THE ABC OF NATIONAL DEFENSE ■ ■ J. W. MULLEFL ■ ■ Book t II j / COPYRIGHT DEPOSm THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE WHAT THE ARMY AND NAVY WOULD HAVE TO DO IN WAR, WHY THEY WOULD HAVE TO DO IT, AND WHAT THEY NEED FOR SUCCESSFUL PERFORMANCE BY J. W. MULLER AUTHOR OF "THE INVASION OF AMERICA' NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1015, by J. W. MULLER Copyright, 1915, by E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY li DEC 13 1915 ©CI.A416848 Ho 7 I 3 United States 765,133 RELATIVE ORDER WHEN VESSELS NOW BUILDING ARE COMPLETED Great Britain 2,714,106 Germany 1,306,577 17 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE France 899,915 United States 894,899 The answer is more striking still if the comparison is limited to dreadnaughts. This comparatively new type of ship un- doubtedly is the deciding factor in mod- ern naval war. The submarine probably will alter the conditions and strategy of naval campaigns, but when fleets actually meet it will be the dreadnaught that will do the smashing. This monster with its batteries of great guns, more numerous than once w T ere mounted in fortresses, is the destroying angel of the sea. Great Britain has 20 dreadnaughts afloat and (last autumn) had 16 building. Germany has 13 afloat and 7 building. France has 4 afloat and 8 building. The United States has 8 afloat, 4 building and 3 authorized. This list is limited to such vessels as the belligerent nations actually had laid down in the normal course of their ship- 18 THEA-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE building programs. It is known that they have increased their construction im- mensely. If the constant advice of the General Board of the Navy had been accepted by Congress, the United States fleet should consist now of at least 32 first-class bat- tleships and dreadnaughts, all of a type fit for the first line. 19 IV CONGRESS AND SHIPBUILDING LEGISLATION ABOARD of naval officers, known as the General Board of the Navy, organized in obedience to legislation by Congress, laid down a naval policy for the United States in 1903. Although the per- sonnel of this board has changed continu- ally, its members have urged on Congress practically the same policy year after year. Despite this agreement by the country's trusted experts, the policy never has been followed by the various Congresses. In every other Nation that assumes to be a sea-power, it is an unchallenged principle that a certain definite number of certain definite types of vessels shall be constructed every year. It is recog- 20 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE nized that each year a certain number of warships must be retired, because they have become antiquated, and that, there- fore, a single year's interruption of the building program will handicap the navy doubly, by robbing it of its quota of mod- ern ships and forcing it to carry useless vessels. The record of Congress for twenty-five years shows that it never has adhered to a consistent building program. The 1890 Congress authorized the first true battleships ever built by the United States. These vessels, Indiana, Massa- chusetts and Oregon, were consistent types, equal in tonnage, armament and speed. It was a sound beginning. Battleships were not an experiment. Other navies had been building this type for years and it was established that it was the only type of ship that would keep a navy in the first rank. Yet the Con- gress of 1 89 1 authorized none, but appro- priated money instead for the Minneapo- 21 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE lis, a "protected" cruiser, whose type had been practically replaced in other navies by armored vessels. Both type and speed were almost out-dated by the time the ship was launched. In 1892 Congress permitted the con- struction of the battleship Iowa. This was a good ship, with tonnage, armor and speed greater than in those of the 1890 class, thus taking proper advantage of the advance in naval science. But it was only one ship, when three of this type should have been authorized. The Congresses of 1893 and 1894 au- thorized no battleships at all. Thus by 1895 the Nation had 4 first-class battle- ships when it should have had, afloat and under construction, 15 ships equal to any then in commission. The record of succeeding Congresses was: 1895, two first-class battleships, Kearsarge and Kentucky; 1896, three, Alabama, Illinois and Wisconsin; 1897, none. 22 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE Therefore, in 1898, when the Spanish- American War began, instead of having 18 first-class battleships afloat and 6 un- der construction, as would have been the case had the various Congresses voted three battleships in each year, the United States had 5 — Kentucky, Kearsarge, Ala- bama, Illinois and Wisconsin — under con- struction with no possible chance of fin- ishing them for several years to come. The only battleships afloat were the origi- nal 4 — Massachusetts, Oregon, Indiana and Iowa. The result was that the War Session saw a mad scramble of appropriation to make up in headlong, wasteful speed for years of wasteful indifference. In the previous session Congress had passed a naval bill of some 20,000 words which, while it neglected to provide for a single battleship or cruiser, had gone carefully into such important legislation as appoint- ing "four watchmen for the Naval Acad- emy at two dollars per day each ; one clerk 23 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, $1,400; a colored book, 'Flags of Maritime Na- tions/ of which 1,300 copies shall be for the Navy Department and Revenue Cut- ter Service and 3,700 copies for the Sen- ate and House of Representatives. ,, Now, with war on the country, the 1898 Congress hurled an appropriation of 50 millions forth in one short bill for "na- tional defense." There was a rush to buy freight and passenger steamships, steam yachts and even tugboats. The conse- quence was such a naval spectacle as prob- ably never was seen in war before. American naval officers almost wept, and foreign ones laughed. Observers have not forgotten, and will not be able to forget while they live, the wonderful fleet that Admiral Sampson took to bom- bard San Juan de Porto Rico. There were armored and unarmored ships, each of a different type, age, tonnage and speed. There were "converted" yachts, meaning plain, ordinary pleasure yachts 24 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE that had guns mounted hastily. To crown the absurdity there were coast defense monitors, 10 years old, utterly useless for battle and so slow that at last the war fleet took them in tow. Thus the Ameri- can Navy by the Grace of Congress went to war. It is an open secret that later in the war when Admiral Cervera ran out of blockaded Santiago, some of his vessels nearly escaped despite the fact that he had to make his attempt under the worst possible conditions for flight or battle. He had to emerge from the bottle-neck inlet of Santiago, one of the tightest en- trances in the world, through which ships can pass only one by one. He had to run with the rocky coast on one hand, pre- cluding any chance for escape by scatter- ing or sudden change of course. Yet whoever has visited the wrecks of the Spanish ships has been astonished at their great distance from Santiago. The reason was largely that no two of 25 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE the American ships were equal in speed. Between the Brooklyn and the Indiana there must have been a difference of al- most six knots. The speeds of the others varied wildly in all degrees between. With such great differences the swiftest ships could not afford to chase at top speed. In an hour's chase they might have left their slower mates so far behind that they might have given the Spanish vessels an opportunity to turn on them. That was in 1898. The lesson holds good to-day. Without a consistent build- ing program, followed undeviatingly by every future Congress, the United States will continue to have ships varying so unduly in speed and fighting power that they cannot exert their maximum strength in coherent action. And it is fleet action that wins naval war, not single ship ac- tions. 26 V WHAT A "SYMMETRICA^" FLEET SHOULD BE WHY IT ALONE CAN INSURE EFFECTIVE DEFENSE UNTIL recent times, it was a practice of governments to carry warships on their active lists as long as they were seaworthy. Naval experts always ob- jected that a warship was not a ship but a machine, and that seaworthiness was only a minor factor in determining its value; but the public, especially that of America, liked to count its navy by num- bers and insisted on assuming that every vessel was a good warship while it re- mained afloat. A few years ago, largely as a result of the accentuated shipbuilding rivalry be- tween Great Britain and Germany, the 27 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE naval Powers of the world were compelled to recognize that warships reach old age in a period when merchant vessels still are in their prime. In 1910, as a result of carefully tabulated and analyzed ex- perience, it became an established funda- mental principle of all naval programs that a warship, no matter how sound and apparently effective it might be outwardly, was past its useful life when it reached the age of twenty years. The establishment of this absolute age- limit forced an instant readjustment of the values ascribed to ships of all ages between, and made necessary a recogni- tion of the fact that the American first line of battleships was not so large as it had appeared in old lists. But another and more dominating factor than age as- serted itself at about this time in a man- ner not to be gainsaid. It was the sudden and amazing change that came over naval architecture with the established success of the dreadnaught type of battleship. 28 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE In 1906 Great Britain completed her first ship of this type, Dreadnought. Un- til that time the heaviest armament car- ried on battleships was four guns of 10, 11, 12 or 13-inch diameter in the bore. As late as 1908, after the Dreadnought, Great Britain launched two ships carry- ing only four 12-inch guns in the main armament, the United States completed one, France one, and Germany launched two with four 11 -inch guns each. The naval experts still disagreed as to the practicability of so hugely increasing main armament as the Dreadnought type implied. By 1909, however, all the great navies were definitely embarked on the principle of building dreadnaught * fleets, and in- stantly all previous ships that had seemed monsters before were rendered secondary. * American naval usage is "dreadnaught" as name of the type. The first British ship of the type was named "Dreadnought." 29 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE As a result, many ships whose age en- titled them to be carried in the naval lists as highly modern cannot properly be kept in the class of first line ships; and it has become more essential than ever that a scientific building program be undertaken at once and adhered to by succeeding Con- gresses. The armament placed on the dread- naught to-day would have been considered incredible and preposterous by naval ex- perts of fifteen years ago. It has made such a vast difference between United States ships built within the past five years and those built seven and eight years ago that it would be wholly impossible to form a cohesive or "symmetrical" fleet containing both types. A very simple statement of the existing differences will make this fact clear even to laymen who know nothing whatever about ships. Let it be assumed that a squadron of eight of the newest United States ships were to attack a squadron of ten ships that 30 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE are nearest to them in age, but were built before the dreadnaught type was accepted. In that case the modern squadron of eight dreadnaughts, New York, Texas, Arkan- sas, Wyoming, Florida, Utah, Delaware, and North Dakota, would muster 20 14- inch and 64 12-inch guns against 40 12- inch and no 14-inch guns on the ten battle- ships Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Ver- mont, Connecticut, Louisiana, New Jersey, Georgia, Virginia, and Rhode Island. In other words, the eight dreadnaughts could throw more than twice as much metal from their main armaments as could be thrown by the ten battleships. In addition, the dreadnaughts have their main batteries so disposed that they can bring them to bear practically all together, while the older vessels cannot use more than one-half their guns simultaneously under ordinary maneuvering. Thus in reality the ratio is more than two to one against the older vessels. Yet the four ships of the Kansas type are only eight 31 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE years old, and the six ships of the Con- necticut type nine years old. In the matter of speed, the incoherence produced by only a few years' difference in age may be understood with equal ease. The dreadnaught type ships are 21 -knot vessels. The Kansas and Connecticut type has only 18 knots speed. If a fleet be made up of both these types, the swift dreadnaughts at once lose the advantage of their superior speed because, if they steamed at their maximum speed, they would leave the Kansas type ships seventy- two miles behind in twenty-four hours of steaming. This would mean, of course, that, in the event of attack, the American ships would be so far separated that the slower ones could not come up till long after the fight is ended. Hence, it is plain that the incorporation of inferior ships into a squadron or fleet does not merely weaken the fleet to that fractional extent,but actually forces the en- tire fleet to assume the weakness of the few. 32 VI the reai, situation regarding America's dreadnaughts and battleships ON October 17, 1903, the General Board of the Navy, having studied carefully the conditions governing foreign and American naval policies, reported that safety demanded an American Navy con- taining 48 battleships. At that time there were in commission ten battleships, while fourteen were either under construction or had been authorized, the completion of the last of the fourteen being due by 1907. In view of the building programs of other Nations, it was believed that all pur- poses would be answered if the United States fleet of 48 battleships were com- 33 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE pleted by 19 19. Therefore, the Board recommended that Congress institute a building program of two such ships every year. Such a program would have pro- duced the desired fleet by 1919, without making allowances for replacements. It was not an extravagant schedule. The 1904 Congress, however, authorized only one ship. The General Board asked the 1905 Congress for 3 battleships in order to make up the deficiency. Congress re- fused and authorized 2 ships. In 1906 the General Board again asked for 3 and got 1. The 1907 Congress authorized 1. The General Board, now 3 battleships short, asked the 1908 Congress for 4 and got 2. It asked the Congresses of 1909, 191 o and 191 1 for 4, and got only 2 each time. In 1 910 there entered the new element of age, experience having proved that twenty years was absolutely the age-limit for warships. It became apparent that in 19 10 battle- 34 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE ships should be laid down to replace In- diana, Oregon and Massachusetts, that Iowa should have to be replaced by 191 2, and that Kentucky and Kearsarge should require substitutes by 191 5. Accordingly in 1912 and 191 3 the General Board asked for 4 battleships in each year, but each Congress authorized only 1, thus increas- ing the shortage in the original program to 5 and making the entire shortage of battleships nine when counting the loss to be caused by the retirement of Indiana, Oregon, Massachusetts and Iowa. In November, 19 14, under the General Board's original plan as modified by the 1910 replacement policy, there should have been 38 battleships in commission less than 20 years old, 7 building, and 2 auth- orized. Instead, there were only 30 in commission, only 4 building, and 3 author- ized. This is a deficiency of 10 battleships from that contemplated in the original pro- gram, which, it must