It would not be necessary if service opinion required officers so to order their lives that it would be common knowledge that they were “hard,” in order to avoid the danger of being selected out.
We have no such service opinion, and it is not in process of formation. On the contrary, it is known that the “Principal Dignitaries” unanimously advised the Secretary to abandon all physical tests. He, a civilian, was wise enough not to take the advice.
I would like to see a test established that would oblige officers to take sufficient exercise to pass it without inconvenience. For the reasons given above, 20 miles in two days every other month would do the business, while 10 miles each month does not touch it, simply because nobody has to walk on “next day” feet. As for the proposed test of so many hours “exercise” a week, the flat foots of the pendulous belly muscles are delighted. They are looking into the question of pedometers, and will hang one of these on their wheezy chests and let it count every shuffling step they take out of doors.
If we had an adequate test throughout 20 years, there would at the end of that time be few if any sacks of blubber at the upper end of the list; and service opinion against that sort of thing would be established.
These tests were kept during my administration. They were afterwards abandoned; not through perversity or viciousness; but through weakness, and inability to understand the need of preparedness in advance, if the emergencies of war are to be properly met, when, or if, they arrive. ↩
This is a condensation of a speech I at the time made to the St. Louis Civil Service Reform Association. Senator Gorman was then the Senate leader of the party that had just been victorious in the Congressional elections. ↩
In a letter written me just before I became Assistant Secretary, Senator Davis unburdened his mind about one of the foolish “peace” proposals of that period; his letter running in part:
I left the Senate Chamber about three o’clock this afternoon when there was going on a deal of mowing and chattering over the treaty by which the United States is to be bound to arbitrate its sovereign functions—for policies are matters of sovereignty. … The aberrations of the social movement are neither progress nor retrogression. They represent merely a local and temporary sagging of the line of the great orbit. Tennyson knew this when he wrote that fine and noble Maud. I often read it, for to do so does me good.
After quoting one of Poe’s stories the letter continues:
The world will come out all right. Let him who believes in the decline of the military spirit observe the boys of a common school during the recess or the noon hour. Of course when American patriotism speaks out from its rank and file and demands action or expression, and when, thereupon, the “businessman,” so called, places his hand on his stack of reds as if he feared a policeman were about to disturb the game, and protests until American patriotism ceases to continue to speak as it had started to do—why, you and I get mad, and I swear. I hope you will be with us here after March 4. We can then pass judgment together on the things we don’t like, and together indulge in hopes that I believe are prophetic.
To counterbalance the newspapers which ignorantly and indiscriminately praised all the volunteers there were others whose blame was of the same intelligent quality. The New York Evening Post, on June 18, gave expression to the following gloomy foreboding: “Competent observers have remarked that nothing more extraordinary has been done than the sending to Cuba of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, known as the ‘rough riders.’ Organized but four weeks, barely given their full complement of officers, and only a week of regular drill, these men have been sent to the front before they have learned the first elements of soldiering and discipline, or have even become acquainted with their officers. In addition to all this, like the regular cavalry, they have been sent with only their carbines and revolvers to meet an enemy armed with long-range rifles. There have been few cases of such military cruelty in our military annals.” A week or so after this not wholly happy prophecy was promulgated, the “cruelty” was consummated, first at Las Guasimas and then in the San Juan fighting. ↩
General Wood writes me: “The representative of the Associated Press was very anxious to get a copy of this dispatch or see it, and I told him it was impossible for him to have it or see it. I then went in to General Shafter and stated the case to him, handing him the dispatch, saying, ‘The matter is now in your hands.’ He, General Shafter, then said, ‘I don’t care whether this gentleman has it or not,’ and I left then. When I went back the General told me he had given the Press representative a copy of the dispatch, and that he had gone to the office with it.” ↩
I quote this sentence from memory; it is substantially correct. ↩
In a letter to me Mr. Quigg states, what I had forgotten, that I told him to tell the Senator that I would talk freely with him, and had no intention of becoming a factional leader with a personal organization, yet that I must have direct personal relations with everybody, and get their views at first hand whenever I so desired, because I could not have one man speaking for all. ↩
Each nation has
