New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-11-05
The Presidents Army Plans.

he ATIity
I'm his speech at the Manhattan Club
last night President Wilson added little
to the knowledge which the public already
had of his and Secretary GarriSon's mill
tary preparedness programme. How the
details of the administration plan will
work out no one can tell just yet espe-
cially as there is some chance that Con
gress will amend the scheme in the parts
in which il is weakest. The Presidents
point of view may not control in the end.
But it is pretty clear from what he said
last night that he has not advanced so far
as army reorganization is concerned, very
far beyond the point at which he stood
when he wrote his annual message to Con-
gress a year ago.
This sentence is, perhaps, the keynote of
Mr.. Wilson's programme: "ln accordance
with our American traditions we want and
shall work for only an army adequate to
the constant and legitimate uses of times Of
international peace" This means, trans
lated in legislation, provision for only such
an increase of the regular army as will
enable it to perform routine peace duty
in the Philippines, Hawaii, Alaska and
the Canal Zone and In Continental United
States. Secretary Garrison asked for an
increase of $4,000 men a year ago, be-
cause the mobile force in the United States
proper had been reduced to 24,602, little
more than twice the size of the New York
police force. He thought then that its total
of effectives should be raised to $4,000;
and that is all that the administration pro-
gramme aims at now.
To supplement our little trained army
the President wishes to raise half trained
or quarter trained Continental army of
4OO, 900 men, while retaining the SER
vices of third body of second line troops
the nationalized militia-about equal in
size to the regular army The misconcep-
ton which underlies this preference for
raw or half-raw material to really trained
material crops out in this sentence of the
Presidents speech What we all wish TO
accomplish is that the forces of the nation
should indeed be part OF the nation, and
not O professional force The real army
is stigmatzed as something professional,
something which ought to be set aside
from the militia bodies as not part of the
nation" From either the military or the
political point of view that ancient heresy
is the greatest possible menace to sound
system of national defence.
Instead of treating the standing army
as a mere body of mercenaries it should be
honored as a national agency of the first
rank. The entire army should be nation
allied, not merely the more amateur parts
of it. 1t would be vastly better if we had
one coherent, co-ordinated national army,
instead of three armies different in quality,
makeup and training, and incapable Of
amalgamation except after much friction
and long delay.
The President said further: "The chief
cost of the system would not be in the
enlistment or training Of men, but in the
providing of ample equipment, in case it
should be necessary to call all forces into
the field" Here, again. the fallacy of the
administrations plan is apparent. 1t puts
the cart before the horse. For what would
be the value of costly equipment, supplied
to masses of only partly trained troops,
| if there were no trained officers available
to handle those troops?
The crucial deficiency in our military
system is its shortage of trained officers.
Everything else should be subordnated to
creating an ample corps of educated Off
GERS, and it is obvious that the poorest
possible way to build up such a corps is
to hold down the strength of the regular
army and at the same time 10 organize 4
much larger army of partially trained
men, less than three months in the field in
any year, and led by officers left for nine
months without professional employment.
The administration scheme would be Of
far greater benefit to the country if it
tried to make the regular army as much "a
part of the nation" as the Continental
army is expected to be, and if it altered
the proportions of the two bodies so that
the regulars would number 100000 and
the Continentas 225,O0O. We earnestly
hope that Congress will amend the admin
istration plan in those respects.