be understood, was prepared under the direction of Congress, 35 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE and which has been approved and adhered to by all the naval experts who have suc- cessively become members of the board since the original incumbents laid down the policy. There have been so many conflicting statements about the existing dreadnaught fleet, both in criticism and in defense of it, that the public evidently has become per- plexed- The following are the simple, straight facts as to its composition and condition : The battleship fleet afloat and ready for service consists of 14 ships in the "first line'' and 19 ships in the "second line." The "first line" contains the thoroughly modern ships less than 9 years old, which are adjudged to be fit for decisive battle action. The "second line" contains the ships ranging from 9 years to 20 years in age. There should be eliminated entirely from this list Indiana, built in 1895, Ore- gon and Massachusetts, built in 1896, and Iowa, built in 1897. Kearsarge, Kentucky 36 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE and Alabama, built in 1900, while only 15 years old, are well outclassed also, and probably would be retired now had Con- gress authorized a program that would have provided ships to replace them. In- diana, Oregon, Massachusetts and Iowa certainly should not be carried on the list. It is proper, therefore, to say that the "sec- ond line" contains only 15 battleships, and it would no doubt be quite just to cut it down by three more. Of the ships in the "first line," there are 4, Kansas, Minnesota, New Hamp- shire, and Vermont, that do not approxi- mate the other ships of this line in either tonnage or speed, and that are entirely out of the first line class in armament, carry- ing main batteries of only four 12-inch guns, against the 10 and 12 gun batteries of the others. Therefore the only battleships that may be held to be actually ships of our "first line" are the battleships Michigan and South Carolina, armed with main batteries 37 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE of 8 1 2-inch rifles each; and the 8 dread- naught ships : New York and Texas, car- rying 10 14-inch guns each; Arkansas and Wyoming, with 12 12-inch guns each; Delaware, Florida, North Dakota, and Utah, carrying 10 12-inch guns each. This makes ten battleships in all in the first line. These are fine ships, none more than 5 years old. But the situation in the "sec- ond line" is different- The ages of these vessels are: one 20 years old, two 19, one 18, three 15, two 14, one 13, one 12, one 11, six 9, one 8, or, if the four ships of the Kansas class be listed as of the "sec- ond line/' as they should be, there will be five of 8 years old. Thus, there are 12 of the 19 ships that are past one-half of their effective age. All these "second line" ships, whatever their age, have main armaments limited to four great guns only. 38 VII WHAT BATTLESHIPS CANNOT DO THE dreadnaught has appealed so much to popular imagination that most of the arguments for a larger navy have confined themselves to discussion of these monsters. But dreadnaughts alone do not make a navy. To be capable for war, a fleet absolutely must contain several different types of ships assembled in cor- rect proportion. To understand the necessity for this, it is sufficient to understand that war on sea differs from war on land only in de- tails, not in principle. The primary ob- jects of either a sea or a land force are: (i) to discover the enemy, (2) to know his strength, (3) to gain the most advan- tageous position, (4) to fight him. 39 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE Everybody knows probably that an army, however large it might be, is quite powerless to operate without a big force of scouts and advance detachments. The navy is in exactly the same position, except that its task is far more difficult. Land forces move through country more or less populated where there always are spies and other means of intelligence. The sea force is on an enormous, vague waste, greater in area than a continent. Further- more, natural conditions on land confine a hostile army to certain known directions of movement. A hostile navy can go where it will. Therefore, a fleet of dreadnaughts or battleships alone, no matter how power- ful, cannot form a useful fighting organ- ization, because battleships are only the smiting force — the heavy artillery, so to speak. When fleets of battleships actually meet and engage, the naval war almost certainly will be decided then and there; but until they do meet, 40 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE the mastery of the seas remains undeter- mined. Clearly a defending fleet might as well not exist if it cannot find the enemy fleet. Even if it were immensely superior to the foe, so long as the latter evades it he can sweep the ocean or attack coasts. If the enemy is superior, the naval campaign be- comes a game of blind man's buff reversed, the defending fleet trying to escape blind- folded and the pursuer following with his eyes wide open. It is impossible for battleships to obtain for themselves the knowledge that they must have before they can begin to move. One reason is that it would be suicidal for a commander to detach battleships for scout purposes. The issue of a pitched naval battle probably always will depend on the massed force of great ships brought to bear at one time and place. Apart from this, they are inferior in speed. Although the giants of to-day have extraordinary velocities, lighter ships with 4i THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE the same character of engines naturally always will be faster. For this reason, with the advent of the hugely armored and hugely armed brute righting ship the light cruiser has attained great importance again — not for any fighting purpose what- soever, as once was the dream of naval tacticians, but for spying, scouting and patrolling. Flying machines and the rushing de- stroyers also act as scouts for "their bul- lies, the ships of the line/' but their radius of action is limited by their nature. The information that they bring comes from distances so short that the two fleets will be approaching battle. Their reports are invaluable for the execution of the battle plans, but for strategy — the preliminary movements and devices that may enable one side or the other to deliver a crushing blow — their range of observation is far too small. The needed advance information can be obtained, at the present time, only by large, 42 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE very swift vessels that have a cruising radius as great as, or greater than, the battleship fleet. As an army thrusts a screen of cavalry in front of it, so modern navies thrust enough scout cruisers ahead to investigate every possible sea-area. It is the mission of scouts to precede a battle-fleet by half a thousand miles and even more, and to send their news back by wireless. Five hundred miles practi- cally is the minimum limit of safety on the sea for such advance scouting if the battle-fleet is to profit by it in time, where an army might be content with advance scouting as little as fifty miles from its front. The reason is that an army would require at least three days to move fifty miles, while a battle-fleet, steaming at 14 knots an hour in fleet formation, would cover the 500 miles in 36 hours. It is plain that lacking scouts of such great sea-going range, a fleet might, and probably would, blunder into a trap set by a better informed enemy who shall have 43 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE assembled hastily a superior force of pow- erful vessels. In the United States Navy no scout cruisers have been authorized since the 1904 Congress authorized the construction of Birmingham, Chester and Salem. These were highly efficient vessels with speeds of 243/3 knots, 26 knots, and 26y 2 knots, respectively. Though they have lost some of their speed, they still are serviceable. Carrying as they do only the armament of two 5-inch and six 3-inch guns each, and not being intended or con- structed for fighting, they have not been so seriously out-classed by the advance in naval construction as the big battling ves- sels have been out-classed in all navies by the mere passing of a few years. But there are only these three in the whole American Navy. No single other large vessel of equal speed has been au- thorized by Congress in the past eleven years, though the naval estimates have asked for such ships consistently. The 44 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE report of the General Board of the Navy dated November 17, 19 14, repeated the request strongly and asked for an imme- diate authorization of four such ships, adding that the United States Navy is "peculiarly lacking in this element so es- sential for information in a naval cam- paign." There was no result. 45 VIII the destroyer — almost next in value to the dreadnaught IN explaining its naval policy, the Gen- eral Board of the United States Navy has placed the destroyer as the type of the warship next in importance to the battleship. The story of how this value has been attained by the craft that once was esteemed only as a minor auxiliary, is the story of startling changes in naval theory that have occurred within the life- terms of Americans of middle age. Not many years ago Kipling wrote one of his most popular poems in description of an imagined battle between the Clamp- her down, a huge, slow, armored battle- ship, and a light cruiser that "carried the dainty Hotchkiss gun and a pair o' heels 46 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE wherewith to run." According to Kipling, the light cruiser pranced around the un- wieldy giant, silenced its guns and swept its decks. The poet expressed the opinion of more than one naval expert, and with some show of reason. Big guns still were in- accurate in themselves, as was proved by the famous and inefficient no-ton guns that the British Admiralty had adopted at about that time, only to withdraw the ships that mounted them. In addition, gunners were poor marksmen. Range- finding and fire-control were largely ex- perimental. Under such conditions, with the slow rate of fire delivered by big guns of that date, speed might very possibly have gained a decision over a heavier but slower and clumsier ship. But even while people were reciting the verses and deeming them prophetic, con- ditions were changing. Big guns began to fire accurately by scientific calculation. The day that the first great shells smashed 47 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE in unbroken series into a bobbing target miles away, the hour of the light vessel as a fighting factor had struck. At that same time the torpedo boat was passing, though it survived a little longer in the estimation of the public and even of naval strategists. This "mist-wraith" that flitted on the midnight sea and struck and fled, not only appealed to public imagina- tion with its fearful possibilities, but kept many an Admiral awake nights. Unlike the submarine, the torpedo boat never had an opportunity in a protracted naval war to prove itself to any great extent; but its existence affected naval construction and tactics immensely, and it inspired the conception of what is now one of the most effective and valuable types in a modern navy — the torpedo boat destroyer. At first the torpedo boat destroyer was little more than a torpedo craft large enough and sufficiently well armed to be superior to the torpedo boat proper. Thus, the Bainbridge, the first American de- 48 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE stroyer, was not quite twice as large as torpedo boats then in use. It carried two 3-inch rapid fire guns and five 6-pounders against the three or four i -pounders that most torpedo boats mounted. Against the 26 to 30 men carried by the smaller craft, it carried 76 men and 3 officers. In the beginning the speed of the de- stroyers was not consistently greater than that of the torpedo boats- For some time naval constructors believed that the latter craft always could be made faster, and even after destroyers were being built largely, torpedo craft still were being con- structed with engines that could out-speed the new type. But gradually the destroyer attained velocities that made competition hopeless. It was this, probably, that relegated the torpedo boat to peaceful retirement. It was not battle-test but experience driven home in maneuvers that demonstrated the superiority of the destroyer. When the United States ship Gloucester (a converted 49 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE pleasure yacht) sank the Spanish torpedo boats Plat on and Terror during the Span- ish-American war in fair fight, it was as if the little craft that had been sung throughout the world by poets as the exe- cutioner of the battleship vanished finally from the imagination of naval men. For some years it has been so completely eliminated that the destroyers have quite lost their original prefix of "torpedo boat'' destroyers. It is the only thing that they lost. Instead of diminishing in importance with the disappearance of the prey for which they were devised, they gained steadily in engine power, size and arma- ment and finally became an inherent part of the war fleet. Armed with three and four twin 1 8-inch and 2 1 -inch torpedo tubes, they have re- tained their theoretical function of attack- ing the under-water bodies of armored ships, but this function has remained largely theoretical. Enlargement of sec- ondary batteries on big ships, improved 50 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE gunnery, increased speed and vastly im- proved search-light systems have reduced greatly the destroyer's chances for suc- cessful attack with torpedoes, though it is assumed that in the clamor and smoke of a sea-ba/ttle between the giants the destroyer flotillas still may play an impor- tant part. Their more important and certain work that made them valuable was work that the destroyers evolved for themselves. They are scouts now, able to hold the seas in any weather and to steam great dis- tances at maximum speed. While they cannot vie with scout cruisers in this re- spect, they supplement them with a chain of intelligence that no other form of craft could supply. A secondary but very great value is their value as dispatch boats, which still are needed despite the wireless. For actual fighting purposes, also, they are vitally necessary, and would have been so had the submarine never been invented. This is because they are absolutely the 5i THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE only craft that can fight against their own kind. Against destroyer flotillas the dreadnaughts are almost helpless, because the little ships, nearly twice as fast as the mammoths, can evade them with thorough ease. Therefore, the battleships cannot fall on the destroyers, but can only defend themselves by firing at them with the secondary batteries. Important as this fact makes a destroyer flotilla for battle- ships, the arrival of the submarine has made it imperative that the big ships be accompanied by them wherever they may have to go. 52 IX THE BATTLESHIP'S ONLY SURE DEFENSE AGAINST SUBMARINE ATTACK OWING to their own value as war- ships, the destroyers would have re- mained an inherent part of the modern fleet even if battleships never had been threatened by renewed danger from tor- pedo attack. With the advent of the sub- marine, however, they assumed instantly a new and enormous value because they have had to resume their original func- tions against a new and undeniably terri- ble reincarnation of their old enemy. The war in Europe has proved one point to the complete satisfaction of all naval experts — that destroyers are not only the sole fairly certain defense against 53 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE submarine attack on a fleet, but that the very existence of the armored navy may depend on them. At present the dreadnaught is fatally weak against the undersea torpedo boat, which is all that a submarine is. The bat- tleship's great batteries of rapid fire guns hardly can be considered as defenses, be- cause by the time a dreadnaught's crew sights the periscope of a submarine and fires at it, the dreadnaught's death