Arms control

“ Why not control explosive force? Firearms control it. Why not develop some means by which we could blow off just what material we wanted to be rid of, in precisely the quantities we wished to remove, and at the same time preserve the stone left in place, intact and without injury? ”

“ If a man cannot move freely, he cannot fight. If a horse cannot move, what use is his rider? If the artillery-man cannot serve [80] the gun freely and the gun is immovable, field artillery is useless. Therefore, if gas becomes a standard weapon, we are left with the tank and the aeroplane as the sole effective arms for offensive action. Only as the static defenders of the fortified bases—the land-ports—of tanks and aircraft will there be a future for infantry and artillery, the former armed with super-heavy armour-piercing machine-guns, and the latter with anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. ”

“ Peace will leave at least 40 millions of the most efficient small arms ever known, probably 10 million machine guns of the same character; three hundred thousand cannon, large and small; thousands of war-ships, all with corresponding munitions and equipments for which the world will then have little use.
Peace will find most of these soldiers with three or four times their number employed as accessories to the army, discharged without vocation, and, perhaps, 100 million expatriated citizens, poor, helpless and starving men, women and children, wandering on the face of the earth. ”

“ The first duty of outposts, which is reconnaissance, cannot be assisted by machine guns; but their second duty, which is resistance, may be materially strengthened and aided by them, as we have already seen in dealing with the defence. Little can be said about tactics, and it will be necessary to use the guns in positions on the line of resistance where their fire power is most likely to be of value. In order clearly to understand where and how machine guns should be used with outposts, it will be necessary first to examine the composition and distribution of outposts of a force of all arms. ”

“ In the United States all of the forces are now provided with standard arms or weapons. The army, the Marine Corps and the organized militia of the States, absorbed into the body proper of national troops, have the same firearms—the same service rifles, the same machine guns and field guns and the same automatic pistols. ”

“ All arms, ammunition and implements of war and all specialized facilities for their production shall be held at the disposal of the Allies or destroyed. The maintenance and production of all aircraft and all arms. ammunition and implements of war shall be prevented. ”

“ These gentlemen are authorities which show that, when two belligerents are carrying on a war, a neutral power may supply, without any breach of international law and without a breach of the Foreign Enlistment Act, munitions of war—gunpowder, every description of arms, in fact, that can be used for the destruction of human beings. ”

“ National weakness — real or perceived — can tempt aggression and thus cause war. That's why the United States cannot neglect its military strength. We must and we will remain strong. But with equal determination, the United States and all countries must find ways to control and reduce the horrifying danger that is posed by the world's enormous stockpiles of nuclear arms.
This has been a concern of every American president since the moment we first saw what these weapons could do. ”

“ CONFERENCE ON REDUCTION OF ARMAMENTS
Both the League of Nations and President Coolidge have given expression to the universal desire to reduce the burden of armaments in the interest of economy and world peace. Armaments, speaking generally, express a nation’s fears or the ambitions of its controlling classes. Reduction of armaments will follow increasing world security and still more extensively an increasing sense of security, which is a very different matter. We are used to our armaments as we are used to locking our doors at night. ”

“ The big guns may level the forts and reduce them to powder, driving off the opposing forces, but the infantry must advance and the small arms and rapid-fire guns must keep the opposing forces from resuming the position which they had abandoned. ”

“ It is a war of explosions, from bombs thrown by hand within ten yards of the enemy to shells thrown as far as twenty miles and to mines laid under the enemy's trenches; a war of guns, from seventeen-inch down to three-inch and machine-guns; a war of machinery, with man still the pre-eminent machine.
Guns mark the limit of the danger zone. Their screaming shells laugh at the sentries at the entrances to towns and at cross-roads who demand passes of all other travellers. Anyone who tried to keep out of range of the guns would never get anywhere near the front. ”

“ If they go forward equipped with the necessary arms, ammunition, and enginery of war, and are well trained and well officered, then they will be able not only to hold their own against the invaders, with comparatively little loss of life, but also to repel and drive out the enemy and save our land from spoliation and our homes from despoliation. ”

“ Simultaneously with the work of making the new, huge army, of housing and training it, meeting its immediate and preparing to meet its future needs of clothing and equipment, the War Department had to provide, against the time in a very few months when these troops would be at the front, the munitions with which it would fight—heavy and light artillery, machine guns, rifles, automatic pistols, grenades, bombs, gas shells, cartridges, every death-dealing instrument made necessary by modern scientific warfare. ”

“ Force for defense vs. force for aggression.
The problem of the League of Peace is actually the problem of the use of force. Force internationally expressed is measured in armaments. The chief discussion which has been waged for the past decade between the pacifists and militarists has been over the question of armaments. The militarists claim that armaments insure national safety. The pacifists declare they inevitably lead to war. ”

“ To secure these ends, America's weapons are non-provocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self-restraint. ”

“ Zero time is 9 p.m., and exactly on the second hell breaks out. Guns in the rear roar out in fury. Trench mortars close at hand vomit forth their missiles of death, and even machine-guns and rifle batteries help to swell the crescendo of battle. The ranges are well known, and the guns do their work without harming our men, who are now crawling forward. ”

“ Personal prowess, resistless in the whirlwind of the charge, is of little avail against modern artillery or long-range ordnance. The destructive power of modern military equipment will make adjustment of international differences by arbitration imperative. ”

