Chapter I: Part 1

SOLDIERS UNMASKED

SOLDIERS UNMASKED

_By_

WILLIAM ADDLEMAN GANOE

COLONEL, U. S. ARMY

Author of “The History of the
United States Army,” etc.

1939

FIRST EDITION, COPYRIGHT, 1935, BY
WILLIAM ADDLEMAN GANOE

SECOND EDITION, COPYRIGHT, 1939

FIRST PRINTING JANUARY, 1939

Published by
THE MILITARY SERVICE PUBLISHING COMPANY
HARRISBURG, PA.

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE TELEGRAPH PRESS
HARRISBURG, PA.

_To
George Washington
ever revered
seldom obeyed_

_HOW IT STARTED_

This booklet cropped out from a mixture of chance happenings. One day last October, Captain R. B. Lovett, Adjutant General’s Department, came into my office. I hadn’t seen him since he was a student at the Infantry School in Georgia when I was an instructor. He said Colonel Harvey W. Miller, Adjutant General, 1st Corps Area, thought it would be a good thing for the recruiting service and the public in general to be informed about the soldier. There were so many misunderstandings about him. Would I do ten talks over the radio? They looked mountainous with all my other work. But if you knew Lovett, you’d appreciate how convincing he can be. He put in a plea of public service and I succumbed. The next thing I heard was that the Yankee Network had generously given time to the series Saturday nights. I began December eighth. I felt the first talk was a beautiful flop. I got no fan mail and my friends who phoned me were just pleasant. I suspected they were letting me down easily. Anyway, I kept plugging along. After the third talk, fan mail from strangers in Portland, Newburyport, Bridgeport and little towns began to come in. After the fifth talk, there was a flood of requests for copies. Then letters began to pile in from every walk of life. The copies asked for couldn’t be furnished. There were no means or money to get them out and mail them. My friends suggested printing the whole series at as little cost as possible. Well, this is the result. I hope you’ll get something out of it.

W.A.G.

_I_

WHAT IS A SOLDIER

In a certain town in the United States a sign in front of a theater boldly announced: “No dogs or soldiers admitted.” After some complaint the sign was taken down. And after the people of the community got to know the soldier, they were sorry the sign had been put up.

Prejudice against the military man hasn’t ordinarily gone to that length, but many citizens are at least disinterested. Not long ago I was called upon to speak to a rather cultured group on the soldier’s work. A few days later, an acquaintance, an intelligent, elderly woman, met me on the street. “I liked the way you talked,” she said, “but I’m not in sympathy with anything you spoke about. I don’t want to hear about the soldier or anything military.” I thanked her for her frankness, and dropped the matter, knowing it was useless to try to give her the facts which are presented here, and which she probably wouldn’t have believed anyway.

Here are some of the questions which have been asked me by educated people: “What do you fellows in the army do when there’s no war? Do you just go out and drill the boys and then loaf around? What’s the need of an army in a depression? Where’s the army now? How big is it? What’s the use of an army when we have an air corps?”

Whether or not such questions sound foolish, they do show ignorance of what the soldier and the War Department are really doing. But the citizen is not to blame for this lack of knowledge. A combination of circumstances has deprived him of knowing what has happened and what is happening with the military man. Certainly no true American wishes to be unfair. First of all our school and college histories, our literature, our entertainment have a habit of either misrepresenting or omitting the actual deeds and purpose of the soldier. Second, anyone associated with weapons usually has a bad name nowadays. Third, the soldier, away off in our island possessions or in an army post, has too little intimacy with the general run of people. Fourth, the name War Department has a misleading sound. It makes us think of a great mail-fisted demon, breathing fire and smiting with a red-hot sword. Before we get through with the stories and facts given later, we’ll see that it could much more faithfully be called the Peace Department. Fifth, there’s the term “preparation for war,” which is about as far from the truth about what the soldier is trying to do, as saying that firemen are preparing to cause fires.

The soldiers in this country have never prepared to have a war and they are not doing so now. They have always prepared _against_ war. There is no place in our history where they have been the remotest cause of war. And would you believe it, they have actually been the outstanding pacifists of American History? You know it seems peculiar that the trained fighter has done more for peace in this country than any other class. But it is so. In normal times he has repeatedly saved us from war. In public works he has been one of the chief builders of the nation, if not the chief one. In disaster he has been the first on the spot to restore order, and feed and shelter the helpless. In war he has aimed to bring back peace and return the people to restful firesides, with the least loss of life and treasure. A multitude of facts enforce these statements--facts which can be verified in the archives in Washington--facts which we have ordinarily been denied in our formal education.