war- rant may already be hurrying toward it in the form of a torpedo. Armor protection for the hull, increased number of compartments and water-tight bulkheads, torpedo netting of vastly in- creased strength, sound detectors to warn of the approach of the submerged killer, all are only theoretical at this time. They or some new safeguard may be developed; but to-day the only dependable defense that the dreadnaught has is to keep its engines whirling at top speed that the submarine shall be unable to approach, 54 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE or to so change its course when a sub- marine is sighted that the latter may be unable to send its torpedoes true. The modern torpedo has minimized this chance of escape seriously. Its vastly in- creased propulsive power now makes it possible to launch a torpedo from such a distance that it is practically impossible for the men on the threatened ship to see so small an object as a periscope. The self -steering devices have made the tor- pedo so automatic after it is launched that it can be set actually to describe curves of known arc so that (theoretically at least) a torpedo can be adjusted to dart around one ship and strike another beyond it. Against these dangers the battleship has absolutely no protection within itself. Its one and only protection must come from means outside of itself, and these are fur- nished to-day by only one type of craft — the swift destroyer that can circle around a battleship, sweeping to and fro at dis- tances well at the limit of possible torpedo 55 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE distances, to sight a submarine before it can get its observation and sink to get nearer to its prey. The destroyer's value for this purpose arises from the fact that the submarine terror can fire its torpedo by no knowledge except such as it has gained by spying its prey through its periscope or by rising bodily to the surface for a glimpse. In that moment the submarine's crew fixes the location of the chosen ship, esti- mates the distance, and establishes the exact direction in which the little vessel must approach after submerging. That interval of visibility is the destroyer's op- portunity. It is then that the destroyer tries to sink the submarine by gun-fire, ram it, or, failing both these attempts, to shoot away its periscopes, which is equiva- lent to shooting the eyes out of man's head. Lacking its periscopes, the subma- rine may dive and escape by running suK merged, but it cannot attack. It is for this incalculable service, then, 56 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE that the modern fleet requires destroyers. Peace maneuvers carried on during past years, and in addition the graphic illustra- tions furnished by the European war, have assured naval tacticians that destroyers are not merely necessary but literally in- dispensable. Under the stress of this need, they have grown into real warships, and so far as quality is concerned the United States is well in the front with such as it has built. Thus, the 6 destroyers authorized by the 1914 Congress will be 1,100 tons as against the 420 tons of the first American de- stroyer Bainbridge. The new ones will, in fact, be almost one-half the tonnage of Atlanta and Boston, the first protected cruisers built by the United States that served as the basis for the present navy. They will carry four 4-inch guns and a hundred men. But there are very few of them. It has been established that for adequate defense each battleship needs at the very least four 57 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE destroyers as its special guard. They never must leave it in war. They never must be detached from it for other duty. They must be large enough to go wherever it goes and to hold the seas as long. Though the American Navy carries 62 destroyers on its list, only 25 constructed and authorized are highly modern craft of more than 1,000 tons, only 26 have a tonnage of 700, and the rest are about 400 tons, which is far too small for oceanic work and confines them rigidly to harbor and coast service. At the rate of 4 de- stroyers to guard each battleship, the 26 effective armored vessels in our first and second line should have 104 sea-going de- stroyers ready for battle. As it is, there would be enough to protect the 8 dread- naughts now in commission. To guard the other 18 vessels of the battle-fleet, there would be left 19 destroyers. It is not extreme to say that this weakness may prove fatal in any operation that exposes the American ships to submarine attack. 58 X SUBMARINES — THE NEW AND SUCCESSFUL NAVAI, WEAPON IT was the explosive gas engine, also known as the internal combustion en- gine, that made the submarine possible. And it has been the lack of a reliable en- gine with power enough to give the re- quired speed that has retarded, in die United States at least, the construction of the larger sea-going submarines which have proved themselves so formidable in the present war. This difficulty has been overcome. The General Board of the Navy has reported that it is "assured that engines have been designed and fully tested that will meet the requirements, and builders stand ready to guarantee the results." 59 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE Therefore the United States has begun definitely to build submarines that com- pare with the original type as the dread- naught compares with the old unarmored cruiser. These are known as fleet sub- marines, because they are designed to ac- company the cruising fleet, while the old, small type will be known hereafter as coast submarines and will be limited to harbor and coast defense and to occa- sional activity with the fleet in home waters. The United States was the pioneer in submarine invention and adoption, but it fell behind quickly in construction. Though the 1893 Congress authorized the building of a boat, Plunger, no submarine actually went into commission until 1900. Three years elapsed before any more were placed in commission. By that time Eng- land, Italy, France and Russia had en- gaged vigorously in under-sea construc- tion. By 1904, when Germany adopted the submarine and developed it seriously, 60 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE the United States under-water flotilla con- sisted of only seven craft. However, there now are more than 60 built or building. An official estimate made for the Navy Department July, 19 14, tabulated the number built or building for foreign navies as : England 84, France j6, Germany 31, Japan 17. It is known, of course, that since then these powers have increased their construction so greatly that estimates would be fantastic, and it may be that when the veil of secrecy is lifted after the war, the United States subma- rine flotilla will seem comparatively tiny. But submarines can be built in compara- tively short periods and their cost is not yet unduly high, although already the esti- mated expenditure for the sea-going type has reached figures beyond half a million dollars. So far as size and power are concerned, the sea-going or fleet submarines author- ized by the last two sessions of Congress probably will be able to hold their own 61 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE with any foreign craft, unless the bellig- erent nations succeed in producing a "su- per-submarine" of which there have been rumors. The United States fleet submarines of the new type are to be 265 feet long, which is more than twice as large as the old type. Their displacement is to be 1,000 tons, which is within 100 tons of the most mod- ern destroyers and within 486 tons of the United States ship Dolphin, which still is in commission. It is calculated that they will be able to accompany the fleet under either peace or war conditions, as their surface speed is to be 20 knots, whereas the average speed of a fleet of dread- naughts and cruisers is 14 knots in peace and 18 knots in war cruising except when forced draught is used. The cruising radius of these great un- der-water boats is to be 6,300 miles on the surface, and 3,200 miles submerged when their speed under electric power will be 12 knots. They will be armored and 62 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE armed with three 4-inch rifles to enable them to fight destroyers on the surface. They will have six fixed torpedo tubes in their hulls, and four on deck in disappear- ing carriages. In fact, they will be so powerful and efficient that in this very efficiency there will be a grave weakness that demands intelligent attention by the public and by Congress. The weakness lies in the fact that this new machine has achieved a stage where it is superior to the men who must gov- ern it. It can endure more than human beings can. It carries within itself innum- erable and ever-imminent dangers of utter disaster, always menacing and not to be averted except by incessant, expert watch- fulness, knowledge and unfaltering skill. Running on the surface, the least inat- tention may cause it to founder from tak- ing a sea aboard, for its "trim" always is within a narrow margin of submersion except when all the tanks of water ballast are emptied by blowing out, which cannot 63 THE A-B-C OF 'NATIONAL DEFENSE be done unless the vessel is cruising in absolute safety from sudden attack. When it is sealed and starts to dive, a tiny error in manipulating the horizontal diving rud- der may turn it head over end and send it plunging to a fatal depth. The moment it is submerged, its men are cut of! from light and sound — from all the things by which human beings guide and control their actions. The only illumination that they have is the electric light that they make themselves. It is only by continuous and expert reading of gauges and dials that they know in what direction they are moving, how deep they are, whether their bow is pointing up or down, whether they are sinking to a water pressure too great for the vessel's strength whether their air supply is good, whether their water ballast tanks are trimmed cor- rectly, whether they are on an even keel. The electric motors that propel the ship require minute care. Any defect or in- jury must be remedied at once, and per- 64 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE f ectly. The penalty for bungling in a sub- marine is death, and a horrible one. If the public will realize that all this is only the constant routine of the submarine, and that there must be added to this in war the strain of going into battle, it will be easy to realize how vital it is that there shall be a highly trained force of men for the work. The submarine, more even than the intricate dreadnaught, has made it ab- solutely impossible to continue with a hap- hazard system of forming a naval person- nel, or a system that depends on hasty, indiscriminate enlistment and emergency training when trouble threatens. A dreadnaught has 700 men. There al- ways is some margin for relief, substitu- tion and elimination. The submarine car- ries only a sharply limited number, every one of whom must be expert. When the fleet submarines go to war, not only must each one have all these men trained to the last degree, but the navy must have within it other equally trained men who can re- 65 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE place instantly submarine crews who are disabled. The submarine may become the decisive weapon of naval war. Without highly trained crews it certainly will be wholly impotent. 66 XI IMPERFECTIONS OF THE SUBMARINE "XT THAT has been true throughout V V all naval wars of the past, and what is equally true to-day, is that the backbone of any navy that can command the sea consists of the strongest sea-going, sea-keeping ships of its day, or of its bat- tleships." Thus the General Board of the Navy said in its report of November 17, 1914. It repeated not only what the Gen- eral Board had declared undeviatingly since 1903, but it repeated merely what the lessons of all naval wars in all history have declared. Single ship actions, or fights between small groups of ships, may make varying fortune of war for months; but the deci- 6 7 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE sion that means definite victory or defeat will come from a fleet action. And the fleet that wins will win because its ships have superior resisting power and superior smashing power. "The large increase in submarines is most desirable," said the Secretary of the Navy in presenting this report to Con- gress, "but nothing in the present war has disproved the Board's faith in the modern dreadnaught." It is important that the American peo- ple shall not be carried away by the ro- mantic thrills caused by exploits of the wonderful submarine. Four times in the history of our existing navy the scientific up-building of the fleet has been halted ser- iously by enthusiasm over new types of ships that proved fallacies. First came the commerce destroyer fallacy, based on the belief that a swift, unarmored and practically unarmed ship could sweep the seas of enemy commerce and escape enemy warships by running away. It produced 68 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE the almost wholly worthless ships Minne- apolis and Columbia, that soon had to be relegated to the position of training and receiving ships. Then there was the arm- ored naval ram, hailed as the death-blow to armored vessels. There were the arm- ored, heavily turreted, heavily gunned coast defense monitors that cost two mil- lion dollars. And finally there was the dynamite-throwing cruiser of which type fortunately only one ship, Vesuvius, was built. It was hailed as a wonder of war, and it was an uter failure. All these appealed almost as powerfully to public imagination in their time as does the submarine to-day. The submarine has proved itself to be an undoubtedly effective and necessary ship, but despite the ex- traordinary things it has done in the pres- ent war, it has not yet proved that it is decisive. It may be that events later on may change this condition; but at this time, the big ship remains ruler of the seas. 69 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE The one positive achievement of the sub- marine is that it has made blockade mor- tally hazardous if not impossible. But blockade of the American coast would mean that an enemy already had won the mastery of the sea. If the American dreadnaught and armored cruiser fleet is properly strong, blockade will be impos- sible and the country will not need to fall back on the desperate expedient of keeping its ports open by submarine defense. In this sense the submarine is far more valu- able to continental European countries whose coasts are on narrow seas, easily blocked by close neighbors or raided from near-by bases. The submarine's second undoubted achievement is as a commerce destroyer. But here again the narrow seas of Europe provide a condition differing from the po- sition of the United States. Furthermore, in the event of an attack on America, there would be no hostile commerce to destroy. The only shipping that would attempt to 70 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE approach our coasts would be friendly shipping, to be welcomed eagerly. In addition, the United States has been consistent for years in working for a free sea — that is, for an agreement that in time of war all merchant shipping, even though belonging to countries at war, shall be absolutely immune except when it carries actual (not constructive) contraband of war, or if it tries to run an actual close blockade of a specified port or ports. Events appear to be shaping toward a gen- eral acceptance of this principle, since the destruction of commerce in the present war has proved itself to cause irredeem- able damage to all sides without over- whelming advantage to any. There remains then for American con- sideration chiefly the actual fighting value of the submarine against fighting ships. That this is great is undoubted. That it is decisive still remains to be proved. There is no way to know till a test comes whether or not the fleet submarine opera- 7i THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE ting in the open ocean during a ferocious fleet battle, can cause preponderating dam- age before the great guns of the armored ships already have done their destructive work against each other. The great inherent defect of the sub- marine is that the moment it sinks under the surface it is as blind as a blind man. There has been no approach yet toward curing this serious weakness. Therefore the submarine absolutely must expose it- self to attack by lifting its periscope above water to sight its prey. If the chosen vic- tim is stationary, or moving at a steady speed in a steady direction, the submarine can sink and guide itself with its speed- depth- and direction-indicators so that it can fire a torpedo at the ship which it no longer sees. But if the vessel is immense- ly swift and holds an erratic course, the difficulty of torpedoing becomes extreme. The complete failure of the English navy to establish a close blockade of the German coast and the complete success of 72 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE that same navy in guarding perfectly its transport of troops across the Channel, illustrate graphically both the strength and the weakness of the submarine. The lesson to be learned from this illustration is that the United States Navy must have a flotilla of submarines justly proportioned to its capital ships, but that nothing should interfere with the establishment of a proper strength in dreadnaughts and arm- ored cruisers. 