel, our standing arm:y would he at least a milbon four 
 hundred thousand, or nearly double that of Germany in 1914. 
 It* would mean so vast m.achinery of control and discipline that 
 no other department could compare with it in expense or in the 
 multitude of its permanent employes. Has any one in America 
 who is advocating universal service yet computed the cost, direct 
 or indirect, to the nation? If so, I have not seen it. Even on the 
 dilettante Swiss and Australian basis, it would be stupendous. If 
 carried out under federal supervision, it would enormously increase 
 our most favored class of citizens — our military and naval servants 
 — and their pension rolls. Abroad the conscripts receive only a few 
 cents a day for their service, which is practically unpaid (in Turkey, 
 even in war time, the soldier gets but twenty-five cents a month.) 
 Would our American youth stand for this when our National Guard 
 has just now, by skillful political influence, succeeded in getting 
 itself on the federal pay-roll — the first time that men have been 
 so paid, yet remained important political factors in civil life? 
 But we need have less concern with the financial cost and the crea- 
 tion of a dangerous military caste and the terrible burden of 
 taxation than with the indirect results. 
 
 For what those do not see who feel that universal service is 
 what we need to make patriots by the million is that the spirit of 
 universal servitude, whether Australian, German, or Swiss, makes 
 directly against the American ideal, for it inculcates blind obed- 
 ience to the will of others, subord!nati( n to thc.''<e who are masters, 
 
48 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 not necessarily because of superior wisdom or fitness, but largely 
 because of accident. Heretofore we have always valued the 
 American’s self-assertiveness — yes, his refusal to recognize masters, 
 his independence of thought and action, his mental alertness, par- 
 ticularly the happy-go-lucky Yankee initiative and individuality, as 
 some of his best characteristics. We hated the servile obedience of 
 the foreigner. Indeed our whole American experiment was founded 
 as a protest against certain tendencies abroad akin to those we are 
 now asked to make dominant by means of universal service. The 
 manhood of our western pioneers, the daring spirit of those who 
 conquered the wilderness were our admiration. They might verge 
 on the lawless at times, but militarism gave them nothing and 
 could add nothing to their virile courage and their ability to take 
 care of themselves. Now we are to prefer all men cast in one 
 mould, drilled into one way of thinking, and taught blind obedience 
 to those set above them. Formerly, we deemed it most worth while 
 that all men should have their own opinions, express them freely, 
 and if their consciences dictate, differ with their rulers if they 
 saw fit. The principle of voluntary military service is directly con- 
 nected with the principle of freedom of conscience which led to the 
 foundation of Massachusetts and of Pennsylvania. Universal con- 
 scription, however disguised, by whatever foreign name it is 
 characterized, makes against freedom of conscience and drives men 
 into intellectual slavery. 
 
 Take the education of our boys. Recently, at a joint meeting 
 of schoolmasters’ associations, there were divided views on some 
 issues, but none apparently as to the utter lawlessness of our 
 American youth and the complete failure of our private schools 
 to reduce them to subordination by means of mental and moral 
 discipline. And so there were many who grasped with joy at the 
 universal military-drill idea to retrieve for them the ground lost 
 by their own failure to do the fundamental thing they pledged 
 themselves to accomplish. Of course, they knew little or nothlnf 
 about universal service; perhaps it was the unexplored m.ystery of 
 it that appealed. Many Americans are quite sure that the latest 
 untried remedy, be it some law, or the initiative and referendum, 
 or the recall of judicial dicisions, or somie other panacea, is, by 
 reason of its very newness, just the medicine for a given ill they 
 have been looking for. So with these school teachers. Ignoring 
 the fact that our private military schools have been anything but 
 popular, and, only in exceptional cases, of high standing, they turn 
 military drill as to a last straw. But some of them do not even 
 stop there; they want everybody subjected to military service. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 49 
 
 They forget that to some of their boys enforced military training 
 may be as poison, and do not inquire whether they are not suddenly 
 exalting the physical above the intellectual. The only thing that 
 stands out about it is that they, too, confessing -themselves and their 
 judgment failures heretofore, are now ready to take a leap into 
 the dark. 
 
 V 
 
 Advocates of military preparedness are fond of likening their 
 policies to the insurance policy upon our edifices. But there is a 
 point beyond which no man would increase his premiums upon any 
 given premises ; he would tear them down to get a lower rate 
 on a more modern structure, or he would build a concrete struc- 
 ture and do away with insurance altogether. So the price of uni- 
 versal military servitude is far too great a price to pay for in- 
 suring peace by any free peoples. Its dangers, its contaminating- 
 effects, the terrible weapon it forges for rulers, its reducing men 
 to a dead level, far offset the alleged advantages which are phy- 
 sical betterment, greater practical efficiency and energy, and a sense 
 of responsibility to the nation. For all of these things the price of 
 compulsory service is too heavy. For it does not train the unfit or 
 build up the weak, and it is not meant or intended to increase effici- 
 ency in civil life. Its primary purpose is to turn out killers, not 
 workers. It often destroys those it would benefit — no less than ten 
 thousand three hundred Germans conscripts have committed suicide 
 in the last thirty years, or at the rate of one a day. There was a 
 time when the price of social order was that human beings should 
 go armed all the time, when they lived and ate and slept with 
 their weapons by their sides. Humanity was deemed to have ad- 
 vanced itself from this stage until the present time has seen a re- 
 turn to it in the conscript armies of Europe. Surely, if the price 
 of each mian’s carrying arms against another was too great to pay, 
 the social cost of arming every man in a nation against all the men 
 of other nations is wholly beyond reason in the present age. The 
 answer to the world’s difficulties is not the old destructive reaction- 
 ary policy of arming to the teeth, but of so building our national 
 edifices and so relating them one to the other that we can at 
 once by mutual organization of nations reduce the premiums to a 
 minimum or wipe them out altogether by building a concrete fire- 
 proof structure of internationalism — equipped with such I'ghtning 
 rods as world courts and international parliaments, and, if needs 
 must be, an international police force of volunteers. 
 
 What to-day — what single thing — would most quickly win for 
 Germany anew the good will of the world and make possible the 
 
50 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 immediate coming of peace abroad? What else but an announce- 
 ment by Germany that hereafter she would forever abandon uni- 
 versal military. : service? The chief menace of her militarism, 
 against which all the v/orld is roused, would disappear over-night. 
 ' ' N6, td lead the world aright, the United States ought not to 
 
 be debating to-day whether it prefers voluntary military training 
 or conscription, but how rapidly it can induce the other nations by 
 precept, by example, by enlightened leadership, to limit all armam- 
 ents to the dirriensions of police forces. Fortunately, there is evi- 
 dence in every land that the world is to be different place when 
 the soldiers return from the trenches. 
 
 “Compulsory military service is, therefore, unwise and abso- 
 lutely incompatible with our institutions. We must depend upon 
 voluntary enlistments for the making of our armies. Our ser- 
 vice must be sufficiently remunerative, beneficial and attractive to 
 draw men." 
 
 SELF-PRESERVATION HIGHEST LAW 
 Military Training League of America 
 
 The supreme law of life is self-preservation. This ap- 
 plies not only to the individual but to the state. There can 
 be no progress, no civilization, no moral or spiritual develop- 
 ment, nor any of the essentials that make for the welfare of 
 the individual and the up-building of the state, which docs not 
 rest on the law of self-preservation. 
 
 This law carries with it the duty of being prepared for de- 
 fense. It is the paramount duty of every man to protect his 
 home and to help protect his country. This law holds to- 
 day and its truth has been recognized in all ages and by all 
 peoples. 
 
 Turn to the first chapter of Numbers in the Old Testa- 
 ment and you will find that God commanded Moses to list 
 all men of fighting strength, of twenty years and older of 
 various tribes. 
 
 In the New Testament we find: “And he said unto them, 
 But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise a 
 wallet; and he that hath none, let him sell his cloak, and buy 
 a sword." Luke, Chapter 22-36. 
 
 “When the strong man fully armed guardeth his own 
 court, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger than he 
 shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from 
 him his whole armor wherein he trusted and divideth his 
 spoils." Luke, chapter 11; 21-22. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 51 
 
 There is in no country in the world a more earnest de- 
 sire for peace than that in the United States. Now war of 
 aggression would never receive the support of public senti- 
 ment; therefore, we need not fear such a war. War is often 
 forced upon a people. We have several recent examples of 
 it. The weaker a country’s defense and the greater its wealth, 
 the more probability there will be of attack. There is noth- 
 ing truer than that in strength lies safety and in weakness lies 
 danger. 
 
 War today is a highly specialized art and one in which un- 
 trained men count for little. Defensive military action must 
 depend upon trained men in the ranks and highly skilled of- 
 ficers in command. Universal military training will pro- 
 duce the one and stimulate the production of the other. 
 
 Sources of Danger 
 
 The world is growing smaller year by year. It took 
 our grandfathers from three weeks to three months to cross 
 the Atlantic; our time is five days. International relations 
 are becoming complicated and there are more sources of 
 danger now than existed even a generation ago. 
 
 We have by a narrow margin so far (March 1917) kept 
 out of the European war, but as President Wilson recently 
 said :‘With the world on fire, and sparks flying every where, 
 we know not what a day may bring forth.” tie certainly is 
 in a position to know. The enormous naval program under- 
 taken by our government should satisfy any one that there is 
 substantial ground for alarm. 
 
 Out of the European war our country has made the 
 most extraordinary gain in wealth in the wordl’s history. While 
 European nations have been burning up wealth, we have been 
 reaping an enormous harvest from their misfortunes. They 
 have become envious, so no matter whether judged rightly or 
 wrongly, as a nation today we have few friends. 
 
 The following dispatch which appeared in the Chicago 
 Daily News on February 14, from its well-known London 
 correspondent, Edward Price Bell, is illuminating; 
 
 “London, February 14, Flow any American citizen can 
 be so blind to the vital interests of his country at this moment 
 as to oppose thorough going measures of preparedness is un- 
 intelligible to persons in close touch with the European 
 situation, German statesmen, admirals and generals regard 
 America, though technically neutral, as an ally of the 
 entente, and that they will severely punish her if they get an 
 
52 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 opportunity is believed to be certain.” 
 
 “Americans abroad easily can understand why the Amer- 
 ican nation should wish to keep out of the war if possible, par- 
 ticularly since its neutrality, owing to the naval position, oper- 
 ates advantageously for the cause of freedom. But these 
 Americans cannot understand that there should be any op- 
 position in the United States to the most rapid and thorough 
 preparation possible to insure the security of the country 
 against every menace, now or later. 
 
