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seems indeed, at a casual view. Yet I do not believe it incapable of solution. I think that an expedient may be found to inure our people to the horrors of warfare without resorting to the actual practice of them—at least upon the citizens themselves.

My plan owes its force to the fact that shells eviscerate and frightfulness disfigures not only men but animals. Anyone who has seen, in reality, or in representation by photograph or cartoon, a landscape ravaged by artillery fire, in which horses and other live stock have not escaped the destruction which had man for its chief object, must be conscious of the depressing influence which animals of large bulk exert on the mind when they lie about dismembered or disemboweled. Looking at such a spectacle, one could hardly help reflecting that it provides an opportunity to experiment in the emotional effects of war without its dangers. Soldiers indeed have mentioned the inconvenience to the feelings of walking about among bits of animal flesh and hair displayed on walls, barbed wire entanglements, or other lodging places. That they overcome this inconvenience may be guessed from impressions of the campaign of General Sherman in Georgia. We are told that the invading Yankees distressed the citizens of that state by popping their guns all day long at cows, pigs, fowl, or any living thing which had the misfortune to show itself before the sights of the troopers' guns. If this is true, why may we not suppose that nonchalance in the presence of animals that have been subjected to shell fire is a real, if incomplete, preparation for unconcern in the presence of human beings exposed to the same trial?

The test would be severe, I confess, if our women and children shared in the bombing. The sight could not be accepted easily. Perhaps no expedient

could be devised which would adequately prepare the mind for it. But some step ought certainly to be taken to fit a civilian population for its new prominence in the theatre of war, and I am doing the utmost that a citizen can do in recommending the measures which have occurred to me as most efficient and practicable. All things cannot be expected of the best of plans, and there must be a residue of endurance for the occasion itself to call forth. But what can be done to reduce this residue to its lowest terms, and thus enlarge the factor of safety in morale, I have been at utmost pains to discover and urge upon my countrymen.

My plan, then, briefly outlined, is this. The country would be divided by the General Staff into military districts, and in each district a battle area would be designated. At stated periods, each district would provide a number of horses bearing a proportion to the numbers of its population. I choose horses as the animals most fitting to the scene of war, as they are still employed for reconnoitring movements, for drawing gun carriages, and for other honorable military labor to which machines have not yet proved adaptable. The horses would be mobilized at a concentration camp, and on given days the people of the district would be called out according to mobilization orders and would proceed to the designated battle area. The artillery would then be directed against the animals, which would be enclosed in the area. The citizens would march in ranks behind the advancing wave of shell fire, and would observe its effects. They would be furnished with hand grenades to destroy any of the animals who might escape the projectiles hurled by the artillery. Hand grenades are recommended instead of rifles because their effects are more in accordance with the emotional results which it is

desired to produce, and because it seems likely that foot troops will be armed more and more exclusively with them in the future rather than with guns alone, the destructive powers of the grenades being greater and more violent. Children could participate in the exercise as far as was thought advisable by the military authorities, and might thus gain their first acquaintance with the phenomena of war in the steadying company of their elders, and perhaps buoyed up by the fine stimulation of martial music.

I am able to see only two objections to this plan, and I should like, if possible, to obviate them, as I am convinced of its usefulness, and believe that it deserves the immediate attention of the country. The first objection is that our stock of horses would be rapidly exhausted if the plan were put into execution, and a noble animal made extinct. In this I do not at all concur. I am not able to see that man is in any danger of extinction from war, and while horses in their present numbers would be put to a disproportionate strain by the conscription which I propose for them, they would soon be raised in vast quantities to meet the annual demand for their consumption. Would the herds of cattle which now thunder on our Western plains ever have come into existence if our expanding population had not caused an economic demand for them? In the same way, if a people has been decimated by war, do the mothers and fathers of the country give up producing population? Rather they at once set about repairing the damage done by the guns and providing material to be consumed by another generation of artillery. Far from destroying the horse as a species, the expedient I suggest would be the very means of encouraging its cultivation in the largest possible numbers. War requires

multiplication before there can be destruction. Populations must grow before they can be deflowered by conflict. I believe that if my plan were adopted our wayside farms and highways, which have lost a note of nobility in the gradual disappearance of so fine an animal as the horse, would again rejoice in the full-blooded, nervous life of those admirable creatures, again resound with the gallop of hoofs, and toss with the splendor of careless manes and sensitive, proud heads.