73 XII BAT1%£ CRUISERS — TH£ N^W^ST TYPE) OF CAPlTAI, SHIP WHAT is the battle cruiser? It is a hybrid — an attempt to combine the speed of a cruiser with the smashing power of a battleship. As in all hybrids, it has been impossible to give the battle cruiser the maximum value of the quali- ties of either progenitor. It is not as swift as a lighter cruiser with equal engine pow- er. It does not carry the armor or the array of guns of the dreadnaught. The sole question remaining is to de- termine if it combines enough of the ex- cellent qualities of both cruiser and bat- tleship to make it truly a distinct, new and valuable type. 74 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE Naval hybrids almost always have been failures. In the days of the Armada, the Portuguese scored a failure with the mon- strous ship known as Carack, which was an attempt to combine the qualities of a galleon and a warship. In the time of Nel- son and later in our own early history, it was found necessary to keep corvettes, frigates and line-of-battle ships distinct. In the history of the modern United States Navy a conspicuous fiasco was the old Texas, authorized by the 1886 Con- gress as a "sea-going double-bottomed armored vessel of about 6,000 tons dis- placement, designed for a speed of at least 16 knots an hour." At that time foreign navies were building battleships twice as large, and the United States was building protected cruisers of 19 and 20 knots speed. Thus the Texas was an anomaly. When completed she was carried on the navy list under the mysterious title of "second-class battleship." In truth she was neither a battleship nor an armored 75 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE cruiser. Her end was that she was used as a target in Chesapeake Bay. The battle cruiser appears to have de- veloped a certain distinct and noteworthy value. The theory in designing the battle cruiser was to obtain a high rate of speed with a very great cruising radius, and to sacrifice for this purpose only enough armor and guns to leave the ship still qualified for combat with battleships. It was calculated that the inferiority in smashing power and range would be bal- anced by the superior speed, which should enable the battle cruiser to out-maneuver the battleship. Up to the time of writing this article, there has been no encounter between bat- tle cruisers and battleships. It is only by such an encounter, fairly fought out, that exact knowledge can be gained as to the ability of the new type for holding the sea in defiance of strong hostile ships, or as to its adequacy in fleet action involving bat- tleships. 7 6 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE The battle cruiser's absolutely dominat- ing influence as against all classes of war- ships lighter than battleships, has been fairly well established by the engagement in Helgoland bight, when, during a prelim- inary and not decisive battle between Eng- lish and German light cruisers a squadron of English battle cruisers arrived and an- nihilated the German ships almost in- stantly. This, however, simply was a proof of the invariable superiority of heavy armor and heavy ships, and was in no sense a test of the battle cruiser as a type. The most that this engagement may be held to suggest is that the day of light ships passed away when engine construc- tion made possible great speed with hea- vier ships. The lesson for the United States thus far is that, except for com- merce-destroying, the navy of the future has no place for unarmored ships save for scouting purposes, and that the battle fleet should consist of battleships (dread- 77 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE naughts) and armored cruisers of strength that would have entitled them a few years ago to be classed as battleships. An idea of the strength of a modern battle cruiser may be gained from the following comparison: English battle cruiser Queen Mary, 27,- 000 tons, 35 knots speed, eight 13^-inch guns. U- S. first-class battleship (dreadnaught type) New York, 27,000 tons, 21 knots speed, ten 14-inch guns. U. S. first-class battleship (1908 type) New Hampshire, 16,000 tons, 18 knots speed, four 12-inch, eight 8-inch and twelve 7-inch guns. An examination of this list will indicate that speed is the outstanding quality of the battle cruiser as against the battleship of dreadnaught type. At present there is not a single armored cruiser in the United States fleet with a speed greater than 22 knots. The heaviest armament of any of these is four 10-inch and sixteen 6-inch 78 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE guns. All told there are only n of even these inferior vessels and only six of them are less than ten years old. Congress has provided for none since 1904. 79 XIII CESSATION OF MISCHIEVOUS MEDDLING BY CONGRESS THE FIRST NEED OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY "OINCE 1900," says George von L. O Meyer, former Secretary of the Navy, "the United States has spent one billion, six hundred and fifty-six million dollars on the navy, while Germany had spent only one billion, one hundred and thirty-seven millions for a more powerful one. A fair amount of this difference may properly be charged to the heavier costs for men and material in the United States, but by far the larger part of the difference cannot be so explained." Where has the money gone? It has not been stolen during construc- 80 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE tion, nor has it been embezzled in the Navy Department. Congress and Congress committees, ever watchful of Government departments and ever ready to investi- gate and expose, never have even insinu- ated either dishonesty or incompetence in performance there. Americans have fallen into the habit, with good reason, of point- ing proudly to the honesty and fidelity of their army and navy. The money has not been stolen, but wasted. It has been wasted not in paying too much for construction, but in con- structing too much that should not have been constructed and in maintaining too many useless or not highly useful vessels. There is no dispute among naval men all over the world of the statement that for the amount that has been spent, the United States should have to-day a navy ranking second only to Great Britain. There is no possible room for dispute, either, as to where the fault lies. The facts are on record in the records of 81 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE Congress. They can be comprehended in an hour's examination of the reports made to Congress by Secretaries of the Navy, by the General Board of the Navy and by other officers. Anybody, even the most careless layman, who will read the recom- mendations, appeals and warnings in those reports and will then read the naval bills as passed by the various Congresses, can learn from the record of those Congresses as set down by themselves, how the ap- propriating body has labored to bungle, to hinder and to waste. Republican and Democratic Congresses have accused each other of failing to pro- vide this or that number of ships, but the true damage to the country has not been in this direction. It has been and is in the manner of the appropriations. No man, however partisan, can point to the records and say that any Congress, whatever its political complexion, was better or worse than any other in this matter. In selecting the record of the second ses- 82 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE sion of the 63rd Congress as an example there is, therefore, no intention of criti- cizing that body particularly. As a matter of fact, it authorized the construction of 3 dreadnaught type battleships, 6 excellent destroyers, 1 fine fleet submarine and 7 coast submarines — a good record of con- struction compared with previous Con- gresses. The same evil faults that exist in its method of appropriating money for the navy, exist in the acts passed by all other Congresses. The total naval appropriation act of June 30, 1 9 14, contains 14,000 words. Of these, just 270 words were used for appropriating money for the ships men- tioned. The rest of the long Act was devoted to prescribing in detail exactly how the Navy Department might spend the other sums that are needed annually for its main- tenance. Four hundred words were used for prescribing puny expenditures, such as purchases of ice, stationery, photo- 83 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE graphs and "religious books." Five hun- dred words were expended on the partici- pation of the fleet in the Panama-Pacific Exposition festivities. Two hundred words were devoted to the important mat- ter of birth certificates to be produced by candidates for enlistment. One hundred words prescribed just how clothing outfits should be furnished to enlisted men. The appropriation for the maintenance of naval auxiliaries (a purely administra- tive detail of any Navy Department) was loaded with a clause enumerating 41 uses for which it might be spent, going into such utterly trivial and routine details as "compasses and compass fittings. " The appropriations for the four training sta- tions and the war college were burdened with the same petty detailed orders. In this Act there were such vastly im- portant laws as the provision of $360 for paying the annual wages of a laborer, "four scrubbers at $192 each," "one chief laundress at $240." Altogether, this one 84 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE clause providing in rigid detail for such insignificant matters (total amount §22- 696) had 140 words devoted to it — a little more than half the space devoted to appro- priating for ships worth $33,410,000. It is this sort of legislation to which every Congress has given more time and attention than to an intelligent building of a great navy. It has not only tied the Navy Departments of all Administrations in a paralyzing web of red tape, causing immensely wasteful clerical systems, but it has prevented the experts who alone know how a navy should be made from using any money as their knowledge and experience might suggest. It is Congress, and not the Navy Department, that "runs" the Navy, and after Congress adjourns, its dead hand remains heavily on the whole naval system in the form of these narrow Acts which no naval authority and no President may transgress under penalty of being punished for violation of the law. Ex-President Taft, once a Secretary of 85 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE War, speaking from experience, said last June: "I heartily concur in Mr. Meyer's suggestion that Congress allow some dis- cretion to the Executive, under the advice of a General Staff, in the expenditure of money appropriated for the naval estab- lishment. One of the real difficulties we have had in building up a navy has been the little knowledge of naval matters that members of Naval Committees in the Sen- ate and the House have had, which has proved to be a dangerous thing. We have available the finest experts in the world. Why should we not make use of them? The expenditures would be subject to thor- ough and prompt investigation. No Presi- dent, Secretary of the Navy and General Naval Staff could possibly waste the amount of money that has been wasted under the present system." Why has no Congress ever done this? The answer is: Politics. Why is there no General Staff of the Navy, as demanded for years by all naval 86 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE men — a staff such as every foreign power has as a matter of course? Mr. Taft's answer, and Mr. von L. Meyer's answer, are that "the same Senators and Congress- men at whose door can be laid the logroll- ing extravagance in naval expenditures were bitter in their opposition to a General Staff." 87 XIV THD UNITED STATES NAVY A CREATURE} WITHOUT A HI)AD PROBABLY the most terrible fleet that ever sailed to attack a country was the Spanish Armada. It had the vastly superior numbers, the crushing power, the size and armament that should have made victory certain. But it was not organized. Its Admirals had only general plans. Its captains, excellent sailors though they were, had not been trained in fleet and bat- tle maneuvers. Its men were brave, but they could not shoot. The little English navy never could have won in stand-up battle. It won because its Admirals and Captains worked together in a manner that is an object lesson to this 88 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE day, because all its units acted in accord- ance to comprehensive plans, and because its men, though they could shoot only fairly, shot so much better than the Span- ish that there was hardly room for com- parison. To-day every navy in the world, British, German, Austrian, French, Italian, Rus- sian, Japanese, Turkish, and even the smaller South American navies, are organ- ized. Each has a General Staff, or what amounts to a General Staff, whose plans are ready, who study their own and rival fleets every day and change their plans as changing conditions arise, and who govern the Navy, not spasmodically as ordered by meetings of legislatures, but constantly. The only navy in the world that has no such organization is the navy of the United States. If war occurred with any degree of quickness, the fleet would have to be han- dled in a haphazard way under a system of control devised in a hurry. Plans for 89 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE squadron action, for fleet action, for single ship movements, for mine laying, for mine sweeping, for meeting an enemy or man- euvering for delay, all should have to be made in the desperate manner in which all work has to be done when war threatens its swift strokes. The Chief of the Bureau of Navigation has reported that in time of war at least 1 60 officers should remain ashore if the efficiency of the fleet at sea is not to be fatally impaired for lack of trained men to attend to its innumerable and instant necessities. No provision has been made for this force- The navy to-day is managed by seven bureaus — the Bureaus of Navigation, Construction and Repair, Steam Engineer- ing, Ordnance, Yards and Docks, Sup- plies and Accounts and Medicine and Sur- gery. A large part of the time they work not only without co-ordination but actu- ally at cross-purposes. They cannot help it. In fact, the greater the efficiency of 90 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE each, the greater must be the endeavor of each to overbalance the others. In one hour Congress could authorize the creation of a General Staff to bind all these bureaus together. But if such a General Staff is created, it will wrest power from Congress. A General Staff will not fail to object to the construction and maintenance of Navy Yards that have only 19 feet at low water when the draught of battleships is from 26 to 29 feet. It will not countenance annual and ever-varying laws as to the relative ranks of commissioned and warrant officers from gunner's mates to chaplains. It will assign construction to navy yards according to the ability of those yards, and not accord- ing to the political influence of the con- stituencies whose interests demand busi- ness for their navy yards. That Congress, representing the nation, shall always rule and govern the navy is proper. It is imperative that the people shall dominate their military establish- es THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE ment But it is certain that the public of the United States desires only to rule its navy, and not to manage it. For the pur- pose of management it trains officers at great expense. On the Naval Academy at Annapolis alone the country spends more than eight million dollars a year. Congress has taken a large part, and a most important part, of this management out of the trained hands and placed it in the hands of committees, many of which have been merely political and all of which have been ludicrously ignorant almost al- ways of naval science. Therefore if future Congresses appro- priate money for ships without also pro- viding for expert management of the navy under a General Staff, the money again will be largely wasted. Construction with- out reorganization is to pile armament on a rotten base. Every ship built under such political rule is penalized before it is launched, by a percentage of inevitable and incurable inefficiency. 