Military movement

“ But so few of our faculties are of a truly military turn, and these wax indolent and unwary from disuse like troops during long times of peace. We all come to recognize sooner or later, of course, the unfailing little band of them that form our standby, our battle-smoked campaigners, our Old Guard, that dies, neversurrenders. ”

“ Sometimes, by great effort, a nation can transform a small available cadre into large, new and effective units on the political, military, economic or social fronts. Even then, the character of the war effort will be colored and influenced by the experience of the men undertaking it. ”

“ We read of grand strategic combinations, of masterly plans of attack and admirable counter-strokes of defense. On the battlefield we hear of gallant charges, superb rushes of cavalry, indomitable resistance. Our military historians largely give us the impression of man in battle as in the exercise of his highest powers, and war as something glorious in the experience and heart-thrilling in the contemplation. ”

“ But the war called for money, provisions, and supplies on a vast scale, and even more it demanded endurance, energy, and military experience on the part of the troops. In the almost entire absence of all these, you personally provided and organised everything, drilled those who had reached the age for military service, got together a force of cavalry to match the enemy's, and issued orders for the infantry to persevere in their training. ”

“ Movements and manoeuvres were criticised, attacked, defended, ridiculed, and condemned, with a degree of acuteness and knowledge that showed the enormous progress the nation had made in military science, and with what ease the Republic could recruit her officers from the ranks of her soldiers. ”

“ For the dear-bought experience of our four great wars is entirely unheeded, indeed almost unknown to the mass of the people; and the army to-day, in organization as in numbers, in its influence upon the military ideas and aptitudes of the nation in peace as in its capacity for expansion in time of war, is inadequate to our needs as a great nation. ”

“ We are at war, and I shall not say one single sentence with regard to the policy of the war or its origin, and I know not that I shall say a single sentence with regard to the conduct of it; but the fact is that we are at war with the greatest military Power, probably, of the world, and that we are carrying on our operations at a distance of 3,000 miles from home, and in the neighbourhood of the strongest fortifications of that great military Empire. ”

“ Large numbers of untrained men, without organization to embody them in, add little to actual military strength.
Armies of First Line
The Army which will take the field at the outbreak of war is the Regular Army, which is organized, kept up, and trained, year by year, in peace. The War Army will be this Peace Army mobilized, or brought up to war strength and completed in every essential, by calling up reserve officers and men to fill its ranks. ”

“ The Army as organized must be the nucleus around which in every time of need the strength of your military power, the sure bulwark of your defense—a national militia—may be readily formed into a well-disciplined and efficient organization. ”

“ From the opening battles of the American Revolution through the turmoil of the Civil War, to World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, to the Persian Gulf and today's operations in the war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world, the members of our military have built a tradition of honorable and faithful service. ”

“ All the business of preparing for the military registration of 10,000,000 men, of providing quarters and instructors for nearly 50,000 prospective officers, for finding arms and equipment for millions of troops yet to be organized, of expanding the regular army to full war strength, of preparing and recruiting the National Guard for war was at hand. ”

“ In this conflict we are engaged with great nations whose military preparation has extended over nearly half a century, and whose aim, as far as we can comprehend it, has been world-wide supremacy by force of arms. ”

“ We were at war with the greatest military power in the world. We had an army of about 180,000 men, scattered all over the world, to pit against an army of five or six millions of men, already concentrated. ”

“ But does not everybody know, military man or not, that unless there is a defile, or some narrow place through which troops must pass, and which a fortification will command, that a mere open road must, in time of war, be in the power of the strongest? ”

“ Not only does it afford the obvious and immediate military advantages, but in showing to the world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger part to an important new service, and yet leaving enough to vanquish the old opposing forces of the whole—Hood's army—it brings those who sat in darkness to see a great light. ”

“ Little is now wanting to enable the soldier to change the military character into that of a citizen but that steady and decent behavior which has distinguished not only the army under this immediate command, but the different detachments and separate armies through the course of the war. ”

“ In some nations the method has been to trust for defence and security to what is called a Standing Army; a number of men paid by the public, to devote themselves wholly to the military profession; while the body of the people followed their peaceable employments, without paying any attention to the art of war. ”

“ How far this institution, by exciting in others a spirit of imitation or emulation, has been the occasion of the present general attention to the military art among us, I pretend not to say: But whatever be the cause, it must give pleasure to every friend of public liberty, to see this people so generally engaged in military exercises. ”

“ There will be many, no doubt, who will question the military value of a Militia thus raised, who will query their cohesion and discipline, will query their degree of training and efficiency, and will even query their steadiness and gallantry in action. ”

“ Armies are no longer mere levies or hired cohorts, every man in the nation capable of bearing arms or in any wise doing military duty is enrolled, and must take his place as a soldier. During the summer immense armies move out of their barracks and play seriously the game of war. Each nation has its field manœuvres and theme of attack and defence. ”

“ With all their defects, however, they were the pioneers of modern organization. In the inextricable tangle of old and new methods which constitutes the military system of the 15th century, it is possible to discern three marked tendencies. One is the result of a purely military conception of the now special art of war, and its exposition as an art by men who devote their whole career to it. ”