“ The whole art of defensive war, in the present condition of the United States, and still more, what it is hereafter to be, is simplified into two principles—accumulation of masses, and the system of incessant attacks. Upon these two principles the largest invading force would be destroyed—shot like pigeons on their roost—by the volunteers and their rifles, before the lumbering machinery of a scientific army could be got into motion. ”

“ Armament.—The guns for arming the place should be placed in position or in store within the works before the beginning of hostilities. There should be mounted in commanding positions a sufficient number of high-power guns to hold the enemy’s first works at a distance and to fire upon his camps, etc., if placed too near. In addition to these, a full supply of light guns, including machine and rapid-fire guns, should be at all times equipped and supplied for immediate use in meeting an assault or surprise. ”

“ Without it, to send an army to battle with the superbly equipped German troops would be to send the brave fellows to certain slaughter. To equip an army of 4,000,000 men with field artillery alone would call for 20,000 3-inch guns; and the equipment with howitzers and machine-guns, to say nothing of rifles and ammunition of all kinds, would be on the same scale.
"Where are we going to obtain all this matériel? Practically all the arsenals, depots, gunshops, rifle factories, and powder works of the United States lie in that part of the country which is held by the enemy. ”

“ Whichever one of these conceptions finally prevails the Great War has conclusively demonstrated that as long as War Lords exist defensive force must be maintained. Hence the League must be prepared to use force against any nations which will not forswear force. Nevertheless a formula must be devised for disarmament. For unless it is a law of nature that war is to consume all the fruits of progress disarmament somehow and some way must take place. How then can the maintenance of a force for defense and police power be reconciled with the theory of disarmament? ”

“ If it be true that the possession of armaments is an inducement for those who have them to use them, and if it be true that armaments fret the fighting spirit of other nations as a red rag frets a bull, and thereby lead to war, then, surely, we do not need more armaments, but less. ”

“ This consists in flying all over the shop, and protecting our machines which are doing fire control, or photo, or reconnaissance work, or other special jobs; the ‘protection’ consists partly in drawing the fire of the ‘Archies’ (i.e. the regular anti-aircraft shrapnel quick-firing guns) and ‘Crumps’ (i.e. Howitzers which fire high-explosive shells from 5 to 8-inch) and partly in keeping off Hun machines from being too inquisitive as to the doings of our aeroplanes and the movements of troops on our side of the trenches. ”

“ As I endeavored to set forth, the development of militarism in European states can be explained on the theory that each Power may think the largest possible armaments necessary for the protection of its safety among its neighbors, and for the preservation of peace. With us such a motive cannot exist. Not needing large armaments for our safety—for this Republic, if it maintained its old traditional policy, would be perfectly safe without them—we can need them only in the service of warlike adventure undertaken at our own pleasure, for whatever purpose. ”

“ Paradoxically, this is the day of the big gun's greatest effectiveness, and the day of its greatest limitations. The war has taught us more in two years about gunnery and the effect of various types of ordnance under varying conditions than could have been learned in twenty years of theoretical research—for actual experience proves where theoretical research merely gives ground on which to base an opinion. ”

“ The vastly expensive armaments of the present—the rifled breech-loader, the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the long-range field-guns, and so forth, are all accepted and paid for by the respective nations in the frank and naked expectation that these weapons will perform increased execution on the enemy in war time. ”

“ Let us see for one moment what ten thousand men would be able to do upon such a host in open frontal attack: Let us assume that the ten thousand were armed with a thousand automatic guns, and, say, a hundred rapid-fire field-guns, in addition to the usual magazine shoulder-rifle. As soon as the enemy came in sight, the ten thousand would open on them with their hundred field-guns, pouring into their ranks a perfect storm of shrapnel. ”

“ Broadly speaking, the machinery of modern warfare adds a thousand-fold to the potentiality of the soldier in battle above his potentiality at the time of the Civil War.
Ten thousand men, armed with modern guns and all the paraphernalia of modern warfare, would on the battle-line be more than a match for a million men armed with the old smooth-bore guns of the Civil War. ”

“ The essential point is that the new and telling types of armament will develop from these very peace industries. We are not merely concerned with their relative magnitude in a state of disarmament, but with the critical types which may develop from them. ”

“ Every automatic gun and every quick-firing field-gun and every magazine shoulder-rifle puts in the hands of our soldiers the means of avoiding a corresponding sacrifice of their lives. Not only this, but every automatic gun that we make and furnish our troops enables one man to do the work of a hundred men; it enables a hundred men to remain at home engaged in peaceful pursuits while only one man has to go to the battle front and fight. ”

“ Undoubtedly this means of fighting has developed the personal initiative of the soldiers, and the modern fighting machine of the nations is of a high standard, which, together with death-dealing weapons, has resulted in terrible havoc. Massed movements, such as carried on in the War of the Rebellion, have been practically done away with, and although there have been long and costly sieges, they have been carried on by tedious trench fighting, airships, hand grenades, and massive shells fired from guns of great caliber, and with a range which is really marvellous. ”

“ Those who wield the thunder of the state may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. But I confess my opinion is much more in favor of prudent management than of force. The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered.
My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without resource ”

“ As a nation we can successfully pursue these objectives only from a position of broadly based strength.
No matter how earnest is our quest for guaranteed peace, we must maintain a high degree of military effectiveness at the same time we are engaged in negotiating the issue of arms reduction. Until tangible and mutually enforceable arms reduction measures are worked out, we will not weaken the means of defending our institutions.
America possesses an enormous defense power. ”