You know there’s a short paper about 150 years old that we Americans are pretty keen about. In that document it says that Congress shall provide for the common defense. And hand in hand with that provision goes its twin brother--the general welfare. Our wise old forefathers, who had plenty of time to reason, analyse, contemplate human nature and be soundly practical, in contrast to us who must dash through this complex civilization on high, used a sound bit of horse sense when they coupled those two phrases. For it’s easy to see that you can’t have general welfare without common defense any more than you can have an undisturbed household without locks and policemen. Of course, we need a little more than common defense to get general welfare in these times, but that’s quite another subject. However, that business of common defense brings the soldier onto the stage by our Constitution. And one of the big tragedies of our country is that the stage failed to produce him so many times until the play had actually begun. About a million tombstones scattered in this country and in France can be charged up to his absence when he was vitally needed. For it takes time to train a soldier, and it’s pretty expensive and bloody to train him when bullets begin to fly. Besides it makes the war drag on. So you see the loss accumulates. I can make this idea clearer by an illustration. Let us suppose you are a night watchman and have to pace around a spooky industrial plant every night. And suppose your employer armed you with a night stick, saying that firearms were dangerous, expensive and might lead to trouble. You plead with him that all you want is a decent break, that you’d like to have a pistol and learn how to use it. He still contends that the night stick is good enough. Sometime later a bandit scouts around the plant and sees you wandering along with your club as your only defense. The next night you see him entering a window. You chase him. He carefully aims, drops you in your tracks, pilfers the cash box and makes a get away. Now suppose thousands of watchmen are in the same fix. That in principle is what has happened to our untrained men in all our wars. They haven’t had a chance. And because they haven’t had a chance, they have come home from the catastrophe with all sorts of ill-feeling against the army, the soldier, the officer, when the fault has been not in the military service, but in the neglect of proper training before the enemy pounces upon us. Just how much waste and hardship to individuals would result, if the country grocery store at Seven Corners had to expand to a thousand chain-stores in thirty days? Can you imagine it? And yet such an expansion is a drop in the bucket to what the Army and the War Department have been compelled to produce in a twinkling, when war caught us flat-footed. Of course, when we got into the World War we were pretty lucky, for we had Allies who held off the enemy for nearly a year before we had to go into real action. Just what would have happened had we not had such a wall of strength in Europe to stave off our enemies is not pretty to think about. As it was, many an American went to the front untrained, unskilled, an easy prey to disease and explosives. From this lack of preventive medicine, which is what training in peace time amounts to, many men have come out of our wars disgusted, and sayings have arisen which have put the army in a mean light. There’s the word “soldiering” which oddly has come to mean idleness. Yet if you were to go into any army post, any army school, or any C.M.T.C. camp you’d see the soldier anything but idle. Then there’s the term “passing the buck” which expresses an army habit to some people. Just why it should, after your experiences and mine in everyday life, is hard to explain. But the “old army game” is the one we hear so often. It may mean anything from four-flushing to downright crookedness. All these slanders seem to have arisen because men have been rudely and unjustly snatched from the counter, the plough and the mill to face a new desperate life, to live in mixed-up conditions under hasty shelter, to find themselves square pegs in round holes, and to be under officers as unskilled as they, officers not even a quarter baked, whose leadership was too often faulty and cruel. How could it be otherwise when we plunge fine young men who can’t swim into a raging sea? These men come out of the conflict with heavy hatreds, justifiable ones oftentimes, hatreds that go deep into their souls. And whom would they hate? Naturally the professional soldier. He’s the one at hand. But curiously enough it’s the trained soldier who has tried to prevent the awful haste, waste and unnecessary mortality that have caused these hatreds.

The American soldier is the last man to want war or the unnecessary loss of life and treasure in war. He shies at war’s hardships, and the added horrors, resulting from unpreparedness against war. He knows too much about them to want himself or anyone else to be in a war. But he feels that it’s not quite practical in the present state of the world to say that there will be no more armed conflicts. With Europe seething with hatreds, Japan flying at Asia’s throat, Russia making its militant inroads, with no practical progress in abolition of war to date, with industrial strife breaking out here and there, and with an Army of organized crime in this country greater than the Army and Navy of the United States, he feels it’s inviting disaster not to prepare against war and calamity. So he’s out to reduce the tragedy when it comes, or to stop it from coming by a proper show of force.

Do you know that one army officer, single-handed, without an army at his back, saved or helped save this country from six big wars? And do you know that another officer staved off another big war by being on the spot with three trained corps? Do you know that many other officers stubbornly opposed the powers in Washington when those powers wanted to fight the Indian? Do you know who built all our first trails and roads in the west and south? Do you know who constructed the first railroad to span our United States from east to west? Do you know what the army has done to help build this country in time of peace? Do you know that one branch of the army alone has literally saved millions of lives in peace time by its courageous discoveries and safeguards? Do you know what another branch has done in the riddance of pests from industrial plants? Do you know who laid the Alaskan Cable? Do you know that not a single covered wagon ever reached the coast states in the west without being accompanied by soldiers? We rarely hear the soldier mentioned or see him shown in the movies in his protection of the wagon trains, but there is no record of any of those trains ever reaching Oregon or California over the wild prairie tracts unless soldiers went with them. This is but one instance of the suppression of truth about the soldier. We’re pretty well acquainted with what the soldier has done in war. But do we know what he’s done for the up-building of men and construction of public works in peace time? Do we know what he’s done against war?