92 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE Fortunately, this matter, which is abso- lutely vital though it is not so spectacular as launching dreadnaughts, is something that every citizen can grasp without need- ing technical knowledge. Congress will provide for such common-sense manage- ment of the navy by naval experts if the public makes its demand felt. Rear- Admiral Fiske, testifying in 1914 before the Congress Committee on Navy Affairs, said that the lack of plans and control in the navy was such that quite without regard to the number of ships or supplies of material, the navy could not be prepared to meet a highly effective enemy in less than five years. It is only fair to say that many other naval officers consider that his views are extreme; but it certainly is safe to say that the navy could not be made efficient for war within six months. Had England required as much as three months to prepare her navy, she never would have put a man into France, the 93 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE Dardanelles or Africa. Instead, she would be fighting now to save her own island — and it would be a forlorn hope. It was the readiness of her navy that made the struggle possible for her. 94 XV Tll£ AMERICAN NAVY'S ACTUAI, SHORT- AGE IN IMPORTANT SHIPS IN the preceding articles the writer has tried to present the actual and mini- mum need of the navy without regard to the extremists who wish to build up a monster navy because of the European War. In summing up herewith the num- bers and kinds of important ships that are required urgently, the figures are based not on the European armaments evolved during the struggle, but on the fundamen- tal principles laid down in 1903 by the General Board of the Navy when there was no excitement over war or prepared- ness. Battleships. — The building program 95 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE of 1903, modified to meet changed con- ditions in 19 10, called for the formation of a battleship fleet to number 48 capital ships by 19 19, no ship to be more than twenty years old. The United States Navy to-day is short 10 battleships from this program, counting in those that have been launched recently and are not yet in commission, those that are partially com- pleted but still on the ways, those that are being begun, and those that have been authorized by Congress but have not yet been laid down. If Oregon, Indiana, Mas- sachusetts and Iowa are dropped from the list, as they should be, the shortage will be 14 battleships. It will be impossible now to catch up by merely authorizing 2 battleships annually between now and 1919. The best record of construction ever made was attained with the battleships Delaware and North Dakota, which were in commission within 3 years and 2 months after authorization. Some of the battleships, however, have 96 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE required 5 years for completion. The av- erage period from authorization to com- mission is about 3^ years. Had the navy been well organized and administered during the past fifteen years, it is possible that the nation might have its full quota of dreadnaughts now for the money that already has been spent. Destroyers. — Counting 4 destroyers as the absolutely necessary guard for a bat- tleship, there are needed 104 sea-going de- stroyers for that service alone. There are ready, building and authorized, only 57, half of about 700 tons and half of 1,000 tons. This is a shortage of 47. Just how many more seagoing destroyers there should be to form flotillas for independent action, is an open question. Certainly there should be enough to form two "di- visions" of 12 destroyers each. Fi,eet and Coast Submarines. — It may be assumed that the present building program is satisfactory and that what is most required is construction that shall 97 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE permit the retirement of old and inferior types. Possibly it is fairly correct to say that there should be immediate further authorization of 3 fleet or sea-going sub- marines and 10 coast submarines to re- place old ones, exclusive of new ones to be added. Armored Cruisers. — Whatever may be the final lesson taught by the battle cruiser, a line of armored cruisers of great speed is essential for every navy. To pro- tect American commerce against com- merce-desitroyers ; to drive enemy com- merce from the sea; to fight in the second line of battle; to act as scouts against a fleet that protects itself against lighter scouts with swift armored ships of its own, the armored cruiser of maximum swiftness and maximum fighting power is a known potential factor to-day. The United States has none quite equal to the modern armored cruisers of foreign navies. None has been built by the. United States in 1 1 years, when the Montana type 98 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE was commissioned. This ship and the North Carolina of the same type and date are, however, assumed to be fairly good ships of their kind still. The construction of ships with at least 25 knots speed, and possibly 28 knots, armed with batteries as heavy as those of the present second line American bat- tleships, would provide the navy with ves- sels equal to most foreign ones of this type, and inferior only to foreign battle cruisers. The relative number of such cruisers is an open question. The British list indi- cates that its Admiralty has worked on the policy of providing one armored cruiser to two battleships. The German Navy has only about one to four battle- ships, but it is known that the German Admiralty had neglected this type for dreadnaughts. France carries 20 armored cruisers to 30 battleships but has built only 7 cruisers in the last ten years as against 23 battleships in the same period. Scout Cruisers. — Counting Chester 99 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE and Birmingham as still efficient, though they are n years old, there should be at least 4 new scouts authorized with speed sufficient to defy armored ships which now are being constructed in foreign navies of 30 and 32 knots speed. In addition, the navy needs are for a fleet of oil-fuel ships. The only oil-luel ship in the navy to-day has 10 knots speed and cannot accompany the fleet. There are seven colliers, fitted to deliver some oil. Between them they cannot supply enough oil within 3,000 tons per month of sea service. The only submarine or destroyer tenders are improvised ships. The only hospital ships are Solace and Relief, both improvised during the Spanish-American War and both of small use, Relief being unseaworthy. 100 XVI WHAT TH# UNITED STATES HARBOR DE- FENSES ARE DURING President Harrison's term (less than 10 years before the Span- ish-American War), the writer was in Fort Hamilton, one of the defenses pro- tecting the entrance into New York's up- per bay, when news arrived that the United States had sent an ultimatum to Chile demanding satisfaction for an at- tack on American blue-jackets by a mob. At the time there was on the sea an armor- clad just built in England for Chile. "If that ship wants to steam into New York harbor," said one of the artillery officers in the fort, "she won't need to pay any attention to us, though we fire every IOI THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE gun here and every gun in Fort Wads- worth across the way. She needs simply to keep her men under cover. Our round shot couldn't harm her." Both these Narrows defenses, then the only ones that existed for the great har- bor, were armed on that day with cast- iron, muzzle-loading smooth-bores, most of which had been mounted during the Civil War. There were guns building then in the government gun works at Watervliet, New York, that were destined to change this. To-day Forts Hamilton and Wadsworth may be ranked justly among the big har- bor defenses of the world, though the coast defenses of Great Britain and Germany probably are vastly more powerful. The two "forts" have been supplemented as defenses for the southern entrance to New York by Fort Hancock, situated almost twenty miles south of the city on Sandy Hook and guarding the entrance to the lower harbor. 102 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE Equally powerful defenses protect the eastern entrance to the city, the entrance to Long Island Sound, Narragansett Bay, San Francisco and Puget Sound. De- fenses with heavy but lesser armament protect enough other harbors to bring the number of efficient defenses to about 22. A great gap exists in the fact that the en- trance to Chesapeake Harbor is unpro- tected. Despite continual representations to Congress, nothing was done to correct this until a recent session authorized the acquisition of land on Cape Henry. This, however, may be said to be the only gross defect in the American harbor defense system that will require years and much money to cure. The other defects may be remedied by the adoption of a sensible schedule of management and maintenance. The creation of this system had its in- ception in 1886, when the Endicott Board laid before Congress a plan for harbor de- fenses worked out by the most eminent en- 103 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE gineer officers of the army. So correct were their ideas that hardly any changes in principle have had to be made, although they prepared their plans when guns still had sharply limited range and when there hardly was such a thing as fire control or elaborate searchlight installation either on ships or land. The only real change in principle has been to eliminate from the plans a certain number of floating defenses, the board having recommended either armor-clad floating gun-batteries or heavy vessels of the coast monitor type. The provision for these was due partly to the fact that the United States had no navy then, and little prospect of any; but a more direct reason was that no guns then proved could shoot far enough to protect all channels from the land. A great American achievement cor- rected this defect very suddenly. It was the production in the government works by army ordnance experts of an all-steel 104 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE rifled cannon, 12 inches in diameter at the muzzle, that could fire a conical, hardened steel projectile weighing 1,000 pounds to a distance almost undreamed of before that time. The writer was present when the first gun of this type, under test at the Sandy Hook Proving Grounds, threw its projectile five miles into the Atlantic Ocean. Later, under improved powder and firing conditions, these weapons have developed ranges of 13,000 yards, which is 6 J / 2 nautical miles or a trifle more than 7 land (statute) miles. At once the need for floating batteries disappeared. There was no channel that could not be protected by the fire of these truly American weapons. There was no ship then afloat that could dare venture within their range. There was no naval gun that could outrange them. Another American invention that came almost at the same time caused the only other great departure from the Endicott Board plans. They had provided for huge 105 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE steel turrets to protect the guns, because the only mountings known for coast guns were fixed carriages. The new invention produced a gun carriage that could swing the enormous 12-inch gun up to the firing position as if it were a feather, and with- draw it again in the very instant that the projectile cleared the muzzle. Immedi- ately the highly expensive steel turrets be- came unnecessary. It became quite suffi- cient to mount the big guns in a sunken emplacement open to the sky and protected simply in front with mountain-like masses of earth, fortified with steel and concrete. This merely structural change has given the American defenses their visible char- acter. Instead of works dotted with steel shields like the backs of mammoth turtles, the United States harbor defenses are tranquil, beautifully sloped hills and ter- races with not a hint of armament. Oddly enough, the only radical change in American defense construction that is suggested to-day is the suggestion that 106 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE turreted protection be reconsidered. There still is small fear that fire from the sea, even with modern accuracy, could "get" a great coast gun in the brief instant of its elevation above the parapet ; but increased accuracy, increased power and number of ships' guns indicate that their fire may search the tops of the gun emplacements much more closely than had been consid- ered possible heretofore. A fleet of 8 mod- ern dreadnaughts could throw 118 large- caliber projectiles against a single target in one minute. While none of these shells might strike the gun or even fall into the hidden emplacements, it is urged that fragments of bursting shell and smashed concrete will endanger the gunners and disable the numerous installations needed for operating great guns. 107 XVII WHY TH£ AMERICAN HARBOR WORKS CAN B£ TAKEN FROM THE} BACK IN the wide and sometimes vehement dis- cussion of National unpreparedness, much stress has been laid on the fact that American harbor defenses can be taken from the back, meaning from the land side. The public should not be misled into imagining that the works are wide open in the back, and that anybody can walk in. They are constructed to withstand a quite formidable assault by such landing parties as warships might put ashore when operat- ing exclusively as a fleet not accompanied by troop transports. It is, however, quite true that the de- fenses can be taken from the back by a 108 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE military force of any considerable size provided with fairly heavy guns. That this is so is not a defect of the works. It is a weakness of the mobile army, whose function it is to resist such an attack and to prevent even the possibility of it. The harbor defenses were built to fight ships, not men. They are not fortifications. Huge though they may seem, they are nothing but huge gun-mounts. There are no fortifications, properly speaking, in the United States, nor are any contemplated in any scheme of defense. A fortification is a great, complete circle of protective works arranged either to sur- round an important city or to hold a strategic point that an enemy cannot dare to pass until the fortification has been re- duced, or, if he has a sufficiently large army, until he has invested it. The theory is that if he invests it, he must leave there a far larger number of men than the de- fending army needs to leave inside of the fortress. Thus, while the garrison holds 109 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE out, the invading force must carry on its other operations with a heavily diminish- ed army. The immediate result of forc- ing an enemy to invest a fortress is to weaken him as effectively in everything except morale as if he had been well mauled in a severe action. Of course there are many other func- tions of fortifications. They serve as pivotal bases for mobile armies, as supply bases and as protections for lines of