Fore-armed: How to build a citizen army

The average American, tackling the subject of preparedness for the first time, will wade through reams of rhetoric until his mind is a mass of undigested military facts and fancies. Glib and generous are the admonitions to prepare; yet the sum and substance of much that is being spoken and written on the subject, when skimmed of patriotic phrases, leaves but a residue of glittering generalities.

After listening to all the speeches pronounced at national defense conventions, and after reading all the data appearing in print, the average American still realizes how little he knows of what is comprised in the term “citizen soldiery.”

If any economic revolution is to follow the drafting of the majority of our younger citizens into a national militia, the voter wants to know it before he supports the Continental, Federal or any other kind of army.

The economic side of the question is particularly puzzling. Our kings of commerce, who resolve their problems into terms of business, would rarely send their sons into the army to work up from the bottom. As a business proposition the army is negligible. Commercial and professional life offer more substantial rewards. On the other hand, if the available youth of the country were subjected to a short period of military service, would this handicap our national development? How has it worked out in other nations?

The three most thoroughly tested citizen services are the Swiss, the German and the French. The Australian system, although not tested long in time, has proved its value in a manner worthy of close study. But let us begin with the Swiss. All military authorities agree on the proposition that the descendants of William Tell have evolved a nearly perfect national militia system; but these authorities insist that the Swiss plan is essentially militia and not regular. This distinction need not bother us, for no one wants to turn the great mass of male Americans into professional soldiers. My dictionary defines militia as citizen soldiery, and it is on that basis I shall lay before you the workings of the Swiss system.

Briefly, military service is compulsory and universal, with almost no exemptions save for actual physical disability. Citizens excused from service, as well as those called but rejected for mental or physical deficiencies, in lieu of service pay three special taxes. As nearly fifty per cent of all men annually called to the colors are rejected, those taxes amount to quite a tidy revenue.

The military taxes must be paid by every Swiss citizen, at home or abroad, who is not enrolled in the active or reserve armies. So, in addition to the men rejected, all citizens excused from military service for whatever cause are liable for these assessments, which are of three kinds: first, a military poll tax of six francs (approximately $1.20); second, the military property tax, which is 0.15 per cent of assessed value of property exceeding in amount $200; and third, a military income tax of 1.5 per cent on income. Military taxes are paid only during military age limits; that is, from the ages of twenty to forty-four. As a concession to the depreciation of a man’s usefulness as a soldier with increasing age, the taxes are half the stated sums between the ages of thirty-two and forty-four.

Of course, these taxes are assessed in addition to all other payments to the State and they are rigorously exacted, but no one person can be assessed a total military tax to exceed $600.

With a people so devoted to physical exercise, the number of rejections must seem high. We reconcile the paradox when we understand that the physical tests of the Swiss army are more severe than in Germany or France. The Swiss system is extremely selective. For example, the endurance tests, adequately severe, take the character of long tramps across country, something after the fashion of the test former President Roosevelt inaugurated for swivel-chair army officers, and the men who show physical deterioration under this ordeal are passed over for the more fit. Of course, the organization of the Swiss army is based upon the expected average annual recruitment, and it would seriously inconvenience the training staff and tax the depots and supply departments if an unusual number of recruits were accepted. So whenever the “class” is exceptional, the standard is, in a sense, raised by more rigorous selection. In time of emergency, all available men conforming to regulation requirements would be accepted.

Theoretically, liability to serve begins when the citizen is seventeen years of age and ends at the close of his forty-eighth year. In practice, actual service begins at the age of twenty. For the first twelve years service is with the first-line troops, called the Auszug or Elite; the following eight years the Swiss passes in the first reserve, or Landwehr; and the last eight years of service is with the second reserve, or Landsturm. This division does no military service except in war time.

Under this system Switzerland, which boasts approximately 4,000,000 population, has developed a defensive army of 150,000 soldiers with the colors, 120,000 in the first reserve, and 250,000 in the second reserve--a total of over 500,000 trained fighting men. Pausing to consider that Switzerland is but one-third the size of the State of Pennsylvania, with about half as many inhabitants as crowd the Quaker commonwealth, we must admit that the Swiss system produces results. The total training of the Swiss infantry soldier is sixty-five days the first year (seventy-five days for field artillery and ninety days for cavalry), and only eleven days a year for seven (eight in case of cavalry) succeeding years. The first reserve, or Landwehr, is called out only once, for eleven days’ service.