Listen to what comes next.

_II_

WHAT HAS HE DONE

Two big pool operators of Wall Street one evening were standing in front of a prominent theater watching the crowds surge into the doorways. There was much display of ermines, sables, diamonds and general wealth. One of the two asked the other: “Say, where do these lambs get all the money we bears take away from them?”

Today many people say, “Where do these soldiers get all this peace stuff we extreme pacifists take away from them?” The answer lies in cold facts--cold facts the historians don’t tell us--cover up almost completely. Lewis and Clark, for instance. Why, yes, they were two fellows who were the first to go across our Continent and back again. But who ever told you that it was _Captain_ Meriwether Lewis and _Lieutenant_ William Clark who took four sergeants and twenty-three privates in that hazardous trek between the Atlantic and the Pacific from 1803 to 1806--that it was the soldier who made surveys and maps and created friendships with the Indians, many of whom were seeing a white man for the first time?

Pike’s Peak! O yes, that was discovered by a man by the name of Pike. But where was it mentioned that it was _Lieutenant_ Z. M. Pike? And what did he do? With three non-commissioned officers and sixteen privates, he explored in 1806 and 1807 from the source of the Mississippi to its mouth, doing from north to south what Lewis and Clark had done from east to west. Turning west he discovered the peak which bears his name. In what is now New Mexico, he even beguiled the Spaniards into taking him prisoner so that he could learn their intentions, customs and country. For his great deeds of exploration and pacification he received the personal praise of the President of the United States. Then there was Captain Long who in the same way went through what is now Colorado, and for whom Long’s Peak is named; Captain Bonneville who voluntarily lived with the Nez Perces and Flatheads for five years, creating friendships and learning their language; Lieutenant Litgreaves, who explored the Colorado River; and Lieutenant Whipple and Lieutenant Ives, who separately went through the southwest. And then John C. Fremont. O yes, the histories are crazy about calling him the Pathfinder, but never told you that it was Lieutenant John C. Fremont in 1838 when he started out, and Lieutenant Colonel John C. Fremont in 1844--after he had explored 10,000 miles of freezing mountain and sickly basin? In this brief space I can’t even touch on many of these gigantic wedges of understanding. It was the soldier who made the first trails, dug the first wells, built the first roads, bridges and canals, made the first maps, surveyed most of our boundaries, erected most of our lighthouses, dredged our harbors and waterways, escorted the settlers, braved the Indian and suffered in silence. The Hon. John W. Weeks, former Secretary of War and United States Senator, wrote: “The Army was virtually the pioneer of pioneers. As our citizens moved west over the prairies and through forests, they traveled routes which were surveyed by army engineers, constructed by the army and protected by military posts. The titles of their land were valid only because of army surveys.... Up to 1855 there was scarcely a railroad in this country that was not projected, built, and operated in large part by the Army. Army engineers located, constructed, and managed such well-known roads as the Baltimore and Ohio; the Northern Central; the Erie; the Boston and Providence; the New York, New Haven and Hartford; and the Boston and Albany. Practically all of the transcontinental railroads were projected by the army. An army officer, Lieutenant G. W. Whistler, built the best locomotive of his time, after his own design.” The building of the Union Pacific Railroad, the first to connect the two oceans, illustrates the soldiers’ contribution to national welfare. The set-up for this mighty link was a military one. The workmen were organized into companies and battalions. Soldiers would dig and hammer and at the cry “Indians,” would rush to their stacked arms and give battle. Nearly every man was a veteran of the Civil War. The heads of the most of the engineering parties and all chiefs of construction had been officers in the Civil War. The chief of the track-laying force, General Casement, had been a distinguished division commander. In a twinkling, General Dodge, the chief engineer, could call into the field a thousand men, well-officered, ready to meet any crisis. General Sherman also furnished troops. The builders contended that this great bridge of progress could not have been finished without soldiers and army training. During the enterprise Oakes Ames said, “What makes me hang on is the faith of you soldiers.”

The soldier went further than highways in his works. Let’s look at buildings. How many know that the difficult Washington Monument, the wings and dome of the National Capitol, the old Post Office Building, the Municipal Building, the Washington Aqueduct, the Agriculture Building, the Government Printing Office, the War College and the beautiful Library of Congress were all built by the Army? Army engineers supervised the building of the Lincoln Memorial, the Arlington Bridge, the parks and even the playgrounds of the District of Columbia. They even organized the Weather Bureau--and all this our government got at the comparatively small pay of the soldier.

