With these pregnant facts before us, it is very strange that it should not be perfectly plain to every one that what is true of labor-saving machinery in peace is likewise true in war. It is very strange indeed that there should be intelligent men and women among us unable to see and to understand that labor-saving machinery and labor skilled in its use are as applicable and as indispensable to successful warfare as to peaceful industry. Furthermore, labor-saving machinery in war is life-saving machinery. The quick-firing gun is the greatest life-saving instrument ever invented. These persons do not seem to appreciate that war is an industry. As a matter of stern fact, war is, and has always been, the biggest and the most vital industry of mankind, and in no other industry is labor-saving machinery so important and so vital, and in no other industry does so much depend upon the skill of the labor operating the machinery. We are the slaves of belief, and we love our chains. Although our faith may be false, we hate the hand that tries to free us. The people of this country have a great false faith in the fighting qualities of their citizen soldiery, improvised in time of war. They point proudly to the War of the Revolution and the War of the Rebellion to prove how our volunteer soldiers can fight. They overlook the fact that fighting was then mostly done by hand; that now it is mostly done by machinery, and that it is just as foolish and absurd to think of taking untrained men off the farm to operate the guns and machinery of war as it would be to try to operate the factories with them where the guns and machinery are made. It takes as long today to convert a farmer into a skilled soldier as it does to convert him into a skilled mechanic. Battles are no longer decided merely by the patriotism and personal bravery of the rank and file, nor even by their numbers, but by the efficiency and sufficiency of machinery and materials of destruction and the science and scientific experience of the commanding officers. There is no time to build steam-fire-engines or to train fire brigades after a conflagration has broken out. A citizen soldiery without years of training in the discipline and weapons and mechanism of modern warfare is only a mob, as easily scattered by a few real soldiers as chaff by a whirlwind. George Washington held the following opinion about the value of militia in warfare: * * * * *