 “It is painfully evident to the best minds in London that 
 international peace based on agreement is a long way off. It 
 is felt there is in the future more than one disturbing possi- 
 bility from the point of view of democracy and the realiza- 
 tion is steadily becoming sharper that some method of con- 
 solidating the strength of the democratic nations must be dis- 
 covered if free civilization is not to run the greatest risk of 
 destruction.” 
 
 Flere we are, by all odds, the richest nation in the world, 
 and we are practically without defense worthy of the name. 
 We are soft, rich and flabby. Military experts agree that as 
 matters stand, any one of a half-dozen nations could land 
 large and seasoned armies, upon our shores, capture our sea 
 board cities and levy and collect tribute to their heart’s content. 
 There would be nothing new in this. \ Such expeditions have 
 been in practice the world over for thousand years. Is 
 it safe to assume human nature has sd| changed that we are 
 immune? 
 
 It is common knowledge that we have been on the verge 
 of a war with Germany several times and the situation is 
 growing worse daily. Do not assume that when the Euro- 
 pean war is over the nations engaged in it will be so exhausted 
 they could do us no harm. At least five of the nations in 
 Europe and one in the Orient will have millions of seasoned 
 and highly trained soldiers, and a navy equal or superior to 
 our own. Any one, and certainly two of them, in our help- 
 less condition could land large forces and exact any terms 
 they desired. Remember that personal valor, enthusiasm and 
 patriotism would count for nothing against such a foe. 
 
 While our relations with Germany are attracting the most 
 immediate attention, there are many far-seeing conservative 
 men who do not believe that is the onl3q if indeed it is the 
 principal source of danger. Such men are keeping their eyes 
 on the Pacific as well as on the Atlantic, and there is every 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 53 
 
 reason why they should. The outlook is far from reassuring. 
 The Mexican and Cuban complications may at any moment, 
 become of far-reaching consequences. 
 
 The Monroe Doctrine in the opinion of many thoughtful 
 men is becoming a menace and at any hour may involve us in 
 trouble. There are many ways — here is one of them: 
 
 Hundreds of millions of property belonging to the citizens 
 of foreign countries have been destroyed in Mexico, scores 
 of foreign citizens massacred and thousands of them driven 
 from the country in the v^^arfare that has existed there for 
 several years. Lender the Monroe doctrine, we assumed the 
 Mexican problem. Other countries stepped aside and the 
 losses occured. Under this doctrine no nation is permitted 
 to take the usual steps to compel restitution, such as land- 
 ing military forces upon Mexican soil, closing its ports or 
 taking possession of the custom houses. In view of this, is 
 there any substantial reason from the foreign viewpoint why 
 we should not pay these losses? 
 
 Many authorities believe we are morally and probably 
 legally liable for them; but suppose the half dozen nations 
 whose citizens have suffered should present their claims to 
 us and demand payment, what would we do? Suppose one 
 or more countries should decide to ignore the Monroe Doctrine 
 and go into Mexico to collect their claims; suppose one of 
 them should establish a naval base upon Mexican soil — say 
 Magdalena Bay — where it could control the Panama Canal, 
 what would we do about it? 
 
 Suppose these or other demands were made upon us to 
 which We could not yield. Let us remember two things in 
 this connection: 
 
 1. War does not depend upon the disposition of the 
 pacific, but upon that of the bellicose. • 
 
 2- That unless our country puts itself in a position to 
 defend its rights, we may soon have no rights to defend. 
 
 George Washington said, “To be prepared for war is one 
 of the most effectual means of preserving peace.’’ The 
 truth of the statement is borne out by history and by experi- 
 ence. Had Great Britain been prepared on land, as she was 
 on sea; had she had a trained citizenry of four millions of men, 
 as she was compelled to have after the European war broke 
 out, it is the belief of many that the present war would not 
 have been started. What Great Britain’s unpreparedness at 
 the beginning of the war cost her, is now apparent to all. 
 
54 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 In view of this experience, is it not criminal for a nation to 
 wait until war has actually been declared before making pre- 
 paration? General Henry Lee of Washington’s army said, 
 “A government is the murderer of its citizens which sends 
 them to the field for battle uninformed and untrained where 
 they are to meet men trained for battle.” 
 
 Military authorities agree that if Washington’s army had 
 been well-trained and properly equipped, the Revolutionary 
 War would have been over in a year, instead of lasting seven 
 years. 
 
 A strong, trained and virile manhood must be built up 
 and maintained if our country is to hold its proper position 
 in the sisterhood of nations. By military training the nation 
 will be provided with the most intelligent, country-loving citi- 
 zen-soldiery anywhere to be found. It costs too much blood 
 and tears, too much waste and suffering to wait until a crisis 
 is upon us and then prepare. The state of being uprepared in- 
 vites attack. Strength through preparation means peace. A 
 boy may kick a cur, but he will not kick a bull dog — there 
 is a reason. With universal military training the probability 
 of war would be diminished to the vanishing point. 
 
 Will Military Training Satisfy the Nation? 
 
 History records the rise and fall of nations and shows 
 that strength, virility and the ability to defend themselves were 
 essentials of national existence. When nations have be- 
 come opulent and indolent, when extravagance displaced thrift, 
 and indulgence weakend moral fiber, then relaxation and decad- 
 ence followed. An armed foe and subjugation completes the story. 
 Security lies in strength; weakness is a source of danger in 
 the life of a nation as it is in the life of an individual. 
 
 We have been accustomed to think that our country, isola- 
 ted by two wide oceans, needed no other defense. Modern 
 science has destroyed that isolation. Submarine ships from 
 other lands have already entered our harbors. The airship is 
 the practical certainty of tomorrow. 
 
 In universal military training we have the best assurance 
 of peace that can be effectuated and the only one that would 
 serve us in case of war. In such training our country would 
 take the wisest course and insure the safety and prosperity 
 of the people. War may never be forced upon us, but there 
 is always the danger that it will be. Fire may never des- 
 troy your home, but there is danger of it, hence the wise in- 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 55 
 
 sure. In the construction and equipment of buildings -we 
 spend large sums to reduce the fire hazard. So military train- 
 ing reduces the likelihood of war. It will give us over 
 500,000 trained men per year or 2,500,000 men in five years. 
 When the world knows we have this splendid body of loyal 
 citizens that may at once become efficient soldiers, together 
 with our incomparable financial and physical resouces, any 
 nation will hesitate before attacking us. 
 
 Voluntary Military Service A Delusion 
 
 Experience shows that in a prolonged war voluntary en- 
 listments are never sufficient and that conscription must be 
 resorted to. This was true of our own country in the Civil 
 War when patriotism was at flood-tide and a similar condition 
 prevails in England today. There is always a large and 
 honorable number willing to die to save the nation and quite 
 a large and dishonorable number who are willing to let them 
 do it. A volntary system of military defense puts a penalty 
 on patriotism and a premium on cowardise. 
 
 At the threshold of consideration let us keep in mind that 
 the government has, and has always had, absolute power to 
 call for military service every able bodied man in the land be- 
 tween eighteen and forty-five years of age. There is no 
 escape and no excuses will avail. 
 
 The law of required service is the foundation of the family, 
 the state and the nation. In these relations duties arc not 
 optional; they are obligatory. Children must obey their par- 
 ents and do as directed or the family will be a failure. No 
 government, dependent upon voluntary action, would have sta- 
 bility. In a Republic, the duty of all is to serve and sup- 
 port the government, each according to his ability. We are 
 required to pay taxes, to do jury service and to send our 
 children to school. For the safety of the community we are 
 compelled to observe health regulations. These and scores 
 of other provisions necessary for the common good must be 
 compulsory. 
 
 A Story in Point 
 
 A lad of fourteen, returning from the Boy Scout encamp- 
 ment at Plum Island, at dinner observed his younger broth- 
 er in an ill-tempered mood. The father and mother both 
 attempted to discipline him but without success. After con- 
 siderable argument a compromise was effected and the quarrel 
 was concluded. When it was over, the boy scout asked to 
 
56 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 see his father privately. W hen they were alone, he said, 
 “Dad, I do not wish to be impertinent or butt in, but I tell you 
 that the discipline in this family is rotten. I have learned 
 what discipline means, and I think it should be established in 
 this family.” It was. 
 
 There has never been, and there never can be good citizen- 
 ship, good order, and good government without laws that 
 will require every individual to do his share, to carry his part of 
 the burden, and to discharge his obligation whatever it may be. 
 
 There is nothing fair about a volunteer system. Univer- 
 sal training coupled with obligation to serve if needed, is only 
 the square deal in democracy and will produce the only suf- 
 ficient defense. Democracy means the rule of the majority 
 and the service of all. Anything less is not democracy. To 
 permit some citizens to shirk their duty because they want 
 to, and let others defend the country because they are will- 
 ing is undemocratic.' All need and demand protection. All 
 should help to defend. 
 
 Military training should not be confused with military ser- 
 vice. The larger the number of men trained the greater will 
 be our strength and less will the probability of actual service 
 being required. We cannot evade the obligation to defend 
 the country by failing to train, but by thorough training and 
 being strong and ready we probably would escape war. 
 
 In a word, the more trained men we have available for the 
 defense of the flag, the less the probability that we shall be 
 called upon to defend it. Under our conditions today, mili- 
 tary training is more a preparation for peace than it is for 
 war. 
 
 What Will It Do For Manhood 
 
 Every well-informed person knows that military training 
 develops a boy physically as nothing else will. After train- 
 ing he stands erect, head up, and chest out; he knows how- 
 to walk; it gives him a manly bearing, a fine lung develop- 
 ment, hardens his muscles and makes him alert and responsive. 
 It teaches obedience to authority and respect for the right.'; 
 of others. It emphasizes courtesy and good breeding. It 
 teaches him how to take care of himself physically and grow 
 into strong manhood. 
 
 The physical regeneration of this country and the bene- 
 fits to the fathers of the future cannot be overestimated. Mili- 
 tary training will arrest decadence into which we are drifting 
 and will build up our national life. Six months’ intensive 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 57 
 
 military training, such as proposed, is equal to eighteen months 
 in the regular army under peace conditions. 
 
 There is another exceedingly important feature: It will 
 
 bring together young men from all parts of the country and 
 from all walks of life, the rich and the poor, from the homes 
 of affluence and the homes of poverty. It will put these men 
 into the same uniform, into the same tents, and train them for 
 the defense of the country. This close relationsip will make 
 for the common good, and most assuredly integrate us into a 
 nation, break down barriers, remove misconceptions, sweep 
 away erroneous preconceived ideas, establish friendships, give 
 a wider horizon, a truer viewpoint, and cause all to realize 
 that there is here a government to which we owe an obligation 
 and that it must be met. 
 