But the soldier didn’t stop at exploring and building. He didn’t stop at just contributing to development and peace. He went further. He even tried his best to prevent war. So many were his attempts that they can scarcely be hinted at tonight. Here is one conspicuous example. In 1832, South Carolina was verging on secession and civil war. President Jackson called in General Winfield Scott and sent him to the scene of the trouble. There Scott by skillful persuasion and conference helped to quiet the difficulties and return the state to peace, without any troops at his back. In 1838 there was a revolt against Great Britain by Canadian patriots. Many in our border states were sympathizing with the rebels. Blood had been shed. It looked horribly like a third war with Great Britain. Scott was sent north to the place of the struggle. After great effort and the most tactful arbitration he brought harmony between the British officials and our own sympathizers. By his work, war was averted. In the same year the great educated, peaceful tribe of Cherokees in Georgia and the Carolinas, was enraged at the attempt of the whites to force it away from its native home because gold had been found there. 15,000 Indians refused to move. General Scott was sent by the government to conduct them west to what is now Oklahoma. Sensing the right on their side, but being compelled to carry out the government’s unjust orders, he was left with nothing but his personality and good sense to keep us out of a big fight. By his masterful appeal to the Indians not to cause war, by his instructions to his soldiers to be gentle and firm, by his square dealing and carrying out of his promises to the letter, he was able to escort the whole tribe west, without the slightest sign of trouble. So great was his kindly power, that he even had these superstitious redmen submit to vaccination. It is estimated that this prevention of war saved the government two and one-half billion dollars and untold loss of life. (Besides he very nearly washed clean the government’s dirty linen.) But he had scarcely finished this delicate task when he was called to Maine. There the boundary question was about to plunge us into that third war with Great Britain. The government had already called out eight thousand militia. Things were pretty bad. Scott hustled back and forth holding conferences, calming this party and that, and finally closed the issue to the satisfaction of all. In 1848 after he had conducted the brilliant campaign which closed the Mexican War, Mexico was in a state of unrest. It was there that he established a rule so just and kindly that peace came more rapidly, and possibly composed Mexico for many years. Never had the Mexicans been treated so decently. Their representatives came to him and begged him to be their dictator. Though he didn’t accept, it was probably the first time in history where a conqueror of foreign territory had been so cordially urged. Two years later after he had returned to the United States, trouble in Vancouver Island in the northwest again threatened that ever-skulking third war with Great Britain. The British Navy was already beating down upon the little island of San Juan. Scott arrived on the scene. By the cleverest tact he engineered a joint evacuation of the island. And no war came. Six times had this man, who towered six feet five and weighed two hundred forty pounds, showed us that his heart and character were as great as his stature. Six times had he saved us. In keeping us out of war who can compete with him? But he is not alone. Many another soldier gave us peace and many another built for peace.

In 1907, after long years of trial, President Theodore Roosevelt came to the conclusion that high-salaried civilians could not complete the Panama Canal. They would walk out on him and were inclined to the spoils system of wasting money. He wanted someone who would stay on the job, who would carry on the work for the work’s sake. He turned to the Army. He appointed a commission of soldiers. Colonel George Goethals with his able assistants, Colonels Gaillard and Sibert, Corps of Engineers and Colonel W. C. Gorgas of the Medical Corps, were sent south to construct the Canal. Gorgas purged the place of yellow fever and malaria while the others forged ahead on the building. After bitter trials and maddening set-backs, they finished the Panama Canal. This vast public work, which others had failed to complete in almost half a century, the soldier gave to his country in the surprising space of six years.

But this commercial short-cut could not have been so quickly finished, had it not been for the work of another soldier. In 1900 Major Walter Reed with a group of medical officers and men was sent to Cuba to study yellow fever. For several years soldiers risked their lives repeatedly in their attempt to find out what caused the disease. It came to the point where a little banded-legged mosquito was suspected of carrying the fever from the sick to the well. But the suspicion had to be proved. Men had to let themselves be actually bitten by the deadly insect in order to vouchsafe to the world that the mosquito was the only carrier. Volunteers were called for. Officers and men responded with such willingness that the ready victims were always in excess of demand. One day Privates Kissinger and Moran came to Major Reed as volunteers. He explained to them what their offer meant--extreme suffering and probable death. They still insisted. They would gladly run the risk, if it would save lives afterwards. He then told them that they or their relatives would receive money. Both men showed their disgust. Kissinger stepped forward and said, “I want it understood that we are doing this in the interest of humanity and for science.” Major Reed rose, touched his cap and said with tears in his eyes, “Gentlemen I salute you.” The two privates were allowed to be bitten by mosquitoes which had fed on persons stricken with the malignant yellow fever. They took the disease, but God was with them. They pulled through. Major Reed said of them: “This exhibition of moral courage has never been surpassed in our history.” Reed finally proved that the mosquito was the only carrier of the disease. Once the world found out the cause, the rest was easy--riddance of the horrible insect that had made so many countries places of horror and death. In the United States alone yellow fever had taken a toll of more than half a million. Commerce had been interrupted, states and cities had been turned into turmoil and whole populations wiped out. Shortly after the proof of the discovery General Leonard Wood purged Havana in a few months. And today it is estimated that by the heroic service of Major Walter Reed and his soldiers, thirty million lives have been saved in the Western Hemisphere.

Has the soldier done anything for peace? Has he done anything for progress? Sentiment, theory, loud arguments don’t talk, but somehow deeds, facts do.