“ The military element predominates in this group of citizens, and of course, they are talking of the wars,—the foreign wars: but the principle of inroad and aggression on the one hand, and defence on the other, the arts of subjugation, and reconciliation, the arts of WAR and GOVERNMENT in their most general forms are always cleared and identified, and tracked, under the specifications of the scene. ”

“ Other states have fallen from the too great influence of a military spirit, and the absorption of power by standing armies. What is the character of the armies which our commanders led to victory? The most formidable engines that skill or valour could direct against a foreign enemy ”

“ We built our military fabric upon an entirely different theory—a small standing army to be used as a nucleus around which the aforesaid fighting citizenship would rally. We believed implicitly in the volunteer. ”

“ The comparative weight with which militarism, that is, the system which makes the maintenance of great armaments one of the principal objects of the state, burdens different nations, depends upon their respective wealth, the length of the terms of military service, their administrative organization and the nature of their political institutions. ”

“ It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is a nation. ”

“ For otherwise it is impossible to understand the military conduct of many campaigns and battles, in which the political outweighed the military influence, and led to action incomprehensible almost from a purely military point of view. ”

“ These shortcomings are inherent in all armies formed from the masses, which are almost akin to a militia, but this did not prevent these armies or our own from gaining victories and continuing the war. It is necessary, however, to draw a complete picture of the spirit of the Army in order to understand its subsequent destiny. ”

“ The campaign was interesting in its military aspect, in giving experience of the extreme difficulty and expense of carrying out offensive operations in a country composed of mountain ranges, devoid of communications, and inhabited by races of men whom we may consider half civilised, but who, at all events, possess the virtues of courage, independence, and love of their country, and physically are as active and handsome a people as exists anywhere. ”

“ But the influence it commands, by strengthening the ties that bind the military and the civil elements, by rendering the regular army popular, and by therefore facilitating the recruitment of a good class of man, is well known; while the self-sacrifice of many who devote their leisure to martial exercises, without prospect of reward, is creditable to the British character, and tends to 303spread a wider interest in military affairs than was formerly the case. ”

“ One ray of sunlight does not make the sky clear, nor is the voice of one soldier the voice of an army. The armies of to-day are nations; and in such armies, as in every nation, there must doubtless conflict and mingle many different currents. ”

“ From the battles of the Revolutionary War through the epic struggles of World Wars I and II to today's peacekeeping missions in a world with sophisticated weapons and terrorist threats, the men and women of our Armed Forces have served with skill and courage. ”

“ By method and discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure. ”

“ It is curious to see, therefore, how the first voluntary national army, long embodied, produced an antagonism, among the mass of the people, to standing armies altogether, a feeling which lasts even until now in theory, if not in fact. ”

“ HOW AN ARMY IS FORMED. The making of an army—that is what it means to turn men of peace to men of war, to fit the mechanic or the business man, the farmer or the miner, for a passage at arms with a foreign foe—has been for the present generation a matter of conjecture and of lessons drawn from previous passages in the nation's chronicles. ”

“ I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of agression and conquest. ”

“ Then there are the long route marches to keep the troops in perfect training, and drill in which military instruction is given and our men are taught the latest modes of fighting with a view to making future attacks. ”

“ Not only the nation and the Government, but the army itself, apart from its inadequacy in numbers, was completely unprepared for war. There was hardly a single officer or sol&er who was really trained for war, who knew what war meant, who realized the intellectual and physical preparation required for it, or the energy and the sacrifices demanded in waging it. ”

“ We will suppose that there is a large army organized for the purpose of contending against their enemies. All the officers in that army, from the general down to the lesser officers, are clad in bright uniforms; the bands are playing their thrilling martial music, and everything, to use a worldly expression, is grand and glorious. Here is a general excitement, a war spirit is upon every man, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, and the only feeling is, "Let me go forth to battle against the enemy." ”

“ Fighting in their own way, in the open, against superior forces, the Marines and troops of the National American Army fought their way to victory, routing the enemy and wresting from them positions absolutely necessary to their further advance. ”

“ To march an army of preponderous strength through level and fertile country, flanked by friendly war-ships and backed by unassailable credit; to meet and overcome a much smaller and far less rich army, intrenched behind earthworks of doubtful formidableness, and finally to besiege and capture an isolated city of more historic than strategic advantages, seemed on the face of it as easy as rolling a barrel downhill or eating when hungry. ”

“ Every army at the present time is divided into regular troops, who are already organized in time of peace and are merely brought to full strength in war-time, and new formations, which are only organized on mobilization. ”

“ To shorten the War—by strengthening the morale of the allied peoples and their armies, by alleviating their sufferings in the period which must elapse until the American army can become fully effective abroad. ”

“ Thus a strong and well-appointed army, fully disciplined and led by warriors famed for courage and warlike deeds, was annihilated by a small band of peasants, few of whom had ever struck a blow in war, but who were animated by the highest spirit of patriotism and love of liberty, and welcomed death rather than a return to their old state of slavery and oppression. ”