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Page 39
Long service must be logically the desire, and the result, of
voluntary systems of recruiting the strength of a military force.
Where enrolment is a matter of individual choice, there is a better
chance of entrance resulting in the adoption of the life as a calling
to be followed; and this disposition can be encouraged by the offering
of suitable inducements. Where service is compulsory, that fact alone
tends to make it abhorrent, and voluntary persistence, after time has
been served, rare. But, on the other hand, as the necessity for
numbers in war is as real as the necessity of fitness, a body where
long service and small reserves obtain should in peace be more
numerous than one where the reserves are larger. To long service and
small reserves a large standing force is the natural corollary. It may
be added that it is more consonant to the necessities of warfare, and
more consistent with the idea of the word "reserve," as elsewhere used
in war. The reserve in battle is that portion of the force which is
withheld from engagement, awaiting the unforeseen developments of the
fight; but no general would think of carrying on a pitched battle with
the smaller part of his force, keeping the larger part in reserve.
Rapid concentration of effort, anticipating that of the enemy, is the
ideal of tactics and of strategy,--of the battle-field and of the
campaign. It is that, likewise, of the science of mobilization, in its
modern development. The reserve is but the margin of safety, to
compensate for defects in conception or execution, to which all
enterprises are liable; and it may be added that it is as applicable
to the material force--the ships, guns, etc.--as it is to the men.
The United States, like Great Britain, depends wholly upon voluntary
enlistments; and both nations, with unconscious logic, have laid great
stress upon continuous service, and comparatively little upon
reserves. When seamen have served the period which entitles them to
the rewards of continuous service, without further enlistment, they
are, though still in the prime of life, approaching the period when
fitness, in the private seaman or soldier, depends upon ingrained
habit--perfect practical familiarity with the life which has been
their one calling--rather than upon that elastic vigor which is the
privilege of youth. Should they elect to continue in the service,
there still remain some years in which they are an invaluable leaven,
by character and tradition. If they depart, they are for a few years a
reserve for war--if they choose to come forward; but it is manifest
that such a reserve can be but small, when compared with a system
which in three or five years passes men through the active force into
the reserve. The latter, however, is far less valuable, man for man.
Of course, a reserve which has not even three years' service is less
valuable still.
The United States is to all intents an insular power, like Great
Britain. We have but two land frontiers, Canada and Mexico. The latter
is hopelessly inferior to us in all the elements of military strength.
As regards Canada, Great Britain maintains a standing army; but, like
our own, its numbers indicate clearly that aggression will never be
her policy, except in those distant regions whither the great armies
of the world cannot act against her, unless they first wrench from her
the control of the sea. No modern state has long maintained a
supremacy by land and by sea,--one or the other has been held from
time to time by this or that country, but not both. Great Britain
wisely has chosen naval power; and, independent of her reluctance to
break with the United States for other reasons, she certainly would
regret to devote to the invasion of a nation of seventy millions the
small disposable force which she maintains in excess of the constant
requirements of her colonial interests. We are, it may be repeated, an
insular power, dependent therefore upon a navy.
Durable naval power, besides, depends ultimately upon extensive
commercial relations; consequently, and especially in an insular
state, it is rarely aggressive, in the military sense. Its instincts
are naturally for peace, because it has so much at stake outside its
shores. Historically, this has been the case with the conspicuous
example of sea power, Great Britain, since she became such; and it
increasingly tends to be so. It is also our own case, and to a yet
greater degree, because, with an immense compact territory, there has
not been the disposition to external effort which has carried the
British flag all over the globe, seeking to earn by foreign commerce
and distant settlement that abundance of resource which to us has been
the free gift of nature--or of Providence. By her very success,
however, Great Britain, in the vast increase and dispersion of her
external interests, has given hostages to fortune, which for mere
defence impose upon her a great navy. Our career has been different,
our conditions now are not identical, yet our geographical position
and political convictions have created for us also external interests
and external responsibilities, which are likewise our hostages to
fortune. It is not necessary to roam afar in search of adventures;
popular feeling and the deliberate judgment of statesmen alike have
asserted that, from conditions we neither made nor control, interests
beyond the sea exist, have sprung up of themselves, which demand
protection. "Beyond the sea"--that means a navy. Of invasion, in any
real sense of the word, we run no risk, and if we did, it must be by
sea; and there, at sea, must be met primarily, and ought to be met
decisively, any attempt at invasion of our interests, either in
distant lands, or at home by blockade or by bombardment. Yet the force
of men in the navy is smaller, by more than half, than that in the
army.
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