_III_

WHAT MORE HAS HE DONE

A young farmer lad was once leading a calf by a rope down a road. He came to a narrow bridge where the animal balked. An automobile moving up behind the pair had to stop. The boy turned to the car and yelled: “Toot!” The driver gave a great, loud blast from his deafening horn. The calf, thoroughly frightened, galloped madly over the bridge and down the road, pulling the poor boy at a break-neck run for half a mile. When the automobile caught up to the pair, the lad, gasping for breath, blazed out at the driver, “I--ugh--said ‘Toot!’--but not--ugh--so loud!”

One shouldn’t toot too loud about the soldier. It isn’t done. But since his horn has been so seldom blown, I take the liberty to honk just a trifle. Some of the noise may leave us breathless, but I hope it won’t scare the calf.

Yellow fever. We saw last time how Major Walter Reed stopped that disease and saved to date some thirty million lives. Long before his time another army surgeon by the name of William Beaumont had a patient who had been accidentally wounded through the stomach. The case was felt hopeless by other doctors. Beaumont not only cured the man, but took advantage of the large hole to study for the first time the action of digestion in a living body. His pioneer work paved the way for cures later. Tropical anemia! When our country took over Porto Rico, the island was helpless against the disease! Army doctors, after baffling set-backs finally found the cause. Their work saved the Porto Ricans from a scourge that would have stopped their development forever. Dengue fever! Again army surgeons found the mosquito was the cause. The remedy was simple. Empyema, tuberculosis, beriberi, surra and bone deformities have been signally and notably helped by contributions of army surgeons. Rinderpest--a disease that had been carrying off the cattle by the thousands in the Philippines for half a century. The plague was all the more hurtful since cattle are Philippines’ beasts of burden and the key to their whole commercial life. Colonel R. A. Kelser, who is now in Massachusetts, with other soldiers, went deeply into the study of the disease. After patient efforts he developed a vaccine, which prevents its occurrence. What that discovery has done for those islands, cannot be measured.

As with disease, so with disaster. Early one morning in 1906, San Francisco was suddenly buried in flames. Transportation, telephone and telegraph lines were broken down. Hospitals and fire departments were out of commission. The police force was helpless. Riot and anarchy were expected. No organized body of relief was possible but the Army. In less than three hours after the first blow to the city, General Funston with troops was on the scene. The soldier dealt out nearly a million rations, set up bakeries and coffee kettles, gave havens of comfort, controlled looters, opened stores, supervised hospitals and got the fire under control. One private soldier assembled several hundred refugees, organized them, got eating utensils and put up a field bakery. Many a soldier did not sleep while the emergency lasted.

In great catastrophes the soldier has been the first one to deliver supplies, succor the helpless and keep order. The story of our floods, tornadoes, cyclones, typhoons, bursting dams, ice-jams, coal mine disasters, explosions, earthquakes and forest fires is the story of relief by the soldier. In one Mississippi flood the army dealt out over two and one-half million dollars worth of provisions for two hundred forty-three thousand people. It _gave_ everything from stoves to post-hole diggers. In Montana blizzards, Texas floods, Michigan snow-storms, Florida disasters and Ohio overflows, the soldier was there to help the helpless. In the last New England floods, army trains were the first to reach the sufferers with food and relief, and soldiers at great risk made temporary bridges and opened roads. In the Porto Rico hurricane, army transports arrived first with supplies and help for the needy, and brought the island to a state of recovery. We hear much of Mr. Hoover’s magnificent relief in Europe, but whoever told you that five army colonels were his principal assistants and that three hundred twenty officers and four hundred sixty-four enlisted men made up his agencies distributing American relief? The Russian relief was wholly the work of our soldiers.

The triumph of service by the army in our possessions of Alaska, Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Canal Zone doesn’t often come to the ear of the average citizen. In the great archipelago of the Philippines, the soldier calmed strife between savage tribes, built roads, railroads, schools, churches, gave spiritual aid and comfort, and was at once, instructor, leader, governor, judge, jury, councilor, constructor, almsgiver and peacemaker. He did more in 20 years to make the Philippinos a united people than had been done in the previous centuries. It was his labor largely that caused their great desire to retain the supervision of the United States. Alaska, too, knows the army as a friend in need. When the territory was bought, soldiers were immediately sent there to keep order and open up the land. In the pioneer days, under great hardship, the army made surveys and kept watch over the frontiers. In the Klondike rush, it opened the harbors, built the roads and trails leading to gold, and protected newcomers against mob rule and lawlessness. In order to make the only link with the mainland of the United States, the soldier laid four thousand, five hundred eighty-eight miles of cable and built six hundred miles of telegraph, all of which he operated. He largely administered the government of the territory and at low cost furnished to business millions of dollars worth of returns. The signal corps soldier gave during the Civil War the greatest boost to our telegraph systems. As late as 1877, he operated three thousand miles of telegraph in the South. Today in Washington he operates the largest radio net in the world, handling messages for forty-eight departments of the government. In one year for this service the Army was able to turn over to the United States Treasury, two hundred sixty-eight million dollars. It was General G. O. Squier, Chief Signal Officer, who made the outstanding invention of sending a number of telephone and telegraph messages over the same line at the same time. His work improved and revolutionized that industry. It was the soldier, too, who took the lead in developing the short wave, high frequency transmission and opened up vast channels through the air. It was the soldier who developed the radio beacon, which guides the airman through fog, cloud and darkness safely. It was the air soldier who perfected the parachute which has already saved many fliers. Of course everyone knows how the soldier helped the Wright Brothers in their great pioneer flying, and men like Lieutenant Selfridge sacrificed their lives for the sake of progress. Later others made the great good-will flight to South America, covering twenty-two thousand sixty-five miles in two hundred sixty-three and one-quarter hours of flying time. Lieutenants Maitland and Hegenberger made this first non-stop flight from our west coast to Honolulu. Army pilots have photographed thirty-five thousand square miles in eighteen states for geological survey maps. Others have covered half a million square miles of our forests and reported hundreds of beginnings of fires. Others gave Colonel Lindbergh and many commercial pilots advanced training in flying.