com- munication or retreat, but these are aside from the question. The point is that the American harbor defenses function as for- tifications only in the sense that ships can- not pass them to seize the harbor and cities behind. If a combined naval and land force can set troops ashore on the coast outside of the fire-zone of the de- fenses, the latter form no factor that the invader needs to take into account. He needs not invest them, unless he wishes to open the harbor to his ships. He can march past them, leaving them intact, and no THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE they can create no danger because they have no army within them that might sally from their protection to cut his lines of supply or assail his forces. Should he wish to invest them, he need spare only a very small force, because the garrison of the defenses is small even when at its maximum. If he can do these things, it will be not because the harbor defenses are weak, but because the mobile army is weak. If the American harbor works prevent ships from forcing their way into the har- bor, they serve their full purpose. So far as this second line of defense is concerned, the nation's sole problem is to make them fully adequate for the work. As regards construction, they may be said to be efficient. The matter of steel turrets for the guns still is an open ques- tion that will not concern the public till experts have agreed on it. No other vital structural changes have been urged. It is proper to say that American army en- iii THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE gineers believe that the works are ex- cellent. In armament little has developed during the present war to shake the American army's faith in the powerful 12-inch steel mortars which form a prominent part of the gun installation of all the first-class defenses. They throw a 700-pound coni- cal pointed steel projectile with "high- angle" fire, making a plunging bombard- ment that ships always have most dreaded and that they dread still, for even the most mightily armored dreadnaught is weaker on its deck than along its sides. The effect of 700 pounds falling with vast velocity from a height of a mile or more (caused by its curving flight) may be easily imagined, especially when it is remembered that the shell carries a giant bursting charge as well. Ships have not yet attained any arma- ment that will enable them to use "high- angle" fire. They cannot carry mortars. As there are sixteen of these weapons in 112 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE a battery, and all can be discharged simul- taneously, they bear within them poten- tialities of utter destruction for the ship that falls within their range. Not highly esteemed at first for accu- racy, mortar fire has attained so high a degree of reliability that it is assumed that a good gun-company with good fire-con- trol and range-finding should score four hits out of five shots at 5 miles. The ex- treme range of these guns is more than twice that distance. The largest gun for direct fire mounted at present in American defenses is the 12- inch. It still is highly efficient, though there is no doubt that it is outranged by the modern 15-inch guns carried on the latest type of dreadnaughts. It must be remembered, however, that naval guns cannot vie in either range or smashing power with coast guns inch for inch of caliber. The naval gun cannot attain maximum elevation, because of structural conditions in the ship. It cannot throw a 113 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE projectile equal in weight to the projec- tiles that can be thrown by land guns of the same caliber. The 1 2-inch gun, it is established, can be so mounted on an improved carriage that it can attain a maximum range of 21,000 yards, which is the range of the 15-inch naval gun. The projectile, how- ever, would have to be reduced to 700 pounds, thus entailing a diminution of de- structive power. The 14-inch gun now being successfully built in government works will give equal range with a heavier projectile and will have the added and most important advan- tage that the powder pressure in the cham- ber is much less, which will give it a far longer life than the 12-inch gun possesses. It costs little more to build. If expense were not an obstacle, possibly it would be well that 14-inch guns should be mounted not only in all the new defenses, as they will be, but should replace all 12-inch guns in other defenses. 114 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE But there is a very decided considera- tion — and that is that all the armament in the world is useless without effective means of operating it. It is in effective means for handling even the present arma- ment that the American harbor defenses are weakest. US XVIII HARBOR DEFENSES IN ACTION MODERN great guns are not fired by sighting along the barrel. That method went out soon after the Civil War. To understand how impossible it would be to sight a coast gun that way, the reader must conceive himself to be standing on the parapet of a harbor defense work that is about to go into action against ships. He looks out over a vast, blank semi- circle of water without a single mark on it to serve as guide for direction or dis- tance. Away off on the line of the hori- zon are the masts and parts of the hulls of ships. Let him fix his eye on one. It is a 116 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE dreadnaught 575 feet long and its fore- castle deck is sticking 26 feet high above water; but if the observer on the para- pet holds a lead-pencil in front of his eye, the distant vessel will be blotted out com- pletely. That, then, is the target — a mark less in apparent size than a lead-pencil. The 12-inch gun that is going to fire at it is 17 inches thick and it is going to throw a shell half as large as a man. In addi- tion, the distant target is moving inces- santly and in as irregular a manner as pos- sible, varying course and speed continually to disrupt the gunner's aim. It is evident that the mere human eye can do nothing. How is the gun aimed? It is not "aimed" at all, properly speak- ing. Its men do not see the ships during the whole engagement. They do not even see the ocean. They are down in the pit of the gun emplacement. The men who do the "aiming" are not near any of the guns. They are stationed 117 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE along the coast, at opposite sides of the defenses. Their stations, carefully con- cealed, are known as "base stations ;" and a straight line drawn between them and through the defenses gives what is called the base line. Of what is it the base? It is the base of a triangle. Now it will be obvious that when the observer at each end of that line looks at the distant ship, his line of sight will establish another straight line, or a leg of that triangle. Therefore, when each observer with his ingenious range-finding and direction-finding instruments has fixed the exact angle of his line, the ship will be at the apex of the triangle thus cal- culated. That, told very crudely, is the principle on which the work of range and position- finding is founded. The exact angle once obtained, the establishment of the exact range is a mere matter of mathematics — intricate but positive, and very quickly done by modern apparatus. 118 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE All that the gunners and the officers in the batteries can see is the sky overhead. All that they are trying to hear is the buzzer of the telephone instruments that will convey to them the orders from the fire-control stations. They wait with every nerve concentrated on one thing — on catching instantly the order that shall tell them, "lateral deviation, so-and-so-much, so-and-so-much elevation . . . fire!" Their gun, adjusted in the pit, is tossed up by the mammoth steel arms of the car- riage. It is a violent motion, propelling the huge thing upward like a pebble in a sling. But it stops, dead, in its firing po- sition as if it had been stopped by a velvet hand. There is a stunning explosion. Be- fore their ears have fully heard it, while the emplacement still is ringing and shak- ing with it, the gun has been snapped back, jerked down into the pit and is in the loading position. The gunners do not know if they have hit or not. They may have sunk the dread- 119 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE naught. They will know nothing about it till the telephone tells them. Their business down there in their pits is to make their glistening, oil-sweating, burning hot, complex engine ready again instantly. While some wash out the cham- ber, others are hoisting the half -ton pro- jectile on its chute and preparing to send it driving into the breech. Still others are ready with the long bars of brown powder. An expert is putting the new primer into the breech to fire the cannon with elec- trical spark. Engineers are examining the oil and air pistons of the mammoth mech- anism. Every man's brain and every man's hand are working to achieve the utmost in fractions of minutes. They are watching the swung breech that looks like the steel door to a safe deposit vault and is almost as complex. They are standing by the batteries that are to fire the gun. They are standing by the wires that are placed everywhere to gov- ern fire control, explosion, lighting and 120 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE communication from a dozen different places. Every one of these innumerable installa- tions is threatened constantly with injury. The explosion of their gun shakes the emplacement like an earthquake and may tear the wiring like a storm. There may be half-ton projectiles pounding on the works or on their very parapets. Frag- ments and rubbish may pour on them and bury them temporarily. Everything in that pit is being subjected to the most fear- ful destructive attempts that man ever has devised. The habit, the nerve-force and the con- centrated skill demanded to fire coast guns in such conditions, cannot be improvised. They must be there, ready from long pre- vious training, when the need arises. How many men who are thus trained has the nation ? 121 XIX the; soldiers of the; shore: — the: coast ARTII,I,$RY THAT part of the land army to which is entrusted the operation of the harbor defenses is known as the Coast Artillery. For many years Congress and the Nation have counted it as merely a part of the regular or mobile army. Un- der the stress of necessity the army or- ganization itself has been obliged to use the Coast Artillery for field army pur- poses. An attempt was made even to de- plete the already grossly inadequate force by using part of it for siege artillery corps. It was like trying to increase cash by transferring it from one pocket to another. The expedients, forced by poverty of men, 122 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE have diminished and disorganized the Coast Artillery without doing the mobile army the slightest good. The functions of the Coast Artillery are radically different from those of the field artillery which belongs to the mobile army. Where the field artillerists must be horse- men, the Coast Artillery must have men trained as boatmen, for a most important part of harbor defense is mine-planting, cable-laying and even coastal scouting. They must have experts in explosives, for while the field artillery is served largely with "fixed" ammunition (projectiles and powder ready cased in brass like cart- ridges), the great guns are loaded in de- tail, the projectile going in first and the powder afterward. It is delivered from the ammunition galleries in bags which must be ripped open that the big bars of powder may be packed into the gun-breech properly. In addition, the Coast Artillery must load its projectiles with the bursting charges. 123 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE All this is highly dangerous work, and apart from the danger great precision is demanded, for an error in the loading means infallibly a failure of the projectile to attain the calculated range. Where the field artillerists have a fixed target, and can fire without further shifting of guns after they obtain the range, the coast artillerist has a target that shifts constantly. He has no natural ob- ject that will serve as a guide to range and direction. Every shot that he fires must depend on a new calculation ; and this calculation must take into account the movements that the ship will make be- tween the moment of fixing its position and the moment that the projectile reaches it. This involves a knowledge of naval tac- tics and of the speed and other capacities of hostile ships. The scores of complex problems that are presented to the range- finders and controllers of fire in a coast battery are too technical to be susceptible 124 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE of explanation here. Many thick books have been written about them. But one simple example may serve to indicate the closeness of computation demanded for putting a coast battery into effective ac- tion. When a 12-inch mortar fires, its projec- tile ascends first toward the sky, mount- ing so high that it disappears from sight. Then it curves and descends to plunge on its mark. If the range is maximum, the projectile will be in the air a full minute. In that one minute a ship maneuvering at 14 knots an hour will have moved 1,386 feet; that is, a dreadnaught of the Okla- homa type, which is 575 feet long, will be more than twice its length from its orig- inal position. Thus the coast artillerist actually must fire at a spot that the ship has not yet reached when he discharges his weapon. Of course most of this difficult and highly scientific work falls on the officers and not on the men. But the Coast Artil- 125 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE lery is short of officers, even under the "peace organization/' which in turn is far short of the strength that actually would be needed in war. At the minimum computation made by the Chief of Coast Artillery, the shortage in officers was 856 in 1914. The shortage is greater now, be- cause men have been withdrawn from the continental defenses to man the Panama, Hawaii and Philippines works. Among the enlisted force, also, there is urgent necessity for highly specialized men, such as electrician sergeants, master gunners, master electricians, wireless op- erators, and men trained expressly for cable work, search-light operation and the handling of submarine mines. So short is the Coast Artillery of men, that the army has been unable to form any- thing like even a small fairly permanent force of this class of specialists. There are not men enough, as a matter of fact, even to act as mere garrisons for the de- fense system. As the Chief of Coast Ar- 126 THE A-B-C OR NATIONAL DEFENSE tillery said in his last report, "unless pro- vision is made in the near future for addi- tional Coast Artillery, it will be necessary to reduce the garrisons to mere care-taker detachments at some of the defenses, in-' eluding Portsmouth, Delaware, Charles- ton, Savannah, Key West, New Bedford, Potomac, Tampa, Columbia, Cape Fear and Mobile." The garrisons in some of the defenses already are little except such "care-taker detachments." Thus one company (104 men) was the force last autumn in Fort Rodman, which is supposed to defend Buz- zards Bay and the rich manufacturing dis- trict of Massachusetts behind it. Even the immensely important and immensely ex- pensive works defending the eastern en- trance to New York City had only six companies which under the present main- tained strength numbered less than 600 men. The truth is that the inadequacy of men in this branch of the army has been for 127 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE many years a shocking instance of Ameri- can carelessness. Not only has the Coast Artillery been inadequate to man the con- tinental defenses, but the nation actually has spent millions of dollars for defenses in Panama and the foreign possessions without adding a single man to the strength for garrisoning the works. Therefore the home defenses, long so naked of men as to present tempting op- portunity, have been further depleted to man the foreign possessions — and, natu- rally, these in turn have only a minimum of the men who should be in them. When all the foreign defenses