 There is a commercial value to this training. For the 
 purpose of ascertaining this definitely, the writer took the 
 matter up with about one hundred large employers of young 
 men and all virtually agreed that any young man taking this 
 training would be a better employee, more dependable, more 
 alert and would have greater initiative, better judgment and 
 greater physical strength than an untrained lad. They said 
 they would give a young man who had been thus trained the 
 preference over the untrained man, other things being equal. 
 There was no sentiment about it. It was a cold-blooded 
 proposition. Their conclusions compositely stated were that 
 such training was of so much value to the young man that 
 it would pay him to take it even if there were no probability 
 of war. 
 
 Universal military training is the one effective melting-pot 
 for the making of real Americans and real men. 
 
 Boys Need Discipline 
 
 The American boy, probably more than any other, needs 
 discipline. He must be taught to respect authority and made 
 to feel a sense of responsibility. Too many are drifting aim- 
 lessly. The poolrooms, the dance halls, and “just loafing” 
 sends tens of thousands to ruin every year. 
 
 The venerable Bishop Samuel Fallows, who for twenty- 
 one years was the head of the great Illinois State Reformatory 
 at Pontiac, said before the United States Senate Committee 
 which was considering the question of military training, that 
 such training would have made it unnecessary to commit at 
 75 percent of the boys in that institution. The Bishop is an 
 
58 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 authority. He enlisted at the outbreak of the Civil War as a 
 private and earned his way to a position of brigadier-general. 
 He is now the head of the Army of Tennessee, the successor 
 to Gerneral Sherman and General Dodge. 
 
 In concluding his statement he said : “Such training will 
 save three bad boys out of four and make them worthy citizens 
 and it will make good boys better. Such training will make a 
 boy manly, more courteous and physically stronger. It will 
 harden his muscles, give him greater lung capacity and the 
 ability to re'sist disease.” 
 
 Suppose you make a list of twenty of the young men of 
 your acquaintance. Look over the list. How many of them 
 would be able to step into the ranks at once as efficient de- 
 fenders of their country? Probably not one could do so. 
 How many of them would be greatly benefited by the disci- 
 pline that goes with military training, by the uniform courtesy 
 required, the respect for authority, the promptness of action, 
 the manly bearing and the physical and mental vigor that 
 comes from such training? Intensive training keeps the boy 
 busy and federal control of surroundings would give those 
 training a protection not found under usual camp conditions. 
 
 Are We Prepared? 
 
 Frederic L. Huidekoper in “The Military Unpreparedness 
 of the United States” says, “The fundamental law of life is the 
 law of strife and in the supreme test, ‘might’ nearly always 
 prevails. The American people have but two alternatives, 
 either to profit by the lessons taught every day by the present 
 European struggle and thus avert the horrors inseparable 
 from war, or to learn these lessons by the bitterest experience 
 which human beings can undergo. Which shall it be?* 
 
 “Adequate preparation for war has never yet in history 
 been made after the beginning of hostilities without horrible 
 slaughter, unjustifiable expense, and national peril. It is 
 only in the years of peace that a nation can be made ready to 
 fight.” 
 
 The world is being remade in the awful cauldron of war. 
 What of the future? No one can tell. The world is full 
 of hate and envy. The brotherhood of man in the federation 
 of the world is still a dream. If we prepare for the worst, 
 it is probable that the worst will not come. 
 
 Under prevailing conditions, there should not be a doubt in 
 the minds of anyone that as a nation we are in a perilous posi- 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 59 
 
 tioa. It is a condition and not a theory that confronts us. 
 We know that our country today is in no position to defend it- 
 self against attack from any one of a dozen leading nations. 
 Our navy is barely half-manned and the ranks of our army 
 are crumbling. It is entirely obvious that something must be 
 done to protect ourselves and insure our peace and tranquillity. 
 
 Every well-informed person knows that our country today 
 is in no position to make an effective defense against even a 
 second or third rate power. The Mexican border patrol and 
 the chase of Villa required practically all of our military 
 resources. There are many things to be done before our coun- 
 trv will be safe. The doing of one of these is the purpose of 
 this organization, namely: To bring about a sane and sen- 
 sible plan of military training and have it maintained as a fix- 
 ed policy of our government. 
 
 Good Advice From Great Educators 
 
 Dr. Henry Pratt Judson, President of the University of 
 Chicago, an eminent scholar, a close observer, and one who 
 has spent months in the Orient, in a notable address before 
 the City Club of Chicago, January 19, 1917, among other things 
 said: 
 
 “Formerly I believed that this was a day of progress and 
 civilization in the world, that it was a time when international 
 disputes could be settled in accordance with principles of jus- 
 tice and right; when smaller nations might pursue their hon- 
 est destinies with respectful treatment from might}'' powers, 
 but my ideas have undergone a change. 
 
 “It is apparent that there are great powers which classify 
 as national pirates. They are nations which deliberately in- 
 tend to take possession of other nations in accordance with 
 their deliberate piratical policies whenever their might enables 
 them. In the face of such policies, it is apparent that the 
 United States is in danger of attack. The United States is a 
 rich and helpless people and a piratical attack could be made 
 with ease against us in our unpreparedness. 
 
 “These attacks by these piratical nations not only cau 
 happen but will happen unless the United States wakes up to a 
 realization of her helplessness and the propensity of foreign 
 nations which brush aside right and justice in the pursuit of 
 their piratical policies. 
 
 “There is absolute need of military preparedness and uni- 
 versal military training being taken up without delay.” 
 
60 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus, Harvard Uni- 
 versit}’’, noted educator, and a profound thinker, in “The 
 World’s Work” for November, 1917, says: 
 
 “Steam and electricity have done away with the physical 
 isolation of the United States. The oceans are not barriers, 
 but highways which invite the passage of fleets, pacific or 
 hostile. The security of America can no longer be trusted 
 to the width of the Atlantic and Pacific.” He says further: 
 
 “The only available insurance is a navy, powerful in every 
 respect, and an army of reserve visibly strong in numbers and 
 visibly prepared for immediate service.” 
 
 THE EFFECTS OF MILITARY DRILL ON BOYS 
 
 DUDLEY A. SARGENT, M. D. 
 
 Director of the Hemcnway Gymnasium, Harvard University. 
 
 Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 To select at once a system of exercise that will do no harm 
 to any one, and yet be beneficial to all, is a difficult task, yet we shall 
 come nearer doing the greatest good to the greatest number if we 
 follow what ma}'’ be termed the physiological method. As near as 
 I have been able to ascertain them, the essential requisites of a 
 good exercise may be sum.med up in the following suggestions: 
 
 1. The person should be sufficiently interested in the exercise 
 to give it his attention in order to secure the necessary volitional 
 power to start the movement. Any exercise executed in a lifeless 
 way is of little benefit to nerve or muscles in a healthy condition. 
 
 2. There should be a weight or resistance to overcome in 
 order to bring out the working force of the muscle, the theory 
 being that the mmscles were not created merely to move the parts 
 to which they are attached, but to do service and help man bear hi.s 
 burdens. 
 
 3. The exercise must be performed with sufficient vigor and 
 rapidity to engage the energetic contraction of the muscles em- 
 ployed. When this is done, old tissue is brokn down, and its 
 place is supplied with new material in increased quantity, thus 
 augmenting the size and strength of the muscles. The rapidity of 
 the movement puts a limit to the weight used, and the alternate 
 contraction and relaxation of the muscles assist the circulation of 
 the blood in the parts employed. 
 
 4 . As many muscles as possible must be brought into action in 
 
 order to secure a well-orbed and harmonious development of the 
 whole body 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 61 
 
 5. A sufficient number of muscles sliould be called into action 
 
 at one time to stimulate the action of the heart and lungs, and in- 
 crease the circulation and respiration. This is one of the most 
 important considerations to bear in mind in regard to exercise 
 
 The chief advantage of exercises that give employment to many 
 muscles at one time is that by increasing the respiration and quick- 
 ening the circulation, they improve the health and strength of all 
 parts of the body. 
 
 6. As a “latent period” precedes the contraction of the muscle, 
 so a momentary period of rest should, as far as possible, precede 
 movement in exercise. This is best secured where there is an alterna- 
 tion in the movements, as in walking, running, rowing, etc. All 
 tetanized movements, such as holding weights, standing in a 
 constricted position, etc., tend to inspair the tone of the muscles 
 by interefring with the nutrition of both muscles and nerves. 
 
 7. The exercises of the young should be of such a composite 
 nature as to bring about the co-operation and co-ordination of 
 the muscles. This involves principally the training of the central 
 nerve system. All gymnastic sports and athletic games that re- 
 quire skill, dexterity, coolness, courage, and presence of mind, are 
 included in this list, and are exceedingly valuable to any system of 
 physical training, as adjuncts in the development of character. 
 
 My prinicpal objection to military drill as a physical exercise is 
 that it does not to any extent meet the physiological demands of 
 the body as set forth in the seven observations just referred to. 
 In other words : It is not of sufficient interest as a means of physical 
 development to arouse any moral earnestness and enthusiasm on 
 the part of the boys. The exercise of the manual is not per- 
 formed with sufficient force and rapidity to engage the energetic 
 contraction of the muscles employed. It is essentially a one-sided 
 exercise, bringing into excessive action the elevators of the right 
 scapula, the deltoid, biceps, flexors of the fore-arm, wrist and 
 fingers of the right side, while the other muscles, excepting the 
 legs on parade days, do not get sufficient employment to keep 
 them in good condition. It does not increase the respiration and 
 quicken the circulation to a sufficient extent to secure the consti- 
 tutional benefits that should accure from exercise. 
 
 During the drill the clothing is buttoned close around the 
 chest, and natural respiration is hindered. The muscles are not 
 alternately contracted and relaxed, but are tetanized or kept in a 
 state of prolonged tension. This, as we have seen, not only im- 
 pairs the tone of the muscles used, but it also puts an addition.tl 
 strain upon the brain and nervous system at a time when both 
 
62 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 should be as much relieved as possible. Finally, the mere exercise 
 of the manual of arms does not give sufficient breadth and scope 
 of movement to secure the co-operation of the muscles, and as a 
 training for the central nerve system, it is of little or no value. 
 
 Coolness, courage, presence, of mind, and that rapid and res- 
 ponsible exercise of judgment in emergencies, so valuable to the 
 man of business, as well as to the soldier, are not developed by 
 the drill itself, though I will admit that other normal attributes, 
 such as obedience, practice,' fortitude, and forbearance, may be 
 ])rought into a high degree of perfection. The community at large 
 have long entertained the idea that there was something about 
 military drill that made young men erect, or, as the committee have 
 been pleased to term it, giving them a graceful and manly bearing. 
 