In a different field, it was the soldier who started our steel industry, developed the tractor and was the first to bring interchangeable parts to machinery--making possible American mass production.

There is much false prejudice against our Chemical Warfare Service. Did you know that since the war it has done much for life and progress? It has aided industry by developing gas masks against the deadly carbon monoxide in mines, the fumes from burst pipes of ammonia refrigeration and from cyanide gas. It has aided the Public Health Service in the successful fumigation of ships; the Bureau of Biological Survey in ridding the commercial world of rats, gophers, locusts, grasshoppers, the boll weevil, marine borers, vermin and moths. At a cost of $106 in a western plant, it saved $75,000 worth of cloth goods by a single fumigation. With the air service it developed a quick method of spraying fruit trees, has aided police departments immeasurably with chemicals against mobs and bank robbers, and led the way in the foundation of the American dye industry.

There is scarcely any path of our progress that the soldier has not made or followed with helpfulness. His activities turn into so many avenues that I’m unable to give more than a hint tonight. Here is a late one.

Within two weeks after President Roosevelt’s inauguration a bill to put a quarter of a million jobless men in Reforestation work was passed by Congress. The army didn’t want the task of taking over a mass of men twice its size, of butting in on the Forest Service, and of robbing the soldier of his peace time training. The army’s representative so stated to the White House. The reply was: “You have given all the reasons in the world why the Army should do this job. As a matter of fact all the reasons you state show that nobody else can do it.” The army got the job. The General Staff was wisely ready for that possibility. A month later at the rate of one thousand five hundred thirty a day, fifty-two thousand were enrolled, and forty-two camps had been established. Fifty-one days after that three hundred ten thousand had been enrolled. The rate of reception and caring for this vast number was greater than for both the Army and Navy during the World War. And this was peace time when the spirit, money and cooperation of the people were not so great. And what did the soldiers have to do for these men? Everything and more than a preparatory boarding school must do for its students. It had to examine them physically, classify them, clothe them, feed them, transport them, do all the work of paying them, put up their camps in the wilderness, and supervise their moral, mental and spiritual welfare and conduct. Army training stopped. The soldier had to put every ounce of his energy into the task and spent many sleepless, working nights, if it were to be a go. The little available army not one-eighth the size of those finally enrolled had to press these raw men from every walk of life through their new work in a fair and orderly way. The entering C.C.C. boys were of equal rank. There were no seniors, no foremen, no variations--just a crowd. They were not being received into any organization. The whole structure had to be built from the ground up. The situation was as strange to the soldier as to the C.C.C. boy. The only recourse the Army Officer had for keeping contentment, orderliness and efficiency were precept, example and expulsion from camp. He could not use even minor forms of correction. He wasn’t allowed to make the boy stand up, look one in the eye, or say “Yes, sir” or “No, sir.” It was a fearful handicap, when he was responsible for their safety, good order and reputation in a strange community. But the records show surprisingly little discord for the vast numbers taken in. The records also show how proper sanitation, a balanced diet, daily medical attention and patient supervision turned out. An inventory of one hundred ten camps reveals that the boys gained from five to twenty-seven pounds. Only five per cent left camp--a surprisingly small proportion when you realize that their main qualification was lack of a job. Under skillful guidance they developed rapidly. The white anemic faces and flabby arms of early spring were changed into bronzed skins and bulging muscles in late summer. Professor Nelson C. Brown, New York State College of Forestry, says: “The usual army disciplinary methods were not permitted, but by precept and example and by an exhibition of tolerance and patience, and a friendly attitude of helpfulness, the camp commanders and forestry officers have made a really notable contribution to the upbuilding of character and good citizenship in this great army of young men.” But let no one think for a moment that it is an army, or even the barest beginning of one. These young men are no more soldiers than any other rugged young men of our country. They have had no more military drill, military teaching, military environment, military discipline, military progress than high school lads at a fire drill. Why they’re not even allowed to have military books in their libraries. To be soldiers, they would have to start at the bottom in everything--forms of courtesy, upright posture, neatness in dress, obedience, discipline, team work, scouting and patrolling, guard duty, the use of weapons and all the thousand and one things that the trained man must know. The fact that C.C.C. boys wear parts of army uniform misleads many. That clothing, salvaged from the war, was all the country had to give them. The army dispensed it to keep the lad covered up. But a lion skin doesn’t make a lion. No, anyone seeing an army post and then a camp of the C.C.C. boys would notice the complete difference. The C.C.C. is wholly a peacetime project for the interior development of our country, the largest one ever undertaken in the United States.