have been garrisoned thus inadequately, there will be only "one-third of one relief" left for the continental defenses. That means that even without casualties there will not be enough men to relieve those who become worn out under the intense strain of a modern bombardment. It means that if a hostile fleet is determined, and is willing to expend the ammunition and guns and 128 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE risk a few ships, it can wear out the gar- rison in 48 hours merely by incessant suc- cessive attacks, even if its fire does not injure a single gun. 129 XX HOW A HARBOR DEFENSE IS ATTACKED SHIPS that attack a harbor defense do not approach in stately order. They do not stop when they fire. Their endeavor is to swing at speed toward the works in a great circle whose point nearest the de- fenses shall bring them just within firing range. Before the projectiles have ended their flight, the ship will have rushed out of range and will be circling out to sea to sweep around again for another dis- charge. That brief moment when the attacking ship is within range is the only moment in which the coast guns can "get" her. They will not, however, be fired unless a particularly favorable opportunity pre- 130 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE sents itself. They may withhold their fire indefinitely and permit the ships to pound the works, in the hope that they will ven- ture in to closer range. In such a contest, the harbor defense has the advantage. True, the harbor de- fenses present apparently a big target which is fixed, and the ship is a tiny target which is moving swiftly. But the differ- ence in size is only apparent. Though there may be a mile and more of the de- fense works, the only vital parts of them are the hidden guns or gun emplacements and even if these were visible, they would present only a microscopical mark. The rest of the works might be battered for days without suffering any fatal injury. As compared with this, the ship, though a small mark, is vulnerable in every part. A single well-placed direct-fire projectile may injure it seriously, if not mortally. A single blow from a mortar projectile, fall- ing from the sky, almost certainly will wreck it. 131 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE Therefore while a fleet that is battering defense works may score a hundred hits to a single one from the coast guns, the single projectile that strikes a ship may do more damage than a hundred or even two hundred missiles that strike on shore. Where the greatest dreadnaught yet launched can measure the thickness of its armor belt only in inches, the harbor de- fense can measure its armor of steel, con- crete and earth in yards. An attacking fleet, however, will employ tactics that are more dangerous than bom- bardment. It will strike not at the guns alone, but at the eyes that guide and con- trol the fire of the guns. It will strike at the range-finding and base stations and at the search-light installations, to disrupt the fire-control system. As explained in a previous chapter, the range-finding stations are out-lying posts. Comprehensive search-light systems also demand a certain number of search-lights 132 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE situated outside of the defenses, some- times miles away from the guns. An attacking fleet will inevitably send light draught gun-boats or destroyer flotil- las along the shore to wreck these stations. It is an accepted part of sea-attack on armed coast forts. Taking a chance on escaping the fire from the heavy, compara- tively slow coast guns, the swift little ships will dash in to dismantle the stations with a torrent of fire from light quick- firing guns, or they will endeavor to cover the landing of raiders that shall assault the stations and destroy them. If they succeed in doing it, a harbor de- fense will be maimed almost as much as a submarine is maimed when its periscopes are shot away, or as a field battery is maimed if its observers and range-finders are killed. Lacking fire-control, the big guns are engines without direction. Their chances for a successful shot are reduced to a minimum. The danger of these sharp, dashing i33 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE raids is especially imminent at night. As soon as darkness falls, the harbor works must be on their guard in all directions. There is only one possible method to make such a guard effective. It is to have a search-light system installed by the most capable engineering and artillery experts, and so complete that there shall not be a gap of darkness in all the area that possibly can be attacked. A gap is an open gate; and it will be impossible to conceal that open gate from any alert enemy. Long before the flotillas come in for the real attack, the enemy fleet will have been making feint attacks by striking quick blows at every part of the line of defense. Big ships and little ships will engage in this work, which is known technically as "attacks to develop weaknesses." Let them discover such a weakness, and they will make a determined, elaborately planned and desperately conducted assault on it in the first favoring night. 134 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE The importance of success will be vast. Therefore such an attack will not only be made with all possible force, but the attempt will be masked by simultaneous attacks from the whole fleet against all other parts of the works. There will be furious large-gun fire from the armored ships, to engage every possible man in the batteries. There will be bold raids on the mine-fields to force the focusing of at- tention of the force in the mine emplace- ments. Small vessels will dash into search- light zones, perhaps to perish, but certainly to compel expenditure of men and ammu- nition that are needed elsewhere. One need not have military knowledge to picture what such a night will be like in an American harbor defense that is under- manned, whose search-light system is not complete, whose fire-control is not perfect and whose mine-fields are not adequately protected by search-lights, rapid-fire guns and gunners. The great guns forced to fire at in-rushing dreadnaughts that do 135 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL 'DEFENSE not intend seriously to attack but inevita- bly will force the entrance if they are not driven off ; the smaller guns firing up and down the beach at half a dozen attacking flotillas; the mine-fields invaded by reck- less mine-sweepers and counter-mining boats ; base, range-finding and search-light stations telephoning and telegraphing for men to guard them — and not enough men, not enough search-lights, not enough am- munition ! 136 XXI WHAT THE HARBOR DEFENSE SYSTEM TRACKS AND NEEDS Chesapeake Bay Defenses. — Nine years ago a joint board of navy and army officers appointed as the National Coast Defense Board, reported unani- mously to Congress that the entrance to Chesapeake Bay demanded strong pro- tection. "The importance of securing the entrance at Cape Henry," said the board, "as an outer line of defense to Baltimore, Washington, Newport News, Norfolk and the great railroads crossing the Susque- hanna River at the head of the bay, cannot be exaggerated. It was recognized in the report of the Endicott Board (1886). Any expenditure, however great, is justifiable for such vast interests." i37 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE The National Coast Defense Board con- sisted of George W. Goethals, then Major on the General Staff; General Crozier, Chief of Ordnance, an expert recognized throughout the world; General Mills, Chief of Artillery, equally capable; Gen- eral Greely, of the Signal Corps; Generals Story and Mackenzie, and Captain Sperry, of the Navy. No nation could desire more competent advice from more competent men, but the Chesapeake Bay defenses are not built yet, or even begun. It was only recently that Congress authorized the first step to- ward it. Coast ArTii^ry. — The authorized strength of this branch of the Regular Army never has been the strength that was needed to man fully the defenses of the continental United States. It always has been a Congress provision that the Coast Artillery Corps of the Organized Militia was to furnish the manning details 138 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE for 50 per cent of the gun and mortar de- fenses on the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific Coasts. This theory as to the militia has re- mained a theory. Last June the militia of the coast States was short 11,000 of the number that would be required. Even if the organizations were raised to war strength, there would remain a deficiency of 5,000 men. Some of this militia coast artillery is excellently well trained, considering its limited practice. Some is useless. Per- haps there is no sharper range of quality than exists in this branch of the citizen soldiery. Of the 450 officers, some 290 hold War Department certificates of pro- ficiency in one or more courses, and al- most 1,400 men have qualified as master electricians, engineers, master gunners, gun commanders, gun pointers, plotters, observers and first-class and second-class gunners. But the efficiency of the organizations i39 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE is in unsatisfactory relation to that of in- dividuals. Militia Coast Artillery com- panies as they exist to-day in very many of the States are not qualified to take their place in the defenses or serve guns till they have been re-organized and drilled. The aggregate enlisted strength of regu- lars needed to garrison the harbor defenses is reported by the Chief of Artillery as 24,000. The actual number available was 14,633 in November, 1914. The enlisted strength of regulars required to man the defenses in foreign possessions then com- pleted or about to be completed, was 6,000 and the actual number there was 2,500. "There are now provided about one- fourth of the officers and one-half the en- listed men necessary to provide for our primary home defenses," said the Chief of Coast Artillery near the end of 1914. Twexv^-Inch Steei, Rif%£d Guns. — The maximum range of these with the present carriage, firing a 1,000-pound pro- 140 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE jectile, is 13,000 yards, or 7 1-3 land miles. A comparatively inexpensive modification of the carriage will permit an elevation which, with a 700-pound projectile, will give the gun a maximum range of 21,000 yards. Despite the insistent allegations of enormous ranges attained by naval guns in Europe during the present war, ord- nance experts agree that this range will be quite equal to any likely to be achieved by a dreadnaught. It will, in fact, be equal to that of the new 14-inch guns that are building, whose maximum range with light projectiles is stated as being about the same, while with their standard 1,660- pound shell the 14-inch guns can achieve only 18,000 yards, or slightly more than 10 miles. Ammunition. — The amount of ammu- nition available in the harbor defenses or provided for by appropriations up to No- vember, 19 14, was for the rifled guns, y^ per cent, of the allowance fixed by the 141 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE National Defense Board, for mortars,. 50 per cent, of the requirements. FirE-ConTroi, Systems. — Seven har- bor defense commands have received a thoroughly good, standard fire-control sys- tem. The fire-control installation of the continental defenses, viewed as a whole, is 40 per cent, incomplete. Search-Lights. — The Chief of Coast Artillery reported last autumn that the search-light project for all the defenses was only one-half completed. "The defi- ciencies in the matter of fire control and search-lights, " said the Chief of Staff in his last report which was sent to Congress by the Secretary of War, "are of the most serious character. As a matter of fact, proper fire control and search-light instal- lation is maintained in only a limited num- ber of first-class defense areas, the re- mainder of the fire-control systems and search-light equipment being deficient or improvised/' 142 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE To sum up, the harbor defenses as at present constructed, established or under course of construction, are partially ade- quate in rifled guns, practically adequate in steel rifled mortars, and 83 per cent, efficient in material for submarine mining. They are grossly weak in men. Their next vital defect, and one which cannot be cured in haste when war threatens, is the insufficient fire-control and search-light equipment. Third in order of importance is the deficiency in ammunition. This last deficiency is serious, but it can be reme- died more quickly than the other defects, which will require not merely money, but much time and work. 143 XXII the mobile army — what it is THE title "mobile army" defines an army that can be moved freely, as distinct from forces such as the Coast Ar- tillery, which is a fixed or "territorialized" army. But "moving" an army means far more than merely setting it in motion. It is not enough that the men are mobile. If it simply were a matter of moving, the mobile army in the United States to-day could be moved by the organization of any great American passenger railroad with less trouble than often is encountered in moving a metropolitan holiday rush. The daily movement of commuters in and out of cities like New York involves the handling of far more men than the 30,- 144 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE ooo men of which the mobile army force within the borders of the whole United States consists to-day. A mobile army must be capable of being moved as an army. It must be in such condition and organization that it can be delivered at a given place in a given time with all its component parts — its infantry, its cavalry, its artillery, its signal, engineer and sanitary corps, with all their weapons, ammunition, horses, mules, wagons, am- bulances, clothing, bedding, tentage, sup- ply trains, telegraph and telephone outfits, railroad-building, bridge-building and other engineering outfits, mining material, observation balloons and gas containers, aeroplanes and gasolene, surgical instru- ments, medicines, field kitchens, forage, even lanterns. A huge part of this material must be actually with the moving army, ready to be sent ahead of it to facilitate its opera- tions, or with it to serve the army on the firing line. The rest must be within reach, i45 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE not "going to arrive/' but actually on the lines of supply. The army moving in time of war must absolutely move as an entity independent of everything and everybody else. What- ever is needed is needed at once. There is no time to hunt for it in the country that is being traversed. The army needs prac- tically everything that citizens need every hour and every minute in daily life, and it needs, in addition, innumerable things that war demands. If these are miss- ing, the penalty that war exacts is dis- aster. There is a great deal of free and easy talk about an army "living on the coun- try.