 I dislike to take from the drill one of the strongest attributes 
 that has commended it to parents and teachers, but unless I have 
 been misled in my observations, there is nothing in the drill itself 
 that tends to make one erect or graceful. On the other hand, I am 
 prepared to maintain that it tends to make him stiff and angular 
 in his moments, as well as to droop and round his shoulders. 
 
 This was long since brought to the attention of military 
 authorities, and a set of calisthenic exercises or free gymnastics 
 has been incorporated into all of the. treatises on military tactics, 
 to correct the tendency. I refer to what is familiarly known as the 
 “setting-up” drill 
 
 In reference to the gracefulness that is thought to characterize 
 the movements of young cadets, I can only say it is not the out- 
 come of drilling and marching. The soldier is trained to square 
 corners, straight platoons, and angular movements. Curves and 
 embellishments are not encouraged in speech or in action. If you 
 would account for the graceful poise of our National cadets, you 
 must visit West Point in summer, and see them for one or two 
 liours a day in charge of the dancing master. 
 
 Those who have had the pleasure of examining school boys, 
 or of looking over their measurements or photoplays, will bear 
 me out in saying that the strong and well developed boys are 
 largely in the minority. 
 
 The pupils attending our public and private schools represent 
 nearly every phase and condition in life. Some are well nurtured, 
 others are not. Some have favorably hygienic surroundings at home, 
 others are subjected to unhealthy influences. All bear the stamp 
 of a good or bad inheritance, and the strong and weak points show 
 themselves in the physique as readily as they do in mental char- 
 acteristics 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 63 
 
 My attention was long since called to what I think may i j 
 termed the prevailing weakness or defects in the school boys’ and 
 student’s physique. 
 
 There are a drooping of the head, flatness of the chest, nar- 
 rowness of the waist, and an exaggeration of the normal or phy- 
 siological curves of the spine, and I might add to this number, 
 though it is not quite so common in boys as in girls, lateral cur- 
 vature of the spine. These defects, I say, are so apparent, that 
 it does not take a practised eye to detect them . They attract the 
 attention at once or any one v/ho cares to examine the figures. . . 
 
 Personally, I do not put particular stress upon these malforma- 
 tions, if they can be discovered in time. Nearly all of them can 
 be corrected by judicious exercise. If allowed to increase, how-- 
 ever, they invariably lead to spinal disease, or to some functional 
 disturbance of the heart, stomach, or lungs, followed sooner or 
 later by structural changes in these important organs. 
 
 Whatever the original cause of these physical defects may 
 be, the immediate cause is a weakness of the supporting muscles. 
 
 After the body has once acquired a bias in the wrong direction 
 many exercises otherwise beneficial are likely to be injurious. 
 Among this number are horseback riding, rowing, lawn tennis, and 
 military drill 
 
 After taking the m.ost favorable view of military drill as a 
 physical exercise, we are led to conclude that its constrained 
 positions, and closely localized movements do not afford the essen- 
 tial requisites for developing the muscles, and improving the res- 
 piration and circulation, and thereby improving the general health 
 and condition of the system. We must further conclude that in 
 case of any malformation, local weakness or constitutional debility, 
 the drill tends, by its strain upon the nerves and prolonged ten- 
 sion on the muscles, to increase the defects rather than to relieve 
 them. 
 
 Finally, if the ultimate object of the drill was to prepare 
 young men for the life and duties of a soldier, we should be 
 forced to conclude that the drill itself would still be defective as a 
 means of developing the chief requisites for men in that profes- 
 sion. 
 
 This defect, we are pleased to state, is recognized by the 
 great military nations of Europe, and measures are taken to give 
 all recruits from three to twelve months’ gymnastic training to 
 develop them as men, before they are expected to conform to 
 the requirements of the soldier. — Extract from article in Boston 
 Medical and Surgical Journal. 
 
64. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 FIRST SIX PRESIDENTS URGED COMPULSORY 
 MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 Extracts from Messages of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, 
 Madison, Monroe, and Jackson 
 
 Washington 
 
 In his first annual address to congress, Pres ident Wash- 
 ington, after a few introductory sentences, drove straight to 
 the subject of national defense. 
 
 “Among the many interesting objects which will engage 
 your attention,” said the president, “that of providing for the 
 common defense will merit particular regard. To be pre- 
 pared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserv- 
 ing peace. 
 
 “A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; 
 to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; 
 and their safety and interest require that they should promote 
 such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others 
 for essential, particularly military, supplies.” 
 
 Washington’s Plan for Universal Military Training 
 
 Thirteen days later Washington addressed a brief message 
 to congress, accompanied by plans for universal military train- 
 ing. “Conceiving the subject to be of the highest importance 
 to the welfare of our country,” said Washington, “I have 
 directed him (the secretary of war) to lay the plan before con- 
 gress.” 
 
 With characteristic modesty Washington gave credit for 
 these plans to his secretary of war. General Henry Knox, but 
 Major Henry C. Davis of the United States Marine corps, af- 
 ter a study of “American State Papers,” finds that Washing- 
 ton directed its preparation and materially amended it himself 
 before giving it to congress. It had his enthusiastic approval, 
 and he declared that “It is a capital security to a free state 
 for the great body of the people to possess competent know- 
 ledge of military art.” 
 
 Here is the general scope of the plan as condensed from 
 Vol. 1, “American State Papers:” 
 
 All citizens between 18 and 60, with specific exceptions, 
 to be enrolled for different degrees of military duty and divided 
 into three distrinct classes: the youth of 18, 19 and 20 years of 
 age, the advanced corps; the men from 21 to 45 years of age, the 
 main corps; the men from 46 to 60 years of age, the reserve 
 corps. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 65 
 
 Right to Vote Acquired by Military Training 
 
 “The advanced corps are designed not only as a school in 
 which the youth of the United States' are to be instructed 
 in the art of war, but they are, in all cases of exigence, to serve 
 as an actual defense of the community. The whole of the 
 armed corps shall be clothed, armed and subsisted at the ex- 
 pense of the United States, and encamped together if prac- 
 ticable, or by legions, which encampments shall be denomin- 
 ated the annual camps of discipline. The youth of 18 and 19 
 years shall be disciplined for 30 days successively in each 
 year; and those of 20 years shall be disciplined only for 10 days 
 in each year, which shall be the last 10 days of the annual en- 
 campment.” 
 
 Under this plan Washington’s military training and ser- 
 vice were to be the price paid by the citizen for- the right to 
 vote and hold public office. Having rendered the required 
 service the young man was to be given a certificate of full and 
 honorable citizenship, and without that certificate he could not 
 vote or hold any position of public preferment. 
 
 Congress failed to enact the Washington bill, but passed 
 instead the militia law of 1792, which affirmed the principles of 
 universal liability to military service, but neglected to put that 
 principle into effect. It declared that every-able male citizen 
 between the ages of 18 and 45 was a member of the militia. 
 Those voluntarily enrolling and training were termed the or- 
 ganized militia and the great body of untrained citizenship 
 the unorganized militia. 
 
 Adams 
 
 John Adams, second president, followed Washington’s ex- 
 ample and urged that congress strengthen the country’s de- 
 fenses. In a special message, session of May 16, 1797, Adams 
 said: “As our country is vulnerable in other interests besides 
 those of its commerce you will seriously deliberate whether 
 the means of general defense ought not to be increased by an 
 addition to the regular artillery and cavalry and by arrange- 
 ments for forming a provisional army. With the same 
 view, and as a measure which even in a time of universal peace 
 ought not to be neglected, I recommend to your consideration 
 a revision of the laws for organizing, arming and disciplining 
 the militia, to render that natural and safe defense of the coun- 
 try efficacious.” 
 
 President Adams here was referring to the whole militia 
 of the Union — all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 
 
66 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 45. He wanted them to be organized, drilled and disciplined, 
 and to that end called on congress to pass additional legisla- 
 tion. 
 
 Jefferson 
 
 President Jefferson felt earnestly the need of compulsory 
 training and military service. With his own hand he drafted 
 a bill in 1805 “for classing the militia and assigning to each 
 class its particular duties.*’ (Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 
 Federal edition, volume 10, page 213.) 
 
 Jefferson’s bill provided that “every free, able-bodied white 
 male citizen of the LTnited States of the age of 18 years and 
 under the age of 45, whose principal occupation is not on 
 the high seas or the tidewaters within the United States, shall 
 be of the militia for the land service of the United States.” 
 
 Jefferson wanted to classify the militia into four classes; 
 those above 18 and under 21, the minor class; those above 21 
 and under 26, the junior class; those above 26 and under 35, 
 the middle class, and those above 35 and under 45, the senior 
 class. 
 
 But Jefferson’s advice- was rejected^, as Washington’ts 
 counsel had been neglected. There were pacificists in those 
 days, and they raised constitutional objections. The Union 
 was still looked upon by many as a loose confederation of sov- 
 ereign states, and local prejudices were turned against Jeffer- 
 son’s plan as a thing too ultra federal. 
 
 Jefferson retired to private life and the country went 
 rashly unprepared to war with Great Britain in 1812. It was 
 a humiliating war for the United States. Our poorly trained 
 militia ran off one field after another and abandoned the •na- 
 tional capital to an inferior force of British soldiers. We 
 glimpse conditions from a letter written by Jefferson, Septem- 
 ber 9, 1814, to John Wayles Eppes: 
 
 “If our government ever fails it will be from this weak- 
 ness. No government can be maintained without the prin- 
 ciple of fear as well as of duty. Good men will obey the 
 last, but bad ones the former only. Our country is a desert. 
 None are to be met in the roads but grayheads. About 800 men 
 are gone from it, and chiefly volunteers. But I fear they 
 cannot be armed. 
 
 “I think the truth must now be obvious, that our people 
 are too happy at home to enter into regular service, and that 
 we cannot be defended but by making every citizen a soldier, 
 as the Greeks and Romans, who had no standing armies. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 67 
 
 and that in doing this all must be marshaled, classed by 
 their ages and every service ascribed to its competent class.” 
 
 Madison 
 
 A belief has long been extant, fostered by false repre- 
 sentations in school histories and the flamboyant oratory of 
 Fourth of July speakers, that the militia forces of the United 
 States drove the British armies before them as the November 
 blasts scatter the frosted leaves of autumn. The painful 
 truth is that our poorly drilled and imperfectly disciplined 
 militia did a lot of running from numerically inferior forces 
 of the enemy and were whipped in nearly every engagement of 
 that war. 
 
 Only the good fortune that England was at war with 
 France and that Madison’s administration, thoroughly humili- 
 ated by our military reserves, was taking steps to organize 
 and train much larger forces, induced England to accept the 
 war as a draw and negotiate the peace treaty of Ghent. 
 
 This war was fought in the administration of Madison, 
 and Madison’s last annual message to congress discloses his 
 honest judgment about the inefficiency of the militia. 
 