Today nearly a million C.C.C. boys have passed through the soldier’s hands. Ninety-four per cent of the camps are now under Reserve Officers from civilian life, who are carrying on with great efficiency and success. This vast enterprise is just another by-product of the army’s normal work of being fit and ready against an emergency. And all of these services of the soldier come to the average taxpayer for less than a penny a day.

Do I toot too loudly--do I scare the calf?

_IV_

THE FIRST GAME

One day at West Point it was my duty to take a prominent visitor, an Englishman, to a football game. We sat through three periods with little conversation. Knowing that British Rugby corresponds in its continuous motion to our basketball, I finally got up courage to ask him what he thought of the game he was witnessing. “Well,” he said, “I think it’s all very jolly, but I can’t understand why they get down and pray so much.”

That brings up the very first serious game we played with the British in this country. It was a contest we had for freedom between 1775 and 1783. Incidentally we lost the game, but we gained our independence. If the actual score could have been displayed in the headlines of a great news sheet, it would have read something like this: “The British rout the Colonials, 31-6.”

In the first period of that game, after the kick-off at Lexington and Concord, the English General Howe shoved the Colonial Team right out of Long Island, and sent many of them to the sidelines. When he appeared before Manhattan, they ran away at the first sight of the British Team--ran pell-mell right through New York’s East Side, until our head coach jumped in and actually had to beat them over the back to get them onto the playing field again. But they melted away despite entreaties and prodding. Of course, it wasn’t a team that George Washington had at that time. It was a collection of fellows who hadn’t been taught the rules and principles of the game, did not understand team-work, who had few togs, were poorly conditioned and scarcely knew how to line up. All this was very humiliating since our country was abundantly rich to support a good coaching staff and to make an outlay for training and equipment. Besides the game had been advertised for over ten years. Yet nothing had been done to present even a good defensive line and back field. In fact, most of the men who turned out had never even tackled the dummy--let alone being assembled. It is not surprising then that when the Colonists were chased by General Howe down through New Jersey, that over half of Washington’s squad just picked up and went home, refused to play any longer, said they’d played as long as they’d agreed to, and left him with a few to carry on against a quantity of well drilled and trained opponents. They were discontented not only at the poor showing but because they didn’t have a chance. But Washington, instead of quitting, showed how much determined stuff was in him. When, with the handful remaining, the game looked hopelessly lost, he called for two brilliant forward passes down on his one-foot line at Trenton and Princeton, which were successful. It was a daring play, but besides throwing a tiny scare into the British, the Colonists netted only eight yards and were forced to kick. They did a lot of justified kicking at this time in many other ways, but these desperate plays put back a lot of spirit into the team, in spite of the discouraging situation, and the desertion from Washington’s ranks of players.