The second objection which might be offered against my proposal is a fancied barbarity in it. But from this I instantly dissent. Shall we forbid the destruction of the horse by organized means and for a well-conceived end, and allow the destruction of that even more delicate animal, man, whom it has taken an infinitely longer and more precarious course of evolution to produce, and for whom the instinctive faith of the ages declares that the earth and its other creatures were created? To state such a conception is at once to absolve my scheme of the charge of barbarity. Yet it should be pointed out that it is precisely the characteristic of war to deprive us of what we hold most precious, and if this conscription of the horse were to awaken us once more to the beauty and value of the animal, we should be additionally prepared by its loss to face even more severe losses in a time of national danger.

Again, conscientious opinion has decided that vivisection for the purpose of medical progress is a humane act. A precise analogy is presented by my scheme for the use of horses to prepare our people for war. A scheme which intensifies the national morale is the exact counterpart of a serum which prevents a devastating epidemic. What nation-wide plague could be comparable in its effects to the loss of the will to

victory, which might cost us the staggering price of defeat, or result in the danger threatened by General Maurice, that war may become intolerable? A plan which would serve in any way to prevent such a disaster is justified on the highest ethical grounds.

It might be argued, indeed, that, far from being too barbarous for a civilized state to undertake, the project I suggest is too mild to be of any effect. The Spaniards, it might be said, do as much in sport, pitting the bull instead of the field gun against the horse, and even against man himself, the object being the same as in my plan - that is, to observe the results of tossing and goring. Yet I believe that the feelings of soldiers and the testimony of our common imagination as human beings are sufficient evidence that my proposal would be of real help in preparing an unwarlike population for frightfulness.

III

We have now found means of inoculation against the horrors of warfare, considered emotionally. But I am of the opinion that the preparation of a democratic people for war will be incomplete and liable to shipwreck when tested by the facts unless it is carried out to the ultimate trial which war can exact. This trial is the hand-to-hand combat.

We have seen the dangers to which cities and industrial centres will be exposed through bombing and through the landing of troops in raiding parties or even in large bodies in the rear of the battle lines by fleets of airplanes used for transport. Not every city can be protected by a garrison sufficient to repel such attacks if men are to be maintained at the front in the usual numbers. But it would be unthinkable to abandon all attempts at resistance, to relinquish our strongholds and sources

of supply without so much as a contrary effort! If this is true, the population which will be left in our cities ought to be prepared to oppose the enemy. And in such an event the value of training in hand-to-hand combat, in resistance to the last torn fibre of flesh and nerve, is obvious.

The difficulty appears when we begin to see the difference between direct fighting, man to man, in war, and all other degrees and types of contest of which the public has any experience or can form any idea. Perhaps we can arrive at the matter most simply and immediately by glancing at a few words from a Manual of Military Training, a work designed for the use of young reserve officers, by Colonel Moss and Major Lang of the United States Army. The authors are speaking of bayonet fighting, and of course I must leave the technical education of the people in military exercises and use of their weapons to the experts, who are equipped to deal with the problems offered by such training. I cite the Manual only for the light it may throw on morale, believing that this is a study not yet sufficiently explored by experts to make the tentative investigations of the layman of no avail. Bayonet fighting of course disregards æsthetic and moral restraints, since its object is to dispose of the enemy's life by the most effective and the promptest means. "The principles of sportsmanship and consideration for your opponent,' say the authors of the Manual, 'have no place in the practical application of this work. To finish an opponent who hangs on,' they further advise, 'or attempts to pull you to the ground, always try to break his hold by driving the knee or foot to his crotch and gouging his eyes with your thumbs.'

A good deal of thoughtless criticism has been visited upon these words, which indeed seem to occur only in a

two-volume work of the title given above, and to be absent from other manuals, or forms and editions of the manual, which bear Colonel Moss's name as author or collaborator. The official book of instructions of the Army, published by the United States, is a model of delicacy on the point in question, and gives no hint that bayonet fighting is other than a formal and rather dull ceremonial of thrusts and parries, carried out according to a sportsmanlike etiquette. But why should reticence be required of a writer on this valuable subject which touches the public interest so nearly? The words of Colonel Moss and Major Lang merely express without affectation, but with a perfect regard for decency, what is necessary to be done in war. It is idle to expect men engaged for their lives to observe too great a nicety in the parts of the body which they find it convenient and effective to attack, or in the means used to attack them. It is well for the country to believe that its general policy obeys the rules of international law, rules which soar far above the range of such practical movements of the foot or the thumbs as the Manual describes; but it is not well for citizens who may be objects of attack to imagine that the fig leaf is any fit symbol for the thick of the fight, or that a ritual of decorum is solemnized in each blow and counter. To allow such ignorance is to encourage weakness and laxity, and a state of supine dullness which could only be regarded as a serious danger to the national morale.