 “As a subject of the highest importance to the national 
 welfare,” said Madison’s message of December 3, 1816, “I must 
 again earnestly recommend to the consideration of congress a 
 reorganization of the militia on a plan which will form it into 
 classes according to the periods of life more or less adapted 
 to military service. An efficient militia is authorized and 
 contemplated by the Constitution and required by the spirit 
 and safety of free government. 
 
 “The present organization of our militia is universally 
 regarded as less efficient than it ought to be made, and no or- 
 ganization can be better calculated to give to it a due force 
 than to give to it a due classification which will assign the fore- 
 most place in the defense of the country to that portion of its 
 citizens whose activity and animation best enable them to 
 rally to its standard. Besides the consideration that a time of 
 peace is the time when the change can be made with the most 
 convenience and equity, it will now be aided by the experience 
 of a recent war in which the militia bore so interesting a part.” 
 
 Note Madison’s studied use of the word “interesting.” 
 With the sorry record of the war immediately behind him, he 
 could not, in honesty of speech, say the militia had borne a 
 “gallant,” an “honorable” or even a “distinguished” part. 
 
68 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 But congress was again supine and nothing was done to 
 heed the wise counsels of Madison and his predecessors. The 
 old defective militia law of 1792 was allowed to stand, and it 
 stands substantially today. 
 
 Monroe 
 
 President Monroe added his plea to the plans of Wash- 
 ington, Adams, Jefferson, and Aladison. “As the defense and 
 even the liberties of the country,’ he said in a message to 
 congress, “depend in times of imminent danger on the militia, 
 it is of the highest importance that it be well organized, armed 
 and disciplined throughout the Union.’’ 
 
 Here again Monroe was speaking of the whole militia of 
 the nation — the unorganized citizenry between the ages of 18 
 and 45. 
 
 Jackson 
 
 President Jackson, reiterated the counsel of Washington. 
 Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. He urged that the 
 whole body of the militia be organized and classified for 
 training and liability to service: 
 
 “A classification of the population,” said President Jack- 
 son in his message of December 7, 1835, “offers the obvious 
 means of effecting this organization. Such a division may 
 be made as will be just to all by transferring each at a proper 
 period of life from one class to another and by calling first 
 for the service of that class, whether for instruction or action, 
 which from age is qualified for the duty and may be called 
 to perform it with the least injury to themselves or the public. 
 
 “Should the danger ever become so imminent as to require 
 additional force the other classes in succession would be ready 
 for the call. And if in addition to this organization voluntary 
 associations were encouraged and inducements held out for 
 their formation our militia would be in a state of efficient ser- 
 vice. 
 
 “Now, when we are at peace, is the proper time to digest 
 and establish a practicable system. The object is certainly 
 worth the experiment and worth the experience. No one ap- 
 preciating the blessing of a republician government can ob- 
 ject to his share of the burden which such plan may impose. 
 Indeed, a moderate proportion of the national funds could 
 scarcely be better applied than in carrying into effect and con- 
 tinuing such an arrangerrient, and in giving the necessary 
 elementary instruction.’ 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 69 
 
 VARIOUS OPINIONS 
 David Starr Jordan, From “War and the Breed” 
 
 The objections to Military Training as part of a general 
 education are mainly three. The one is that such training 
 is on the whole highly specalized for ' a particular profession, 
 and that, war. The second is that the martial spirit or spe- 
 cific bias v/hich this training gives to some degree unfits its 
 possessor to consider justly the affairs in which this nation is 
 concerned. It tends to exaggerate that perverted form of 
 patriotism expressed in words “rny country, right or wrong”. . 
 
 . . . A third objection is that military drill is in the hands of 
 non-commissioned officers, in general with no fitness for teach- 
 ing, while its value as exercise is far inferior to that of a well- 
 appointed gymnasium, or even of an ordinary athletic field. 
 
 Col. Thomas F. Edmands: “In Boston the effect of school 
 drill has been to make boys round shouldered and narrow 
 chested. I. never saw a school company well set up in my 
 life. Except a few of the larger ones the boys are overweight- 
 ed by the musket they are obliged to carry.” 
 
 “The modern drill regulations are by no means adapted 
 for work in the schools under any circumstances. They need 
 a man’s brains and muscle. Every time I tell the truth about 
 the matter, I generally raise a storm from persons illy inform- 
 ed upon the subject, and from the boys, whose self-conceit en- 
 gendered by this drill, should be one of the greatest arguments 
 against its further practice.” 
 
 Frederic L. Huidekoper: “General Henry Lee (Light 
 
 Horse Harry), a distinguished officer during the Revolution, 
 epitomized the matter admirably when he asserted that ‘A 
 Government is the murderer of its citizens which sends them 
 to the field uninformed and untaught where they are to meet 
 men of the same age and strength, mechanized by education 
 and discipline for battle.” 
 
 Military Training in Our Public Schools 
 Military training has not enough educationl value to re- 
 place any subject that rightfully belongs in the school courses 
 of study. This objection is approved by Prof. John Dewey, 
 Pres. Henry Churchill King of Oberlin College, Ex-Pres. Char- 
 les W. Elliot of Harvard University, Ex-Governor Charles E. 
 Hughes and Ex-Secretary of .State Gen. John W. Foster, 
 
 The supposed benefits of military training can be secured 
 more effectively by other means, viz.: The gymnasium, out- 
 
70 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 door games and athletics. This statement is supported by 
 such expert testimony as that of Dr. Dudley Sargent, head of 
 the Hemenway Gymnasium, Harvard University, Prof. Reich- 
 art of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Nathan C. Schaeffer, 
 State Superintendent of Schools, Pennsylvania, Prof. Charles 
 Zueblin, and Dr. David Starr Jordan. Moreover, the sup- 
 posed benefits of military drill are due not to the system but 
 to the personality of the particular instructor. 
 
 It is not a burden on the individual but a duty owing to the 
 
 State 
 
 Luke E. Wright: “The fact is that the volunteer is not 
 a reliable soldier, and any people that leans upon him leans 
 upon a broken reed. 
 
 “The volunteer system is a failure. It is wrong in prin- 
 ciple and it is bad in practice. No people have ever been able 
 to fight a long continued war, to endure a strain upon all their 
 resources, under the volunteer system. The fact is that the 
 Confederacy in our Civil War thought they could lick the 
 Yankees in just a year; they gave themselves ample margin; 
 and so they enlisted their own men for twelve months. The 
 twelve months expired and they were mistaken, woefully so; 
 and thereupon by a conscripting act all of those twelve month 
 men were simply blanketed into the army for the rest of the 
 v/ar. 
 
 Advantages Are Numerous 
 
 C. E. Calkins, in “Cyclopoedia of American Government,” 
 Vol. 2, Page 439 
 
 “The military advantages of an automatic system which 
 makes every class of the population bear a part in national de- 
 fense are incontestable. Not only does it provide for an 
 ample standing army during peace and perpetuate the mili- 
 tary tradition, but it provides a practically unlimited reserve 
 of trained soldiers in the prime of life. Thus all the ex- 
 travagance and disorder of hurried recruiting, the bounties for 
 volunteering and the irritating enforcement of conscription, 
 are avoided. The army is mobilized for war by filling the 
 ranks of the existing organization, without sending improvised 
 regiments or companies to the front; and no command is 
 trusted to an untrained officer.” 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 71 
 
 With Civic Duty Goes Military Duty and Upon Both Our 
 Existence Depends 
 
 From an address by John Purroy Mitchel, former Mayor of 
 New York City 
 
 “We are passing today through a great crisis in our na- 
 tional life. The issue is more than national; it is as broad as 
 the human race itself. Into our hands here has been com- 
 mitted the heritage of democratic government. It is our 
 trust to perpetuate it, to develop it, to transmit it to posterity, 
 a serviceable agent for the advancement of civilization and for 
 the happiness of mankind. Here in this nation and country 
 of ours the efficiency of democracy is on trial today. Here 
 under our free institutions through one hundred and thirty 
 years of effort and progress, we have developed governmental 
 and civic efficiency. We teach our citizens the sense of 
 individual civic responsibility, and they respond to it. During 
 the greater part of the time, due to geographical location and 
 the absence of hostile motives abroad, we have enjoyed peace. 
 Now that science has obliterated distance and our prosperity 
 and commerce supply the motive, we can no longer count upon 
 an effective peace. Democracy, therefore, must meet the 
 new conditions. But through its elementary sufficiency for 
 self-preservation we must teach our citizens that with civic 
 duty goes military duty, and that both are obligations on which 
 the life of the state depends.” 
 
 Labor’s Attitude 
 
 Samuel Gompers declares in favor of training for defense of 
 
 the nation 
 
 “We must have a preparation that means a comprehensive 
 development of all the powers and resources of all our citi- 
 zens. In Switzerland every man is a soldier — not necessari- 
 ly to go to war — but he has the physical and manual training 
 necessary to defend himself, his family, and his country. Un- 
 der that system the Swiss have developed a manhood, a charac- 
 ter, that challenges the admiration of the world. We will 
 be satisfied with nothing less in America. 
 
 “We must see to it that the great mass of the farmers 
 and the workers in industry shall be thoroughly trained and 
 organized. We must see to it that the military and naval 
 forces of the country are controlled in the interests of peace, 
 of justice, of democracy, and of humanity. 
 
 “There must be industrial, commercial, political, social. 
 
72 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 moral, as well as military defense. Citizen soldiery must be 
 established, and extended. It must be democratically organ- 
 ized, officered, and controlled. We must put an end to the 
 present wasteful and unfair administration of our military af- 
 fairs." 
 
 Dr. Nathan C. Schaeffer: And since military training, as 
 the authorities quoted state, has not enough educational value 
 to replace any other subject, and since the supposed benefits 
 may be effectively secured by other accessible practical sys- 
 tems, and since one-half of the school population is wholly 
 ignored by this system, it therefore seems to be perfectly clear 
 that the educational value of military training is practically 
 nil, and should have no place in our school courses. 
 
 Years ago, English schools tried military training and 
 finding it physically harmful gave it up; French schools did 
 the same. 
 
 To adopt military training in our schools would be con- 
 trary to our national traditions and national ideals; there- 
 fore, it would be undemocratic and unAmerican. It would out- 
 Prussianize Prussia, for neither the Prussians nor Germans 
 have as yet been so steeped in militarism as to burden their 
 regular schools with the incubus of military training — Prof. 
 John Dewey, Dr. Nathan Schaeffer and Pres. John H. Find- 
 ley of New York State University. 
 
 Military training in the public schools fosters a spirit of 
 suspicion and distrust of other nations. Acting on the fic- 
 titious plea of “National Necessity," a “National Enemy" must 
 be found. This engenders international hatred — a long step 
 toward war. 
 
