veloped resources of men and materials would be as useless as would be an undeveloped gold mine in Alaska in a Wall Street panic.

Our family has men, money, and materials more than sufficient for any military need. But we lack group and individual team work. No one has yet devised a successful scheme for securing effective military coöperation between the States and the Federal Government. Jasper and Henry and Brother Hiram are all tied up in their local troubles. They are fighters, every last one of them, but they have n't had time nor a desire to spend the money necessary to prepare themselves for trouble that might involve everybody. Such an emergency has appeared to us all to be the very remotest possibility. Satisfied with our natural strength, we have had but the vaguest concern as to what shape we should be in if we should be brought suddenly to face the necessity of getting together for the defense of all.

There is a growing conviction that this is not wisdom and that it is not fair to the little body of men whom we hire to protect us.

This conviction, for a long time, has been crystallizing, in some quarters, into a determination to find a way out. Some of our statesmen and military men, notably former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and former Chief of Staff Leonard Wood, have been grappling with the problem. The Swiss idea and the military theories of other nations have been given the closest study.

A start has already been made; a beginning of a system of genuine and adequate citizen defense which already has received the endorsement of President Wilson, Secretary of War Garrison, President Hibben of Princeton, President Lowell of Harvard, President Hadley of Yale, and other men of equal standing. And not one of them suggests the peril of militarism!

CHAPTER IX

THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR

THOSE gentlemen who have been telling us that the United States is the only first-class nation in the world which has no military reserve must have a care lest they be put down as jingos, attempting to create hysteria by inflammable and inaccurate utterances.

We have a reserve. It consists of 16 men. At least, it did up to November 15, 1914. Some of it may have departed this life by the time these pages reach the press; but the chances are that it is safe and accurate to say that our reserve to-day is about what it was in the middle of November, 1914.

We have a reserve law, too. Under its provisions a man intending to enlist in the regular army has the privilege at the time of his enlistment of expressing a wish that he be discharged on furlough when he has served his term, and be held subject to recall to the colors at any

time his services may be needed. In twentyfour months this law produced the 16 reservists.

And there we are.

The law is a joke - just as much of a joke as the "American Landsturm." If by any chance war should be brought our way by any firstclass nation on earth, the joke would instantly become a tragedy; and it is the purpose of this volume to serve in its small way in presenting facts and figures that may assist the American people in reaching some conclusion as to whether our small regular army and our incomplete and poorly organized militia are sufficient military protection for this country.

The territory of continental United States is about 3,027,000 square miles, with a population of about 99,000,000. There are 590,800 square miles in Alaska and a population of about 65,000. We have spent $400,000,000 as an investment in the Panama Canal. Hawaii, the population of 192,000 is contained within 6500 square miles. The area of Porto Rico is about 3600 square miles, with a popu

In

lation of 1,118,000. In the Philippine Islands, with 127,800 square miles, there is a population of 7,640,000.

Our military responsibilities over this scattered area are both heavy and complicated. The distribution of our regular army of less than 90,000 men has been described in detail in a previous chapter.

The most superficial study of our standing military forces and the duties which devolve upon them, reveals immediately the utter folly of contending that our available military forces could cope successfully with even as small an army as 200,000 trained men of any first-class power. In his Report for 1914, Lindley M. Garrison, as Secretary of War, compared our peace and war strength with those of other nations, as shown on the following page.

Mr. Garrison's figures for the United States are generous. They include the Philippine scouts and the organized militia. As has been previously pointed out, there is a vast difference between paper strength and actual strength. It is the opinion of those who have given the