Thus the first training period of the Swiss infantry soldier is one hundred and forty-two days. Beyond this time he spends the eleven days mentioned in the Landwehr with his company and in addition there are certain inspections prescribed that bring the entire time of training up to one hundred and sixty-three days.

The military instruction of the Swiss recruit follows accepted lines and begins with periods of elementary training in what is commonly known as the “awkward squad.” The teaching is carried on much the same as at West Point with the fourth-classmen or with newly joined recruits in any of our National Guard organizations. The recruits arrive and are divided into companies, sections, squads under competent instructors. The training proceeds. The men are taught the facings, marching in single and double rank, and given a full course of setting-up exercises. For a month the men are grounded in the rudiments of squad and section drill. The manual of arms is taken up as soon as the recruit has mastered the simple marching maneuvers and the facings. All instruction is conducted out of doors, and from the beginning war conditions are simulated. Sometimes stress of weather makes indoor drilling necessary, but this is rare. Armory drilling is scorned in Switzerland. In barracks the men are taught to keep their kit clean, to assemble and take apart their rifles, pointing and aiming drill, the theory of shooting and the Swiss regulations. Besides these military duties, recruits are taught to cook and are given some notions of hygiene.

With the exception of Sunday, work goes on without interruption for eight hours each day.

The Swiss recruit begins his target practice as soon as he has shown he is able to handle his army rifle. Each recruit is allowed ninety blank and two hundred ball cartridges. A man is allowed to expend fifteen ball cartridges in preliminary shooting, eighty in individual practice, and one hundred and five in field war practice. As soon as the recruits are graduated from the “awkward squad” and commence company drills, they are taken on marches, which are gradually extended till the men can cover twenty-five miles without unusual fatigue and spend two nights in bivouac.

The whole purpose of military training in Switzerland is to approximate war conditions as nearly as possible. So it has been said with truth that the progress of training of the Swiss militia is exactly the reverse in theory and fact of that in operation with the militia in the United States. Actual work under war conditions being the end and aim of the Swiss system, and the time of training being so restricted, the instruction begins and ends in the open country. To quote from a report of a former military attaché, Major T. B. Mott, U.S.A.:

“After a thorough course in the school of the soldier and squad, work out in the open fields is begun and the recruit comes face to face with the primitive problems of a campaign and learns at the very start ‘what he is there for.’ He is taught to march correctly in column, form line and march in line, but these exercises are made an incident of going to and coming from ‘work.’ The real business of his life, he learns, is to march steadily under a heavy pack, shoot straight, take cover, and obey his squad leader.... The fifth and sixth weeks entire are spent on a long march in rough country, where the battalion acts for the most part as if in the presence of an enemy, maneuvering by day, establishing outposts at night, and conducting combat exercises with ball cartridges.

“The contrast between this sort of militia training and that seen in America or England is most marked. The psychological effect on the men is certainly important. The first conceptions of the real business of a soldier, his whole reason for existence, are apt to produce a lasting impression on a young man. In our (American) service the recruit’s first enthusiasms are concentrated (and dissipated) in the grind of barrack-yard drill, where no man need, or is expected to use his head. As these same recruits, whether fourth-class cadets or regular enlisted men, grow old in the service, and in turn have to instruct others, the ideas crystallized in them during their first training prevail, and instinctively they give importance to the things that have been most deeply impressed upon them....

“In Switzerland there are no parades or reviews or drills beyond the company or battalion ... through the push of stern necessity the Swiss has sifted out the absolute essentials to fitness for war, and these essentials, field exercises and good shooting, he works at to the exclusion of everything else.”

Such in outline is the Swiss plan; but there are certain factors and conditions in the Alpine nation that make the development of a national militia a much simpler proposition than, for example, would be the case in the United States. In the first place, the Swiss are a nation of patriots. Reference again to my dictionary brings out the fact that a patriot is a lover of his country. Not to make any invidious insinuations about the quality of patriotism in this or any other land, if I were the chief of the World’s Bureau of Political Statistics, and had to compile a comparative table of the patriotic qualities of the peoples of the earth, I should begin with the Swiss and work down. A lover of his country. The phrase does not half convey how the Swiss feels toward his lakes and mountains. Why, he regards them with passionate adoration. The Swiss is a super-patriot.