 Charles E. Hughes: Military training in the public 
 
 schools is not necessary in order to teach patriotism or to 
 provide for national defense. Military training may lead 
 to efficiency on the parade ground or to skill at target practice, 
 but it does not develop, necessarily, the spirit of patriotism. 
 Real patriotism is of the spirit — a quality of mind and heart, — 
 hence it is not acquired by evolutions on the drill ground or 
 by shooting at a target. True patriotism grows out of char- 
 acter. It requires a patriot to live a clean, strong life for his 
 country. We can no longer look to war for the develop- 
 ment of either national or individual character. 
 
 Prof. G. M. Stratton: From “The Double Standard in 
 Regard to Fighting." The moral danger. The laws of the 
 community and of the State forbid the boy to carry arms. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 73 
 
 He knows that the man who assaults his fellowman with a 
 deadly weapon is tried in court for his liberty and his life. 
 He goes to Sunday School and learns the command, “Thou 
 shalt not kill.” He attends church and hears that he “must 
 do unto others as he would have others do unto him,” and 
 he joins the cadet corps and is trained with gun and sword 
 in the art of killing his fellow-men ! Then we wonder why out- 
 boys have such hazy ideas on moral questions! We wonder 
 why our boys are so often lacking in clear vision, cleat- 
 reasoning, and right acting! God pity and help us to sec 
 the wrong we are inflicting on the youths of the land by 
 advocating military training for rnere boys ! 
 
 Maj. Gen. Leonard A. Wood, commanding the department 
 of the east, testified before the senate committee; 
 
 “If the policy of Knox and General Washington had been 
 approved the chances are we would have had no war of 1812; and 
 if we had had it, we would have held Canada after a short cam- 
 paign. If we had had that policy the civil war would have been 
 imoossible. The uprising would have been crushed in the bud. 
 
 “I think you have to drive home that principle of general mili- 
 tary obligation and general military training. I think that is the 
 basis of the whole thing. Once you get that basis you can bring 
 I'-our regular arm.y down to a pretty small limit. We should estab- 
 lish a condition under which the greatest possible number of men 
 are trained, and once trained, return to their normal occupations, 
 and only enough m.en m.aintained with the colors for the every-day 
 needs of the nation, no more. 
 
 “Whether they like it or not, men realize that the principle is 
 sound. A man cannot exercise the suffrage as a right and assume 
 that he has the privilege of deciding whether or not he is to 
 render service in case of necessity****. 
 
 “The volunteer system as a system has been a dismal failure 
 in every war we have engaged in and always will be. The good 
 men will go first, then volunteering will stop, as it did in the revolu- 
 tion and 1812, and in the civil war v/hen we went to the draft. We 
 never filled our call for the Spanish war even. It is a rotten sys- 
 tem. The spirit is fine, but the system is unsound and spells dis- 
 aster if we ever go into a real war with it*****. There has been 
 no equality of service. The rich when drafted have been able to 
 buy the poor to take their places. The result has been a debauchery 
 of public morals on the subject of each and every man’s obliga- 
 tion to service in time of war. We have never in our entire ser- 
 vice waged single-handed a war with a first-class country, and we 
 
74 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 have not the slightest conception of what war would mean with 
 an organized and prepared nation, and it is principally with pos-* 
 sible war with such a nation that we are concerned.” 
 
 From a Letter 
 
 “Every thoughful man must feel that as the world is con- 
 stituted no nation is safe nor does its flag command respect 
 unless it is in a position to defend itself and the rights and in- 
 terests of its people. Lack of preparedness invites attack 
 and insures disaster, while adequate means of defense on land 
 and sea is the best possible insurance for peace that can be 
 written. 
 
 “In a democracy security rests upon an appreciation by the 
 people of the basic principle that equality of opportunity goes 
 hand in hand with equality of obligation within the limits of our 
 physical and mental capacity; that we must share and share 
 alike the benefits and privileges as well as the grave respon- 
 sibilities and duties of citizenship. 
 
 “As matters now stand I feel that the most important 
 question before our country today is adequate preparedness 
 and that this must be based upon universal military training; 
 a training which will provide a reasonably effective citizen- 
 soldiery. This training must apply to all young men who 
 are physically fit. Such training if carried on under a system 
 similar to that in effect in Australia or Switzerland will not 
 interfere with the instruction of our youth, but will supple- 
 ment it. 
 
 “The training proposed by the plan submitted by you is 
 in accordance with the best thought of the day on this sub- 
 ject and will, so far as the individual is concerned, turn out a 
 better man physicall3% intellectually, and morally; it will make 
 him a better man from the economic standpoint because of 
 habits of promptness, thoroughness and exactness. He will 
 be a better all round citizen. It will give him that self-con- 
 trol, respect for the flag, for the authorities and for the rights 
 of others which are so much needed. It will serve to impress 
 upon him a sense of his responsiblity towards the nation and 
 teach him to think in terms of the nation rather than in terms 
 of the individual or locality. It will tend to national solid- 
 arity. It will make America what she must be, a real melting 
 pot, fusing the various unassimilated elements into one mass 
 of real Americans. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 75 
 
 Col. E. F. Glenn, U. S. General Staff 
 Australian Mothers Like the Result 
 
 “I inquired personally very carefully into the conditions that 
 confronted Australia and also as to how they worked it out. I 
 found that there was great opposition on the part of the mothers 
 of the country to the introduction of this as a compulsory measure. 
 You understand that in Australia it commenced about 1903, and 
 their compulsory law was passed in 1909, to become effective in 
 1911. After this had been in operation as a compulsory measure 
 for two years, and is so today, from every source that I can get 
 information from, you could not drive it out of Australia on ac- 
 count of the objection of the mothers. They all actually insist 
 upon it, and they insist upon it not from the military point of 
 view — far from it; they insist upon it because of the civil bene- 
 fits.” 
 
 War Costs too Much 
 
 War is the most terrible calamity that can overtake a nation. 
 Not only does it rob a country of the flower of its manhood 
 and cause untold human suffering and misery, but in a mone- 
 tary sense, it is the most destructive agency known to mankind. 
 
 Again quoting Mr. Huidekoper as authority, we find that: 
 The cost of the Civil War to the North, plus pensions paid to 
 date, is almost ten billions of dollars. 
 
 This stupendous amount does not include private losses 
 or destruction of property, the interest paid on the war debt 
 or the losses incurred by the southern confederacy. If these 
 were included, it probably would be double the amount, and 
 the end is not yet. 
 
 In the three Indian wars, the Seminole, Blackhawks, and 
 Florida campaigns to suppress about four thousand redskins, 
 the cost was over $83,000,000 or more than $20,000 for every 
 single Indian! 
 
 The awful debt so rapidly piling up because of the Euro- 
 pean war will hang as mill stones around the necks of millions 
 yet unborn in these unhappy countries. The expense to 
 Great Brittain alone is more than $28,000,000 a day. In view 
 of this should we not do all that is possible to insure our 
 country against war and do it by the only way known to man 
 or approved by experience, namely, to develop strength, readi- 
 ness and ability quickly to meet and vanquish any foe that 
 might attack us? If strong and ready, no nation will trouble 
 us. Let our motto be, “Defense not Defiance.” 
 
76 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 BRIEF PARAGRAPHS 
 
 We should never wait again till the emergency is upon 
 us before we begin to prepare. No one w^ould think of advo- 
 cating such a policy in any other affair of life; why do it in 
 national affairs? 
 
 The real preparation for modern war is not in drilling 
 soldiers. It is in providing armament ; equipment, supplies 
 which are necessary to make an army effective. It is admitted 
 that we cannot do the latter; then why do the former? 
 
 The Great War demonstrated that we could drill an army 
 in six months that was equal to the best that Germany had. 
 We should keep a standing army large enuf to hold any enem}^ 
 at bay till we can train a new army. This provides for our 
 defense; we do not need an army for offense. 
 
 The safety of every nation depends on its defenders, its 
 soldiers. The negative cannot promise us any miracles to 
 offset or compensate for lack of common prudence and com- 
 mon sense. To send men into modern battle untrained is to 
 slaughter them by thousands and then not secure protection. 
 
 It is enuf to ask our young men to rd.lly to their country's 
 defense when there is need of it. Why should one part of 
 the people put an intolerable burden on another part when 
 there is no need for it? When w^e wish ^ thing done in a 
 democracy w'e convince the majority that it should be done. 
 Arguments are the only weapon in a free country. 
 
 Every young man is at sea for a year or two after he 
 graduates. Many are uncertain as to what their life work will 
 be, and many who have decided cannot find a desirable open- 
 ing. A year or two of military training w'ould be a God 
 send to such young men. They would not only lose nothing 
 but the time they are now losing would be profitably used. 
 
 The fact is beyond controversy that young men do not want 
 universal military training. It is compulsory in Australia and 
 the year before the war there were 22,143 prosecutions of 
 young men for refusal to drill; the population of Australia is 
 less than that of Ohio. The overwhelming majority of those 
 who favor universal military training are those who know they 
 won’t have to take it. 
 
 The affirmative claim that because our boys rallied under 
 the selective draft to the nation’s defense when they saw there 
 was need of it, that therefore they would rally also in time 
 of peace when there is no need. There is all the difference 
 in the wo*-M between the two conditions. The very fact that 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 77 
 
 they wish to make it universal or compulsory shows that they 
 know that the young men do not want it. 
 
 In the last war, the only criticism of our soldiers wa'^ 
 that they were too brave; that they exposed themselves too 
 much. They were cool, resourceful and skdlfui in battle ; 
 equal to the finest soldiers in the world. A few months drill 
 had given them all that universal military training could have 
 given them. Two years of military training, as the militarists 
 demand \vould have been enormous waste. 
 
 We already have nearly 4, COO, COO young men Vv’ho have 
 already had cixcellent military training. They can be mobi- 
 lized in a few weeks at any time they may be needed. Half 
 of these young men will be under thirty ten 3 ^ears from now. 
 Why, then, should we be in such a hurry to get universal mili- 
 tary training started? It is as clear as an^^thing under the 
 sun that we will not need it for a number of ^^ears. 
 
 Since we have had so many men in militar}^ training re- 
 cently, for some 3 ^ears, perhaps, hot much will be required. It 
 is a most excellent and favorable time to begin such a policy. 
 All v/e shall need is to keep up what has been gained b}" those 
 of military age, and train the relatively'- small number of those 
 becoming of such age. There never can be a time when uni- 
 versal military training could be so easily introduced as now. 
 