It was in the second period of the game that the Colonists made their first real touchdown at Saratoga. Of course, they outweighed the British about thirty pounds to the man, and that helped. Then, too, they had a fine captain of the team by the name of Arnold, who afterwards because of ill-treatment on his own squad at the hands of some disgruntled alumni, went over and played on the British team. But meanwhile General Howe added to his lead by scoring with wide end sweeps and perfect interference two more touchdowns at the Brandywine and Germantown--and there the half ended. During the intermission both teams rested. The British went into luxurious training quarters in Philadelphia, where they built themselves up with good food and generally had a sprightly fine time, whereas the Colonists’ squad sat out in the open and shivered and starved through a freezing winter, and the hardships took a further toll of Washington’s line and backfield men. But a great thing happened at Valley Forge for Washington’s remnants of a squad. The pupil of the master strategist abroad, Frederick the Great, arrived. It was Baron Von Steuben. At once Washington made him principal assistant coach. There was no department of the game in which he was not skilled. He was an untiring worker and had a kind, attractive personality as an instructor. He picked out the best material and made a sort of varsity squad. He emphasized the fundamentals of blocking and tackling in which the colonists were sadly lacking. As he drilled them in diversified plays and got them clicking as a team, the rest of the players watched them and then attempted to imitate them on separate fields. He did much as they do in those schools where everyone has to take part in sports, where intra-mural athletics are treated seriously. The effect of such coaching was immediately felt at Monmouth in the beginning of the third period, where the Colonists played the British to a standstill; and could have made another touchdown, had not Charles Lee, a good half-back when he wanted to play, run with the ball full-tilt toward the enemy’s goal. He would actually have made a touchdown for the other side, if one of his own team-mates had not tackled him a little past midfield. But shortly afterward, this good showing of the Colonists was overcome by two touchdowns made by the British at Newport and Camden, where undrilled players faced veterans. Later Nathaniel Greene, a fine team captain, played well with a green squad riddled with injuries. Although he could not threaten the goal line, he stood the British on even terms at Guilford Court House. His defensive work with his inferior line was praiseworthy, but it didn’t thrill the spectators or advance the ball. Then came Washington’s strategy as a great coach. He fooled the British into the belief that he was playing a 6-2-2-1 defense and suddenly with a fake kick attack, swooped down on Cornwallis at Yorktown. Even though the team was penalized for holding, he hung on. But the touchdown he was responsible for in his excellent head-work was offset by the fact that there had been imported more men from France to block the British than he had players from his own institution. The officials took the view that players brought in from another institution were ringers, and therefore the score as applying to the Colonists would have to be thrown out. And besides this touchdown didn’t end the game, as so many people think it did. It was just the end of the third period. In the last and fourth quarter, the British quarter-back realized his lead of 31 to 6, and just held on, since he had a squad of three times as many hardy and well-drilled players as had been lost at Yorktown and altogether a better and bigger one than the Colonists had. Of course, the British were just content to stall around in midfield, occupying our principal cities. The game ended just as the entire British squad was called back to England, because the schedule makers in Europe had more important games for them to play over there. And that left the gridiron empty. If the game was not won by the Colonists, at least the field was. So irrespective of score, the Americans surged all over the gridiron and carried off both sets of goal-posts with a great hurrahing over the victory. And we’ve been hurrahing ever since.

Now the story of our Revolution as a game may appear to some to sound flippant, to poke fun at our troops and belittle them. No one reveres more the courage and fortitude of the men of ’76 than the soldier. But so many of their sufferings and defeats were unnecessary, and so much of their efforts wasted because of lack of timely coaching, that the story as a game can briefly picture the play as the action took place. In principle, that was exactly what happened in our fight for freedom. We really never won the Revolution by either our power or our skill. And what’s the use of fooling ourselves now? Are we not ready to look at this contest frankly in the face and learn its lessons? Because of our failure to coach or equip our squad properly, we dragged on eight years of death by exposure, disease and the bullet. And this procedure is all the sadder and more tragic when we recognize that the material available in the colonies was as fine in raw ruggedness, character and marksmanship as anywhere in the world. Men who joined the ranks became discouraged by the wholesale when they saw themselves too often officered by persons as unskilled and unlettered as they, when they realized that they had little chance against soldiers well-trained and equipped. They keenly felt the disgrace and uselessness of it all. It was natural that they deserted in shoals or left at the expiration of short-time enlistments. The Continental Line, which Steuben coached and who stuck all through the war, were able and heroic, but were few by comparison. The great majority stayed only as long a time as would correspond to a few days on a football squad. Washington and Steuben couldn’t count on what material they could coach or could have for any one game. Green Americans against expert British, were the rule. If you can picture a coach on any gridiron receiving from the farm or the store a new set of men every two days, with most of the old set leaving at the same time, and attempting to produce a team for a game each Saturday, you have in a mild way Washington’s situation. We know that when we put untrained and unconditioned men into a football game, we reap more serious injuries than if the men are hardened and trained. If those casualties exist where the human body is the only weapon, how _much more_ unspeakable are the added injuries where bad weather, poor shelter, loss of food and sleep, bullets and cannon balls were the weapons. So in the Revolution we put men in a more terrible plight than we’d think of allowing even in modern football.

But a more surprising thing is what we did after the war was over. We dismissed our entire coaching staff and all of the squad except 80 men, who just worked around the training quarters and received no practice or instruction in the game. Our people had the idea that there would never be another game. They contended that any attempt at a continuous coaching system with a paid staff was getting back to professionalism--to despotism and tyranny. Since armies in Europe were playthings of Kings, then all armies would be that way. They took the same line of reasoning as the man who says, “Since some church members are hypocrites, then all churches are wrong.” Washington tried his best with all his pleading and logic, to show how false was such a view. He begged and advised in so many of his letters and testaments that it seems nothing could be more important to him. He wrote of the Revolution: “Had we formed a permanent army in the beginning--we should not have been the greatest part of the war inferior to the enemy, indebted for our safety to their inactivity, enduring frequently the mortification of seeing opportunities to ruin them pass unimproved for the want of a force, which the country was completely able to afford; and of seeing the country ravaged, our towns burnt, the inhabitants plundered, abused, murdered with impunity from the same cause.” He also wrote, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” Henry Lee, Governor of Virginia about the same time went further. “Convinced as I am 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, I cannot withhold my denunciation of its wickedness and folly.”

Thus the people were warned against their slump--and we shall soon see how they paid for it.

_V_

THE FIELD MEET