The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-06-05

for the education of officers for the two
branches of its armed service the people have
always taken peculiar and almost romantic
interest, and this interest our late history has
tended to intensity. Whatever fancies may
be INDUCED by those who propose to cut the
army down to a shadow and to erase the navy
from the national accounts, it will always be
admitted by men of common sense that the
need for national defence is never 80 remote
that well administered government can
afford to leave it out of practical considera-
ton; and it has always been acknowledged by
writer's on the theory and the practice of war
that in the emergencies which suddenly i'm
peril nations safety instructed officers are,
of all other things required, the most difficult
to secure. Soldiers, better or worse, may be
found at any time in any country, and, as our
own history has shown, so short military
training as three months will make them hold
together in battle with respectable tenacity.
Foundries, factories and commerce will supply
with comparatively little delay all else that is
needed to make an army. But, with all the
material thus supplied, the one want OF officers
capable of turning the material into an effec
tive force and of directing it against the enemy
when it is Created can neither b bought in
the market nor made in q hurry; and
nations that have tried to wage war without
instructed officers, or that have secured them
in pressing need from foreign countries, have
uniformly found defeat and victory equally
disastrous. One Of the happy successes Of
William III. of England was due to the device
with which he had acted upon his recognition
of this difference in the facility with which
every other part of an army may be supplied
by comparison with good officers Parlia-
ment apprehensive Of the uses that Q foreign
king might make of the very effective army
that had overcome the resistance of the
adherents of James H., enacted its reduction
to figure that was deemed safe, even in the
face of the fact that renewed war was immi-
nent; but the King obeyed the law and kept
himself prepared tor possibilities also. He
did not dismiss an officer, and scarcely kept q
private soldier. His muster roll of generals
colonels captains and ieutenants was just
about equal to the army Parliament had
provided for, and he kept all these, sure that
private soldiers would never be difficult to
find if war should come.
1t is much in the vein Of the Kings fancy
that we should treasure West Point and
Annapolis. They are our cheap and COM
paratively safe army and navy. As it has
always been our policy to keep an established
military force at the lowest possible limit in
numbers and expenditure, and as it is now q
mania with some mole-eyed and bilious
economists to carry this proper policy to
ridiculous lengths, we can never have, and
should never expect to have, on hand .
military force fit to meet any important
danger that may suddenly arise, and our best
provision for such danger must necessarily
be the fact that we shall always have in the
country some thousands Of the men graduated
from our great military academy-men soundly
taught in the principles of military science
and fitted to the service of creating armies
from the abundant material which the
country can always supply. If we were
situated with regard to our neighbors as the
various countries of Europe are this would
be an inadequate provision. France Ger
many, Italy. Austria and Russia are COM
PEELED to support respectively great armies,
because any one might be overrun by the
armies of neighbor before it could levy and
train an army for its own defence. But we
have no military neighbors and since the
developments of our war the attempt will
never be made to reach us from Europe. In
American wars the great endeavor will always
be to get the first effective army into the field.
and the success in this endeavor will be
gained by the people whose military acad-
emies have done the most effective service in
supplying capable graduates. It is true that
in our late war this was almost as much
against US as for us. West Point made better
soldiers than patriots in many cases; but
there is no apparent likelihood that we shall
have repetition of that experience, and it is
but just to acknowledge that though West
Point harmed us great deal we cannot say
where we should be to-day but for what it
did. 1t brought us through. It won for us
finally, and that is the practical point, and it
will probably win for us again; and the Acad-
envy should receive the attention and support
of Congress just in proportion as the mania
for cutting down the army prevails 1t should
become the understood theory Of the Acad-
emy's existence that it does not merely edu-
cate officers for actual and immediate appoint
ment to posts in the army but that it gives
military education on the implied pledge
that service shall be rendered whenever in
the future it may be required for national
emergency.
In the case Of naval instruction we have
seen in actual application in the past the ex-
act theory indicated In our first maritime
war, though we had never had naval acad-
envy, we found ready made to our hands in the
commercial marine Of the country abundance
If GOOD 0fficers for the commercial marine