 The chief preparation for war in these days is not mili- 
 tary evolutions which constitute the chief part of military train- 
 ing. It is handling war machinery ; the machine guns, the 
 cannon, the aeroplanes. These require long and thoro train- 
 ing of a few men. There is no need whatever of more than 
 an army of officers and specialists. Americans are quick to 
 learn; all we need is somebody to teach them when there is 
 need. 
 
 Even if the general position of the affirmative were valid 
 their demand is excessive. Universal military training would 
 prepare an army of ten millions of men. The widest and 
 most extravagant militarist in the nation could find no use 
 for such an army as that. It would be like taking a fourteen 
 inch cannon to shoot a chicken' hawk, or club to brush off 
 a fly. The affirmative demand is ridiculously, monstrously, 
 excessive. 
 
 America is the only nation which can take the lead in dis- 
 couraging military preparations. She is so protected by her 
 geographical situation that no nation on earth would be crazy 
 enuf to even think of attacking lier within tl:e next five or ten 
 
78 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 years, and all the nations of the world know this. If we go 
 to making preparations our influence for peace is at an end. 
 We cannot be trusted as a peaceable nation while we go on 
 preparing for war. 
 
 The militarists pretend that they want military training 
 for physical development of our young men, and that they do 
 not expect them to ever have to fight. Well, if physical 
 training is all they are after, why don’t they go in for physical 
 training? It would not cost a fraction of what military train- 
 ing would cost; it would be open to no objections; it would pro- 
 vide for the young women also. The truth is that physical 
 development is only a pretext. It is mere camouflage. 
 
 It is argued that universal military training would endanger 
 the freedom of labor. The whole experience of history is 
 against this opinion; and the reasons are evident. If there 
 is universal military training laboring men get more of it 
 than their opponents because there are so many more of them. 
 Then when laboring men unite they do not form a mob but 
 an army and can get their rights; and at the same time their 
 military training would be the best possible insurance against 
 mobs. 
 
 The negative bring up purely theoretical testimony to show 
 that military training is not good physical exercise; that it 
 does not build up health and physical efficiency. Why do 
 they do that when we have right before our eyes the proof 
 from thousands and tens of thousands of actual cases where 
 military training produced great improvement, and the im- 
 provement was common to all classes of soldiers. The ef- 
 fects of the physical training were magnificent, wonderful, and 
 to the last degree, undeniable. 
 
 It takes nearly or quite as long to mobilize the equipment, 
 food supplies, transportation, etc. of a modern army as it does 
 to train an army. In fact, during the last war we got the 
 army ready long before we got cannon, machine guns, and 
 aeroplanes. An army would be useless without enormous 
 military stores and supplies. But they would not keep; they 
 have to be provided only when war is in sight. We might 
 spend millions in guns and equipments which would be sent to 
 the scrap heap by new inventions. 
 
 In the last war, our soldiers at least had to fight without 
 adequate supplies of cannon, machine guns, and aeroplanes. 
 There was where we lackt preparation. To send an army into 
 a modern battle without ample equipment is wholesale murder. 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 79 
 
 The negative favor this sort of preparation because it is real 
 effective preparation. LTniversal military training vVithout 
 corresponding preparation in armament and equipment would 
 be utterly futile. If the latter is amply provided the former 
 is not needed voluntary enlistments are ample. 
 
 We have inherited our American institutions from our 
 fathers. The}" are not ours to squander or jeopardise, but to 
 transmit to those who are to come after us. Our obligations 
 to self protection are not for our own sakes only or even 
 chiefly, but to protect these priceless institutions which are not 
 ours, but which we hold in trust for posterity and for human- 
 ity. To deliberately refuse to do anything and everything 
 that can be done to preserve this heritage is more than a 
 blunder; it is the supremest crime .a breach of trust, a betrayal 
 of posterity. 
 
 Most of the governments of the world still believe in war. 
 Many others object to it but do not believe that there , is any 
 substitute for it; that war is inevitable. Whether we like it 
 or not, we live in that kind of a world. The affirmative does 
 not believe in military training because we believe in war; we 
 are as much opposed to war as the negative is. We believe 
 in military training because there is no other ultimate pro- 
 tection that we can absolutely depend on. The negative can 
 offer us nothing, they cannot even suggest anything. They 
 merely ask us to take chances. 
 
 Japan and China are good illustrations of both sides of this 
 question. Japan has less than one-eighth of the population of 
 China, and not a fraction of her resources, and yet Japan 
 ranks with the greatest nations in the world and China is a 
 football kickt with impunity by any nation that wishes to 
 indulge in that pastime. Absolutely helpless, China is ap- 
 pealing to outside nations now to protect her from little Japan. 
 It is all right for China to want peace; we honor her for that; 
 but she must take the right way to get it. A nation must 
 be able to protect herself or she can have no standing among 
 nations. 
 
 The Republic of ancient Rome had a large army. Tho 
 maintaind ostensibly for protection against foren foes it in- 
 evitably got mixt up in domestic controversies, so that the 
 day came when rival candidates had an army back of them 
 and political strife became civil war. It is a lesson for the 
 .\mcrican republic. We may safely have a large army when 
 we have something definite for it to do; but to have an idle 
 
80 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 army on the supposition that Satan will not find anything for 
 idle hands to do has, in all our history, been deemd a danger- 
 ous policy; a policy which there is no immediate reason for 
 abandoning. 
 
 What we think of war does not matter; that does not enter 
 into the question at all. The only question is what will in- 
 fallibly protect our nation and its institutions. We choose 
 weapons not according to our personal tastes but to meet the 
 dangers arrayed against us. What would we think of a man 
 who would choose a penknife or walking stick for protection 
 against a pack of wolves because those utensils were person- 
 ally more agreeable to him. Sanity would require that wc 
 choose military training as a protection because that is what 
 every other nation on earth is doing. It is the only thing that 
 can give us any real protection. 
 
 Even if we were willing to take our chances on a policy of 
 non-preparation for our own individual interests, what right 
 have we to use such a policy in taking care of a trust. Wc 
 may run risks with what is our own but we have no right t« 
 take chances in caring for that which is entrusted to us. Wc 
 may experiment with our own matters but we have no shad- 
 ow of right to experiment with the vital interests and wel- 
 fare of others. Universal military training will render us 
 safe; as safe as anything can be in this world. No other 
 plan offers us any security whatever; the negative can only 
 tell us that they hope nobody will attack us. 
 
 The affirmative make much of the claim that they wish us 
 to prepare for defense only, not for attack. That’s exactly 
 what the Germans have been saying for a generation past. 
 But they say, “we are not Germany.” The question is not 
 what we think of ourselves and our intentions but what the 
 rest of the world think of them. We may think ourselves 
 paragons of righteousness and justice but that has no weight 
 in this discussion. The rest of the world think that we are 
 human beings; they do not think that we wear wings under 
 our cloaks; they are more likely to think that we wear daggers 
 if we go to making such enormous military preparations. 
 
 It is not a question of what ought to be or would be in 
 an ideal world; it is a question of what IS. A nation with no 
 power to enforce her will has little or no influence among 
 the nations of the world. We may remonstrate with nations 
 for being so naughty; we may entreat them to be good, but 
 by doing so we only succeed in making ourselves ridiculous 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 81 
 
 Can’t the negative see that the world has not yet reacht the 
 condition where such methods are practicable; that all ef- 
 fective power among nations rests on force? It is folly to 
 argue about an ideal world when we don’t have it. We 
 must govern ourselves by the facts of the world of this day as we 
 find them. 
 
 The affirmative advise that we make extravagant prepara- 
 tion for war and then advocate peace. But who would be- 
 lieve us? If we believe in peace we must act accordingly; we 
 must trust peaceful methods and policies. We can run sonic 
 risks of war for the sake of universal peace. If one mem- 
 ber of the League of Nations shows clearly that it has no 
 confidence in it what effect would it have on the other mem- 
 bers? What good would it do to hold out our left hand 
 to a neighbor as a token of peaceful intentions when she 
 knows perfectly well that we hold a dagger in the right hand. 
 Extravagant military preparation makes a farce of all our 
 efforts for universal peace. 
 
 A large army would be certain to embroil us in foren 
 troubles and controversies. A large idle army would want 
 something to do. They would not enjoy loafing around a 
 camp all their lives. Every time there was a chance to mix 
 up in a foren affair they would be eager to go. And they 
 would marshall all the influence they could command in favor 
 of such policies, and so would be a constant menace to the 
 peacableness of our foren relations. But we must have pro- 
 tection in some way. The only alternative to a large standing- 
 army is universal military training so that soldiers would all 
 be engaged in civil pursuits till there was actual need of 
 their services in the army. 
 
 If we go to making extensive military preparations it is as 
 certain as anything can be that it will cause other nations to 
 make more preparations than they otherwise would. If then, 
 we double our preparadness and other nations do the same, 
 how are we relatively any better protected than we are now? 
 While we may be better prepared for defense others are equally 
 better prepared for attack. And so it will go on without end; 
 there is no hope in that policy. Europe has tried it for cen- 
 turies; the only effect is to make wars more terrible; it does 
 not prevent them in the least? Why ,then, follow this stupid, 
 suicidal policy any longer? -We know that it always has 
 failed, and that it must fail as long as it is tried. 
 
82 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 There is no disputing the fact that the real desire of at 
 least very many of the advocates of universal military train- 
 ing is to have an army ready so it can be used in coercing 
 labor. It is an idea as old as ancient Rome; it has always 
 been the view of the privileged classes of Europe that a reg- 
 ular army could be depended upon to fight for the King and 
 aristrocracy ; and this has generally been the case. In a labor 
 struggle it would be evidently impossible to recruit an army 
 by voluntary enlistments. It is necessary to have an army not 
 in touch with the masses of the people and whose officers 
 were in close social touch and sympathy with the wealthy and 
 privileged classes. In many European nations a military 
 career ,was the only one open to sons of the aristrocacy. It 
 may be that this is best — we are not discussing that — but let 
 the matter be clearly understood. 
 
 Now is the peace crisis of all history. There never was 
 a time when everything that in the least looks towards war 
 should be avoided. It cannot' possibly be claimd that we 
 need military training right now. We have four million men 
 already trained and enormous stores of muitious and arms. 
 There never was less need for anything than there is for uni- 
 versal military training in the United States right now, or will 
 be for a number of years. We are trying to establish a League 
 of Nations to prevent war. What chance has such a 
 league to succeed if the chief nations show that they have no 
 confidence in it? Even if the arguments of the affirmative 
 were valid as general principles, they are not valid under the 
 conditions which just now exist. The chief business of the 
 world now is to establish the League of Nations ; if that fails 
 than it will be time enuf to talk of universal military training. 
 
