RECOGNITION AND ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE MILITARY SPIRIT.
By W. N. G.
The present disagreement between the United States and Spain has demonstrated that, with all our peaceful and Christian pretension as a nation, there is a latent desire for military glory in the breasts of the masses that can only be gratified by war. And it would take a very extensive war to satiate the thirst for blood that seems to permeate the people from ocean to ocean. A bill was recently introduced in Congress providing for the enlargement of the regular army in time of war, which has met with vigorous protest, because it will, to a certain extent, cut off the privilege of the State troops to participate in the war in a manner that would add glory to the local organizations. A specimen protest is that which comes from the adjutant-general of Colorado, from which we take the following:— “Section 3 of the bill provides for increasing the enlisted force of the regular army to more than 100,000 men in case of war. The effect of this section will be to prevent the National Guard of the several States from being called on unless more than 100,000 men are needed. This would seem unjust, for many reasons. The National Guard is organized, equipped, drilled, and disciplined, and its members have devoted a great deal of time and study in order to educate themselves so as to be of assistance to the country in time of need. The organizations of the National Guard would also be imbued with esprit du corps, which is a feature essential to success, and which would not prevail in the case of recruits suddenly added to the forces of the regular army. . . .” “In the event of war the entire National Guard of Colorado desires to be among the first called for duty, and if you will use your influence to have this desire gratified, you will place under many obligations that portion of your constituency known as the National Guard of Colorado.” Representative Bell, of Colorado, who presented this protest, made a speech to the same effect. Following is a specimen sentiment:— “Now, gentlemen, that spirit is in every State in the Union. We do not want any more regular soldiers. The time of war is of all times the period when we least want the raw regular soldier. The regular soldier is a safeguard in time of peace. Not saying anything in disparagement of the regular private, but, generally speaking, many of them drift into the army of necessity. Too often men who have not been able to cope successfully with their neighbors in private affairs seek the regular army in times of peace for food and clothing, and because they are not self-reliant enough to fight their way alone in private life. But when you come to war, if war must be, you will find that the man who has succeeded at home among his fellows in the general avocations of life will be at the front. You will find the young man of the country generally wanting to go with his neighbors and wanting to be officered by his own citizens. You will find miners who want a miners’ regiment. You will find the cowboys wanting a cowboy regiment. You will find that the city boys will want a city regiment. You will find that the farmers will want a farmers’ regiment; and this combination, with the strong emulation it will engender, forms the army that must win our battles now, as they have been won in the past.” The competitive spirit in war preparation is thus pointedly noted:— “The National Guard, generally, of the various sections of the country is drilled in competition with the other forces from different portions of the State. There is a competition and a rivalry existing amongst them to secure the best drill and soldierly bearing, and to-day it is safe to say that many of them could make a very favorable competitive showing, as far as drill is concerned, with the United States Regular Army.” Another expression from his address shows the popular standing of the men thus imbued with the spirit of war:— “I say if you should fill up the army from 25,000 to 104,000, as is proposed here, the greater part of that army would be totally undrilled and not of the best fighting blood of the country; and such a body of men can not be trained and fitted for service and properly used as an emergency army. The National Guard is drilled, ready for action, and of the best citizenship of the nation.” Representative Dockery, of Missouri, in the midst of an earnest speech, said:— “Mr. Speaker, this bill authorizes an increase of the regular army in time of war to the extent of about 78,000 men. I object to it because, to that extent, it stands in the way of the rugged yeomanry from Iowa, from Missouri, from Illinois, from the great Northwest, from the Northeast, and from other sections of the Union, who desire to defend the flag if there is to be war with Spain.” Delegate Smith, of Arizona, spoke for his section in this strain:— “Speaking for the free, brave people of Arizona, I do not hesitate to say this bill will not bring one recruit from that Territory. They will not hide their valor and lose their identity by enlisting as privates in some United States Regular Army regiment. But give them the chance in any war against us to enlist as an Arizona regiment under officers of their own selection, and the battle’s edge will never become too perilous for that regiment to pass across it. I do not believe in any great increase of the regular army, and to that extent I oppose this bill. I depend in war on the great mass of the common people, as the government must depend on them in time of peace. Five hundred Arizona boys, well mounted, as they go at home, can drive any two regiments of Spanish soldiers out of the island of Cuba into the sea and under the very wreck that Spain’s unpunished perfidy wrought.” Representative De Armond, of Missouri, appealed to the sentiment of home pride and social affiliation as a war flame in the following language:— “If we are to read chronicles of bloody warfare, let us read of the charges of regiments of volunteers from New York, from Ohio, from Missouri, from Texas, and from the several other States of the Union. Let the soldiers from one proud State, the volunteer citizen soldiery answering their country’s call, meet in generous rivalry, under the one flag and for the one cause, the volunteer citizen soldiery from the other proud States. That will be a fitting representation of the American people upon the field of battle, where are to be settled great issues worthy of the nation, worthy of its traditions, worthy of its responsibilities, its hopes. . . . Why ought not the comradeship, the fellowship, of those who go out of the same community be sustained and carried through the trying scenes of war? If playfellows in childhood, schoolboys together, fellow-students in the years of early manhood, associates, aye, bosom friends, with full confidence and trust in one another—if they go to war under their country’s starry banner, why should they not go forward side by side, trusting friends as well as soldiers? Then when the battle rages, when the supreme test is applied, each man will feel that at his side stands a friend. He will feel that if some deadly missile strikes him and he falls, he will fall into the arms of a friend, and that his last words uttered upon earth, some message to his loved ones at home, will drop into the ear of a friend, to be carried, he may fondly hope, to those vainly watching and waiting for his return. Such is the American citizen soldiery; such is the volunteer army that has made this country glorious for a century of war, peace, and progress. Why should we banish that army? I am proud of my State, proud of the glorious record her sons have made on a hundred battle-fields. I wish to see Missourians to the front. I wish to hear and to read of the gallant deeds of Missouri volunteers. I wish to hear and to read of the achievements of the heroes and the sons of heroes from old Virginia, from Texas, Tennessee, New York, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. Let each volunteer have the opportunity to gather new laurels from his State at the moment that new laurels are gathered for the United States—his nation. Then your warfare will be truly American, truly republican, truly democratic, really worthy of our great republic.” Thus we find the appeal made to every sentiment, to every tie, to every feeling that may be aroused, in order to keep aglow the fiery spirit of war in the breasts of the young and the strong. And when we take into consideration that the element popularly recognized as Christian is also arrayed, to a great extent, on the side of war,—from the instruction of the children to the sentimentality of old age,—it would seem that we are rapidly drifting backward to the barbarian ambition to be a warlike people. W. N. G.