(6 of 6)
A further test of the plan will come this summer in upper New York State, when some 60,000 regular and militia troops will be concentrated near Watertown. For this grandest of U. S. peacetime military games, Congress is expected to earmark $447,000.
Doctrines of War. A basic principle of modern military strategy is the Decisive first punch. Contrary to belief of most U. S. laymen, their nation, with the smallest standing Army of any great power, with a tradition for an Army in embryo rather than an Army in being, is amazingly well equipped to deal just such a punch defensively or offensively anywhere on its own continent.
The U. S. Army has four unique and potent mobilization aces up its olive drab sleeve. For all the Army's poor-mouth talk, the U. S. has on hand equipment for 1,000,000 men, largely old War stores. The method of its maintenance is the one U. S. military secret foreign nations would like to know.
Second ace is the National Guard, 185,000 men whom the Army has helped bring to tip-top fighting trim in the past decade and who constitute the potent Second Wave after the regulars.
Third ace is the 114,000 reserve officers, who, having completed their four years of instruction in college, are subject to a fortnight's training every year and are encouraged to raise their rank through extension courses.
The last ace is psychological, but figures heavily in the Army's War plans. With the exception of the 1846 War with Mexico, violent popular opinion has sent the U. S. into all its conflicts. From this mass will-to-fight the Army expects a traditional surge of volunteers which will fill the ranks commanded by reserve officers.
The fact that the U. S. has no natural enemies makes the task of the Army more difficult. It does not know whether it will have to go to War in a pith helmet or on snowshoes, must maintain and know how to use both.
The average Naval officer, imbued with his service's tradition for headlong gallantry, jovially declares that the politicians make the Wars and the Navy fights them, that Naval policies merely follow national policies. More philosophic, the Army man ponders historic moments when popular diplomacy ran afoul of military foresight. For example, from the military point of view Theodore Roosevelt committed the gravest folly when, instead of letting the belligerents fight each other to their knees, he stopped the Russo-Japanese War with a peaceful parley and advanced the present Far Eastern problem by 100 years. The watchword of the cautious, far-seeing Army is SAFETY. And the Army's G. H. Q., looking out across the two oceans, sees almost no peace anywhere today.
* Besides the Army, the War Department is in charge of: rivers & harbors improvement, the Panama Canal, Inland Waterways Corp. (barge services), the Philippines, the Dominican customs receivership.