 In America we all believe in the rights of labor; we wish 
 to see labor get far more than it has ever received; but we 
 must not overlook the fact that labor is not always wisely 
 led. In the past year labor has not been following its own 
 leaders even. This is the universal experience of all his- 
 tory. It has been labor’s calamity to be often led by im- 
 practical visionaries, by selfish demagogs. Napoleon was 
 such a leader. He appeared as a champion of the common 
 people and ended by establishing himself as a monarch more 
 autocratic than the Bourbons. The same thing happened in 
 the recent revolution in China; Yuan-Shi-Ki was elected presi- 
 dent but soon declared himself emperor. Tho the attempt 
 faild it shows the tendency. The recent experience of Russia 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 83 
 
 is another illustration. In the end, labor always suffers most 
 by the breaking down of law by mob rule. No state can exist or 
 ever did exist unless mob rule and the demagog are kept in 
 abeyance. The plea that the military might be used against 
 labor riots is dangerous demagogry. 
 
 SUGGESTED QUESTIONS TO AID IN BRINGING OUT 
 THE CHIEF ISSUES 
 
 1. Is a modern Nation safe without an army? 2. Would 
 the League of Nations entirely do away with the need of an army? 
 3. Even if a people thought a foren government would be better 
 for them than their own would they be justified in surrendering 
 their liberties? 4. Is a government something a people can do what 
 they wish with, or is it a trust for future generations? 5. Would 
 the influence of the United States among the nations of the earth 
 be increast or diminisht by universal military training? 6. If 
 increast would it be due to fear or to increast moral influence? 
 7. Would the need of military training be increast or decreast by 
 the League of Nations? 8. To what would a nation’s influence 
 in the League be chiefly due? 9. Under the actual conditions that 
 exist can a nation be protected without military training sometime, 
 somehow, somewhere? 10. Is the real question, then, under what 
 conditions shall it be given? 11. Has anyone a right to live in a 
 country for whose protection he is not willing to do his share? 12. 
 Do the affirmative believe in universal military training because they 
 like it, or because they deem it necessary? 13. Will one ambitious 
 and unscrupulous nation always ready for war compel all other 
 nations to be ready also? 
 
 14. Can we get an army ready in time after danger of attack 
 appears? 15. Is an unprepared nation more likely to have war 
 forced on it? 16. Would a difficulty be settled by an unprepared 
 nation submitting to wrong? 17. How do China and Japan illus- 
 trate preparedness and unpreparedness? 18. If France had been 
 as little prepared for war as England and the United States how 
 would the Great War have resulted? 19. Make a list of the dif- 
 ferences preparation would make in the attitude of nations to- 
 wards each other? 20. Is the effect of preparedness to temporarily 
 or permanently prevent war? 21. What effect would a nation’s 
 preparedness or lack of it have on its influence with other nations? 
 22. Does a nation with right intentions need to be prepared for 
 war? 23. If zeppelins should attack one of our large cities would 
 the nation have to pay for the damage done? 24. Is it the duty of 
 nations to protect its citizens? 25. Can it do it without an army? 
 
84 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 26. How long does it take to prepare an army for modern warfare? 
 
 27. How did our selected draft soldiers compare with European 
 soldiers? 28, Would an army of ten millions be useless without 
 equipment? 29. How would that affect the attitude of the makers 
 of military equipment? 30. Is industrial preparedness also nec- 
 essary? 31. Could we prepare an army in less time than in 
 1917-8? 32. If we had been attackt by a great Power what would 
 have happened while we were getting ready? 33. Can an army 
 be prepared while other necessary preparations are being made? 
 
 34. Is a well armd and prepared nation more likely to attack 
 some other nation than one which is unarmd and unprepared? 35. 
 Which would make the greater efforts to settle disputes by arbitra- 
 tion or diplom.acy? 36. Which would be more unyielding in interna- 
 tional controversies? 37. What chance have military men lor 
 success, fame, or achievement without war? 38. Is that apt to 
 affect their attitude towards war? 39. Are “conscientious ob- 
 jectors” always right? 40. Should their convictions be respected? 
 
 41. Why should a large army be desired by the rich more than 
 l)y the poor? 42. Which would suffer more by an invasion? 43. 
 Which would suffer miore ultimately? 44. Could. military training 
 be made to bear equally on rich and poor alike? 45, Could the 
 poor spare the time for it as easily as the rich? 46. Do the in- 
 terests of the poor require it as miuch as the interests of the rich? 
 
 47. If we had universal military training should any be exempted? 
 
 48. Are military forces desired for any other purpose than re- 
 pelling foren invasions? 49. What effect would universal military 
 training have on strikes? 50. What on mobs and other disorders? 
 51. Is a citizen army more likely to be used to oppress the peo- 
 ple or to defend them. in case of domestic controversies? 
 
 52. How large an army would universal military training give 
 us? 53. Do we need that large an army? 54. Why make train- 
 ing universal if it is not needed? 55, Would it bear equally on 
 all? 56. Would men out of work be wronged as much as those 
 in important positions? 57. Why should all be drafted alike if 
 all are not needed? 58. Can v/e depend on volunteers to keep as 
 large an army as we need? 59. How could a universal military 
 training law be enforced? 60. Would it have to be enforced by 
 local authorities, by the State, or by the National Government? 61. 
 Would we have to create new machinery for its enforcement? 62. 
 What effect would it have on our foren population? 63. Do a 
 majority of our young men favor universal military training? 64. 
 Why don’t they take it voluntarily then ? 65. Should the rest of the 
 people force such a law^ on them? 66. Are the young men of mil- 
 
UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
 85 
 
 itary age less patriotic and loyal than the rest of the people? 67. 
 Would the young men volunteer if they believed it necessary? 68. 
 Would all of them volunteer? 69. Should those who do not be 
 rewarded for not doing so? 70. Should the brave, generous, ‘and 
 loyal preserve the nation for the benefit of the cowardly, selfish, and 
 disloyal ? 
 
 71. How could we tell how large an army to prepare? 72. 
 If we had universal military training would we have to have ex- 
 emption boards? 73. Should there be uniform exemption laws, 
 or should .each board use its own judgment? 74. Could as good 
 men be got for exemption boards in time of peace as in war 
 times? 75. Would you compel non-naturalized citizens to serve? 
 78. What effect would universal military training have on the num- 
 ber and status of aliens among us? 79. Could Universal military 
 training be made “universal?” 
 
 80. ’ Are those most in favor of military training the ones who 
 would take it? 81. If they had to, how would it affect thir 
 opinions? 82. Could military training be universal without being 
 made compulsory? 83. Should those unwilling to take it be 
 drafted? 84. Would those who resist the draft be real criminals? 
 85. Should they be shut up with murderers, horsethieves, etc.? 86. 
 Does the decision of the majority make a thing morally right or 
 only legally right? 87. Should the time for mdlitary training be 
 taken from school time, or from the time when young men are 
 entering life work? 88. Would it interfere very much with our reg- 
 ular American m.ode of life? 89. Why do educators generally 
 oppose military training in schools? 90. What part could women 
 have in military training? 91. What effect would its introduction 
 in schools have on the daily schedule? 92. WTat could the girls 
 and the reiected boys do during the drill hours? 
 
 93. What are the essential features of the Swiss system? 94. 
 Could we introduce it without interference with schools? 95. 
 Some modification of the Swiss system has been advocated in this 
 for several years; has anyone stated definitely just what modifica- 
 tions? Why? 96. Can military training be given in the schools? 
 
 97. Are military gymnastics the kind needed by school children? 
 
 98. What should be the exact scope of military training? 99. Should 
 all have exactly the same training? ICO. Should it include sani- 
 tary engineering, chemical and civil engineering? 101. Should it 
 include nursing, transportation, handling supplies, etc.? 102. Should 
 it include office, clerical, and administrative work? 103. Is industrial 
 preparedness equally necessary? 104. Should it include navy, 
 aeroplane, artillery, etc.? 105. Would some of these require longer 
 
86 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 time than others? 
 
 106, Is soldier life as conductive to good morals as life at 
 home? 107. Why are there more murders, mobs, assaults, lynch- 
 ings, etc., in the United States than in any other civilized nation? 
 108. Would military training be likely to improve our record in that 
 respect? 109. Military training enforces habits of obedience; is it 
 the same kind of obedience required in civil life? 110. Are sol- 
 diers more moral than other men? 111. Is soldier training identi- 
 cal with citizenship training? 112. May a soldier use his own judg- 
 ment? 113. Would military training develop the judgment needed 
 at the ballot box? 114. What is the effect of military training on 
 health? 115. Can the same results be obtained some other way? 
 
 116. Does national safety take the precedence of everything 
 else whatever? 117. What real protection does the negative offer? 
 118. Would military training afford certain protection? 119. 
 Would anything offered by the negative do it? 120. Should our 
 conduct in this matter be determined by ideal theories of what ought 
 to be, or hy the actual facts that confront us? 121. Even if 
 national safety could ultimately be secured without universal mili- 
 tary training can it be for the next ten years? 122. What would 
 he the use of protection after our nation is defeated and destroyed? 
 123. Would the application of Christianity solve the problem? 124, 
 Must the burdens of militarism become intolerable? 125. Is the 
 future safe either with armies or without them? 126. What can 
 we do about it? 
 
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UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
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UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING 
 
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INDEX 
 
 Adams, John 65 
 
 Bibliografy 86 
 
 Brief Paragrafs — 76 
 
 Calkins, C. E. 70 
 
 Croly, Herbert 3 
 
 Dewey, Prof. John 69, 72 
 
 Edmands, Col. Thomas F. 69 
 
 Elliott, Dr. Chas. W. 60, 69 
 
 Findley, Pres. John H. 72 
 
 Giddings, Dr. F. H, 14 
 
 Glenn, Col. E. F. 75 
 
 Gompers, Samuel 71 
 
 Hughes, Chas. E. 69, 72 
 
 Huidekoper, F. H. 58, 69 
 
 Jackson, Andrew 68 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas 66 
 
 Jordan, David Starr 69 
 
 Judson, Dr. Harry Pratt 59 
 
 Libbey, Fredrick J. 32 
 
 Madison, James 67 
 
 Military Training League 50 
 
 Mitchel, John Purroy 71 
 
 Monroe, James 68 
 
 Nasmyth, George 20 
 
 Presidents, Opinion of 64 
 
 Questions to Aid Study 83 
 
 Sargent, Dr. Dudley A. 60 
 
 Schaeffer, Dr. Nathan C. 72 
 
 Scott, Gen. H. L. 28 
 
 Stratton, Prof. G. M. 72 
 
 Villard, Oswald G. 43 
 
 Washington, George 64 
 
 Wood, Gen. Leonard A. 73 
 
 Wright, Luke E. 70 
 
 Young, Gen. S. B. M. I 40