^ What it really means is that every army usually tries, as a matter of policy, to subsist as much as possible on the food supply of occupied territory in order to conserve its own supplies; but no com- mander would dare to depend on the coun- try around him unless he were forced to do so by desperate circumstances as if 146 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE when he retreats headlong, leaving his food behind to save his men, or if the op- portunity for an immense success tempts a General to take such an equally desperate chance with his pursuing troops. As a matter of fact, an army that tried to-day to live on even a friendly country would be facing starvation within a week, if not within forty-eight hours. The proof of this is furnished every winter when railroads happen to be blocked by snow. Within twelve hours the cities suffer a milk famine. Within twenty-four hours meat and other fresh foods become scarce. Whenever a disaster overwhelms any dis- trict and cuts off the railroad lines of sup- ply, the cry of famine sounds from the stricken places almost before the details of the occurrence become known. Scarce as it is, food is the only needful thing that a moving army could expect to get at all. Almost all other army neces- sities are so highly specialized that such equivalents as could be furnished by the 147 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE country would not serve. Even such ma- terial as would serve cannot be furnished in the needed quantities. Military equip- ment could not be obtained under any cir- cumstances. Therefore even the American army moving through its own country must have with it all that it needs immediately, if it is going into action. All the supplies that may and will be rushed to it within a few days will not serve the demands of battle, which are that every man on the firing line shall have instantly what he wants. If the army is short 10,000 rations or cart- ridges or bandages in the hour of the fight, it will not be of any avail to know that one million rations, cartridges or bandages will arrive the next week. The equipment must be there. The in- fantry must have the field artillery with it, big enough and supplied well enough to protect it and save it from being pounded helplessly to bits by the enemy. The cav- alry must be there, the scouts must be 148 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE there, the aeroplanes must help the scouts and the artillery. It is such work that the great Generals in the present war, Joffre, French, Hin- denburg and Mackensen, have been doing — not as a part of their strategy, but as a mere incidental business of their more im- portant work. They did not learn it on paper. They learned it by trying it in time of peace, by finding out what could be done and what could not be done. They, and what is more important, their subordinates, learned it in the great peace maneuvers that the European nations have held as a matter of course. There never has been in the United States anything even approximating these enormous tests, which is all that the maneuvers are. Where American officers have handled regiments, the European officers have seen, every few years, not mere brigades or divisions but all the army corps of their countries set into motion under stern su- pervision that admitted no excuse for the 149 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE breaking-down of commissariat, ammuni- tion supply or engineering material or for the failure to deliver complete army or- ganizations ready to fight in the destined place at not only a designated hour but sometimes actually within a period set by hours and minutes. In these tests every military theory is put to the proof, everything that has been learned academically is practiced and al- most every contingency that war possibly could provide is discovered and must be met. Consequently, the officers of Europe know, from doing it, scores of things that our own officers know perfectly well from intelligent study, but never have had op- portunity to see or try. Ludicrously small as the mobile army of the United States is, the whole army never has been to- gether in one time and place in all its his- tory. Even in the Spanish-American War the strength of the army that finally was as- sembled to go to Cuba was only about 16,- 150 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE ooo men. The second expedition to the Philippines was 4,800 men. The concen- trations on the Mexican border brought together a "maneuver division" of 13,000 men in 191 1 and a "division" of 11,000 men in 1913. Why has the army never been assembled for a test of its officers and men? The answer is : "Army Posts !" 151 XXIII ARMY POSTS AND WHY TH^Y STAND IM- MOVABLY in The: way of improv- ing thi; ARMY EVERYBODY in the United States would laugh if a Congressman should propose that the naval students in Annapolis be ordered by law to confine their practice to row-boats; that naval lieutenants be limited to commanding tug- boats; that Captains be placed in charge of 'little gun-boats only; and that Commo- dores and Admirals be limited to single- ship commands, all on the understanding that on the outbreak of war these men shall at once take command of dread- naught fleets. If, in addition, the Congressman should 152 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE add that until war occurs none of these officers shall have the opportunity of see- ing a dreadnaught fleet assembled, no doubt the country would demand that the Representative be interned in a lunatic asylum as soon as possible. Yet exactly this is what the country and Congress is expecting of its West Point men. When the West Point cadet is gradu- ated he must go to an army post if he is to be assigned to the command of any men at all, for there are no regular soldiers sta- tioned regularly anywhere except in army posts. Since there are 49 such posts, with only 30,000 men to garrison them, it can be computed easily that the posts cannot possibly average more than 600 men each. Transfers and other exigencies may at times leave certain posts with less than 100 men in them. Therefore after he leaves West Point the young officer enters active service un- der conditions that actually assemble a i53 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE lesser number of men for drill or maneu- vers than he saw at West Point, which has more than 600 students. Captains and Lieutenants command skeleton companies. These in turn do not even assemble with other companies of their own regiment, because the army posts force a wide distri- bution. It is actually true that Colonels who wanted to see their own regiments have had to travel through the United States to do it — and sometimes they could not see the whole regiment then, for parts of it might be scattered from Alaska to the Philippines. Generals of Brigade in the United States Army cannot hope to have a brigade assembled anywhere, except by fortunate chance. There never has been a genuine army division assembled in the United States in time of peace. The troops that were sent to Cuba were far from being a division in numbers, and their formation only approximated a division. The skele- ton army of peace remained a skeleton i54 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE division in war, and some of the parts were missing from the skeleton. The divisions that have been assembled on the Texas border during the past few years of disorder were not divisions nu- merically, and despite all the intentions and efforts of the commanders to give them a genuine divisional organization, it was necessary to draw on the Coast Artil- lery for some of the component parts. The establishment of a military line on the Mexican frontier was a welcome op- portunity to the army, not because it prom- ised a fight, but because it offered the chance at last of assembling a respectably large body of men and giving many offi- cers their first commands under real army conditions. It may be assumed, therefore, that the War Department and the army did its best to collect as many men as pos- sible, and to form as nearly perfect an or- ganization as possible. Yet despite all their efforts, the division that was ordered out in 191 1, and that was i55 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE to have numbered 19,000 troops, mustered only 11,000 twenty-five days after the orders for concentration were issued. Thirty days later still, it had grown to 12,600. It reached its maximum strength only after 85 days had elapsed. That maximum strength was 12,800. Six months later it was disbanded, never hav- ing come within 6,000 men of the strength intended for it. Part of this shocking condition was due to the insignificant size of the army avail- able within our own borders. But a greater part of it was due to the army post system. Not a single part of that "divi- sion" was in the same place as any other part. Infantry companies, cavalry troops, signal corps, hospital detachments, en- gineers, field artillery batteries, all had to be collected here, there and every- where. Nobody of intelligence would expect all the parts of a machine to fit if they never had been assembled. It is exactly so with 156 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE the army. These scattered troops may be likened to beautifully made, perfectly pol- ished pieces of mechanism kept in splendid order by workers in forty-nine widely separated parts of the United States, who- cannot possibly know how their particular part will fit into the whole. There never has been dispute of the fact that the officers have done their best with the fragments under their charge. For- eign military men who smile at the Ameri- can "army" testify at the same time to their high respect for the ability of the American army officer. It was not boast- ing when Lindley M. Garrison, Secretary of War, at the end of last November's re- port which was filled with blunt statements of our gross weakness, said that "our small army is unquestionably in as excellent con- dition as any similar number of men in any other military establishment in the world. Were it not for a desire to avoid invidious comparisons, I should say that man for man it is better than any similar 157 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE existing establishment in the world. I do not believe that any one will dispute the statement that the army never has been in better condition than it is to-day, from the most recently enlisted man up to the high- est officers. " If the need should come to-morrow, these officers would be able, without doubt, to entrain these excellent enlisted men at the various posts in record time. They would deliver themselves, without doubt, at the point of mobilization in perfect con- dition, with all their equipment so far as it is available in the posts. But what will happen when each of these perfect, iso- lated units arrives? Each individual fragment, so well trained to take care of itself as a unit, must immediately become part of a mass which it never has met. Add to this picture the arrival of militia organizations arriving from different States, each of which has had its own ideas as to organization and supply — or none at all. Surely the scene 158 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE can be visualized by any citizen, even if he never touched a gun in his life. It will be like dumping in one huge, mixed-up, swiftly growing mass all the parts of a mammoth and immensely com- plicated engine to be asesmbled in deadly haste by men who never in their lives have tried to asesmble such an engine and who never have even seen such an engine com- pletely assembled and working. 159 XXIV CAN THE AMERICAN ARMY BE MADE READY FOR WAR UNDER THE ARMY POST SYSTEM ? THE army post system has been up- held in Congress despite all pro- tests, though the arguments in favor of it do not allege that the posts are of the least military advantage from a strategic point of view, or that they are of the slightest benefit to the training or organization of the American army. There are two chief arguments in sup- port of the system. One is that the posts represent an enormous investment which would be a total loss to the nation if the posts were abandoned. The other is that their abandonment would mean heavy 1 60 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE loss, if not financial ruin, to many com- munities that have been built around them or that base a large part of their existence on them. The latter argument has been assailed bitterly as merely an argument in favor of political graft. It should be considered, however, that the communities which de- mand the retention of the posts are a part of this nation and that they are entitled to appeal to their fellow citizens for protec- tion of their interests. They are without doubt good Americans like the rest of the population, and it would be unjust and un- generous to believe that they deliberately wish to sacrifice any vital interest of their country to their own personal advantage. In so far as their Representatives speak for their views legitimately and openly on the floor of Congress they do only their duty. But unfortunately the matter has become part of the political give-and-take of Congress. Army officers, the War De- partment and even Presidents have 161 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE learned to be chary of attacking the army post system, because Congress appears to have made the retention of the posts one of its jealously guarded prerogatives. It is quite true to say that many high army offi- cers fear to say anything for publication against the army posts, because they fear that the politicians will get after them for it. What are these army posts ? The loca- tion of some dates back to British rule, when they were established to defend the frontier against French and Indian raids from Canada. Most of them go back to the Indian wars in the west. Some estab- lished later were established almost openly as a matter of politics. Their absolutely useless geographical location is illustrated by merely naming their sites, such as Arizona, Idaho, Wyo- ming, Texas, Utah, Kansas, South Da- kota, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Min- nesota. If they had been placed delib- erately to be as far away as possible from 162 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE any spot where the army might be needed to defend the country against invasion, they could not well have been placed better. There is not a military argument in their favor. In 191 1 the Secretary of War told Congress that "nearly all these posts have been located for reasons which now are totally obsolete or which were from the beginning purely local. They have universally been constructed upon a plan which involves a maximum initial cost of construction and a maximum cost of maintenance both in money and men." The remark about their cost is justified. Fort D. A. Russell in Wyoming cost near- ly 5 millions to complete. This amount would have built a sound harbor defense for one of the United States ports. It would have paid for a good part of the cost of building defenses for the naval base of Guantanamo, Cuba, which at this time is absolutely undefended and lies wide open to attack from even a third-class fleet. 163 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE The annual cost of these posts in main- tenance alone is a heavy item, all of which is wasted so far as any military advantage is concerned, with the exception of provid- ing excellently for the health and comfort of the troops. They are little cities, pro- vided with their own water supplies, sewer, lighting, heating, telephone and telegraph systems. They have beautifully graded streets and lovely green terraces and lawns. Some of them look like parks. Every year the appropriations for the posts grow in amount. Congressmen com- pete with each other in their care for the posts within the terirtory of their con- stituents. Thus annually the investment of the nation becomes greater. The War Department suggests that the great increase in the land-values since the foundation of the posts might go far to- ward balancing the loss accruing from their abandonment and might even pay a part of the cost of re-locating the army 164 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE in the better geographical sites that are demanded for efficiency. There have been no statistics or estimates collected to pre- sent the case clearly enough for judgment. It can only be suggested that even if the abandonment represents a large loss, the, United States long ago accepted the indus- trial principle that it pays far better to "scrap" an inefficient machine or plant than to muddle along with it, when a bet- ter method is indicated clearly and is dem- onstrated as being ready for use. Such a method is ready. It has been ready for some years. It has been within the knowledge of Congress for years. It has been presented to the House of Repre- sentatives and the Senate not once but many times. It is neither of doubtful value, nor complex, nor expensive. In fact the War Department has proved to Congress that the proposed method would produce an annual saving in the cost of army maintenance of $5,500,000. This proposed method of replacing the 165 THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENSE wasteful and useless army posts, and the results to be gained from it, are so simple that every American citizen can under- stand them. 166 XXV WHAT ARMY EXPERTS WANT IN PI