The armies, of course, learn soon enough to knee a crotch or to gouge an eye with the proper degree of efficiency and impersonal skill. But again I wonder about the civilians. What of our old men? What of our factory workers who have had no experience of trench life or of military discipline? What of our

women and children? I am afraid that any course except a real acquaintance with such combat will leave the inhabitants of our cities defenseless against any vigorous attack to which they may be subjected.

Let us imagine the events of such an attack. The enemy first bombards from the air to hit such of his objectives as he can and to lay a foundation of terror to expedite more detailed work when he descends to the ground. Then the troops enter the streets. The untrained citizens cower helplessly in corners or snatch up weapons as futile as the sword of Priam against Pyrrhus. They are butchered or herded harmlessly out of the way, and the city is lost. Once let the enemy disable the cities which are the nerve centres of industry, and the best armies in the world will throw down their rifles for lack of ammunition or rot miserably in the field from starvation. It behooves us then to consider whether by any device we can prepare our 'noncombatants' for the final exigency of personal combat. Failing to solve this problem, we must confess that we have carried the task of preparing the nation for war but little farther than it stood when we took it up. All other progress will be worth the effort only if this greatest need is adequately met.

Again at first sight the problem seems impossible of solution. And it offers, beyond doubt, more serious obstructions than the aspect of frightfulness which we met by suggesting the use of horses to inure our people to the emotional inconveniences of war. It will not do to propose the revival of gladiatorial games. It was not the gladiators who made a conquering nation of the Romans, and if we may judge by the analogy of a contemporary prize fight, many a bawling tradesman watched them who would not have changed his seat in the amphitheatre

as

for their bloody stance before the lions if the throne of the Cæsars had been his reward. No, the problem is not easily solved. But, in a finite and perilous existence, dangers and difficulties which threaten life itself are dissolved they are called into being unexpectedly, and by circumstances or lucky thoughts which change the face of the world in the twinkling of an eye, and seem to accomplish the impossible. If one lesson emerges from the experience of all mankind alike, it is not to despair too early. Even this problem may find an adequate answer; and indeed I am about to suggest one which, after long consideration, seems to me not unsatisfying. If others agree with this conclusion, the country may well congratulate itself on possessing the power to train its citizens for the last test which warfare can exact of them.

When I outlined my plan for the conscription of horses, I was able to propose a scheme which had the great advantage of not wasting human life. And in this instance, too, I hope to avoid wasting human life, according to any farsighted understanding of the term waste.' I cannot, however, see that injury and suffering for brief periods may be escaped, though they are such as any citizen, especially that class of citizens which I have in mind, would be glad to endure for the country, and would welcome, I feel sure, if he thought that as a result of his fortitude the people would be better prepared to preserve the safety and glory of the nation in war. My scheme, again briefly outlined and left for wiser heads to elaborate in detail, follows.

It must be accepted as axiomatic that no substitute for actual fighting can be adequate to the case. This principle understood, I propose that a retiring age adapted to the purposes of my plan be established for all officers of the regular army except those of the

General Staff and such others as may be useful for service at an advanced age. Retired officers automatically become eligible to be called out for service as objects for the practice of the citizens in disposing of the enemy according to the methods described in the Manual of Military Training. The full significance of this scheme may not at once appear; but, let it be adopted, and I promise that our wives and striplings will soon be able to knee a crotch or gouge an eye as effectively as only the privileged veteran can under the present plan.

A word in explanation of my system. I choose officers for two reasons: the first, that they are the instructors in military training and therefore the stronger in self-command and the more expert in defense; the second, that men do not usually enlist for life, and that a man who remains a private at the retiring age, while he may be of use in war, is hardly to be trusted in the difficult and responsible exercise which I propose. Again there would be stated periods for the citizens to present themselves at the battle areas of the various military districts, and, for periods of time which would be agreed upon by the military authorities, they would fight one by one with the officers, doing their utmost to dispatch them, either by weapons, or by gouging and kicking, or by whatever methods occurred to them before the concluding signal brought the bout to an end. The duties of the officer would be to arouse in the citizen the desire to kill,1 and to compel the most furious use of all the citizen's powers and resources of combat. But no officer would ever injure by more than a casual bruise any citizen with whom he was engaged, as

1 'The inherent desire to fight and kill must be carefully watched for and encouraged by the instructor.' Moss and Lang, Dranual of Military Training, Vol. I.

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