Why Defend the Nation?/National Defense—Its Essentials

by Frank David Ely

CHAPTER IV.

National Defense—Its Essentials

THE essentials of National Defense are:

Finance;
Industry;
Manpower,

and the complete organization of all three. Their efficient employment demands the existence of suitable plans, complete in all essential detail, and the will and authority to put the plans in force in event of need. There is further demanded trained and competent leadership.

The preparation of plans for the employment of the resources of the Nation in its defense are by law made the duty of the General Staff. Under the National Defense Act of 1920 ample authority is given the President to carry the provisions of the law into effect, and it may be assumed that the work of completing all essential plans has made due progress. While the authority is ample, as stated, there are two obstacles to the accomplishment of all defense plans, viz.:

1. A shortage in trained personnel; and

2. Dependence on annual appropriations, the amounts of which have been entirely insufficient and too problematical. A defense plan worth making and adopting is worth carrying out. Piecemeal or halfway action defeats the success of the best plan.

Finance.—The law makes no provisions for plans regarding finance for purposes of National Defense. The reasons for this are apparent. Under our financial and banking system finance is highly centralized and the Secretary of the Treasury instantly senses any change which portends danger. At the first threat against the Nation reserves could be conserved or increased and business duly warned through financial agencies, i. e., by the banks. The proof of readiness lies in the excellent functioning of our banking system throughout the late war, and through the perhaps even more severe test of post-war inflation and the rapidly succeeding deflation which was so destructive of values. Through all this the banks carried on successfully—not without strain, but with avoidance of panic. That the new banking system, in operation for only ten years when the storm of war broke over Europe, should have so successfully met war requirements is most gratifying to the Nation, and most complimentary to the framers of the banking laws and to the financiers and bankers (for not all bankers may be called financiers) who carried out the actual operations.

Industry.—The second named essential of National Defense is also well centralized, though less highly so than finance. The munitions for defense differing so widely from the peace products of manufacture (though in war the manufacture of vast quantities of peace products is required, unchanged), it becomes necessary to know the equipment, adaptability, and capacity of all important manufacturing plants in order promptly to change production where needed, minimize waste, and insure ample supply and the smooth and uninterrupted flow of defense supplies of every class and kind. This requires a complete and careful inventory to be made of all important industries; the making and filing of plans and specifications for the manufacture of all required munitions other than ordinary commercial articles; the making of suitable provisions to insure the availability when needed of special machinery, tools, jigs, dies, gauges, etc., etc.; and the filing of all plans, inventories, and other essential information for manufacture and supply in a common center for their complete co-ordination, including proper supply of raw materials, power, and fuel (kinds and quantities) needed by all plants in operation; for apportionment of required personnel; assignment of rail, water, or other transportation needed, and when needed; storage, etc.

Under the National Defense Act of 1920 the Assistant Secretary of War is by law charged with all procurement of supplies. Decentralization of the supervision of procurement is effected through the appointment in large centers like New York, Chicago, St. Louis, etc., of responsible civilian heads, the selection of the individual in each case being governed by his ability, experience, and proved fitness to take charge of vast manufacturing and supply problems and operations; and this official, assisted usually by members of an Advisory Board (the members of which will ordinarily be selected and appointed by himself), will, in the event of a major emergency, co-ordinate and distribute the entire production in his district of all supplies of the class with which he is charged, on quantity and destination calls from the central office.

Manpower.—The third essential of National Defense is divided primarily as follows:

First Line.—Combat and supply units of the Regular Army and the National Guard. These are regularly maintained, are fully equipped and trained, and can be quickly mobilized at any designated points by the issuance of the necessary orders. Before the National Guard can be called into the Federal service the existence of a national emergency must have been duly declared by Congress. On proper declaration of the existence of such an emergency the National Guard is available for duty beyond the limits of its own State, wherever ordered by the President.

Second Line.—The Reserves. These units are more or less completely organized on paper, are wholly or in part officered and have some additional personnel of non-commissioned officers in the more important grades. All of the personnel enrolled can be immediately mobilized, on the declaration by Congress of the existence of a major emergency, at local or other designated centers, for the receiving, clothing, equipping, and training of the existing and all additional personnel required and assigned for the completion of the units to full war strength.

Practically all of the officers of the Reserve Corps have had war experience and training and many are receiving additional training at the summer training camps, at designated posts or headquarters, and through the pursuing of correspondence courses in training in the essential duties of their arm or branch, for their grade. This corps is recruited, as are the National Guard and the Regular Army, by officers appointed from the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, which is the name given to the aggregate of all the students receiving military instruction at our universities, colleges, and certain designated schools, and from men who have taken the necessary prescribed courses of military instruction offered at the Civilian Military Training Camps, of which there is at present one held each summer in each of the nine corps areas into which the whole of the United States is divided. Thus a flow of trained officers is provided to replace losses due to age, the limitation on time imposed by business or other duties, etc.

Additional manpower over that required above is available for expansion of the First and Second Lines of Defense; for industry, agriculture, transportation, and for all other National Defense needs. The organization now being effected of the country's manpower holds a great advantage over the conditions which existed at the outbreak of war in 1917. The Nation then stood like a giant muscle-bound. Its potential powers in men and industry were untrained and unharnessed for defense, were without even a semblance of the necessary organization, and for a time the Nation stood all but helpless in defense. Very hasty and wholly unsatisfactory methods were of necessity resorted to for the selection and training of officers before the organization of our units for defense could even begin. But for the fact that our allies were holding the common enemy on a distant front, this loss in time and advantage would have spelled complete disaster. As it resulted, it spelled loss and waste in lives and property beyond all reckoning. The National Defense Act of 1920 brought a distinct feeling of relief to America in that for the first time in our whole national existence a real plan for the National Defense was made law, providing for the organization in peace time of our manpower and industry against our need in any future emergency. This Act is an excellent law and if and when wholly carried out and in force will be fair insurance in event of another emergency against any recurrence of the lamentable confusion and waste of 1917.

The following are a few of the excellent features of the Plan for Defense as carried in the National Defense Act of 1920:

1. It employs all the essential resources of the Nation for its defense, rather than only a part.

2. It is the cheapest in cost of all the plans ever considered that will adequately secure our defense.

3. It permits our maintaining a small Regular Army of only 150,000 men in time of peace, while still insuring efficiency of the National Defense. The Regular Army garrisons the over-seas possessions, guards the coast where necessary, and furnishes the overhead for all training of the National Guard and the Organized Reserves.

4. It insures to the Nation the ability to promptly mobilize finance, industry and manpower—the three essential elements of defense.

5. It utilizes the National Guard as a part of the first line of defense, thus making full use of all pre-existent military organization and training.

6. The Organized Reserves, provided as one component of the Army of the United States, serves as an immense reservoir in which, in the event of war, our manpower can be quickly organized and trained for its various tasks as a second line of defense. This is a very great advantage over our position in 1917.

7. The Officers’ Reserve Corps, composed as it is of citizen-soldiers, forms an essential link between the civil and the purely military which will go far toward removing distrust, promoting understanding, imparting confidence, and assuring wide dissemination of the ideals of America and of the needs of National Defense among the youth of the country and all uninformed elements of our population.

“FONDLY do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”—From Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.