If this statement is not a fact, why is it that no useful, constructive work is accomplished by the fifty odd thousand able-bodied enlisted men of our Regular Army? The same men would accomplish superhuman manual labor in case of war. And the same conditions would obtain if our army was 100,000 or 200,000 or 500,000 strong. This wasteful situation taken as a whole makes it impracticable to work out any plans which might otherwise be initiated or formulated by the War Department for creating a great reserve force that would be entirely under the control of the civil departments of the national government in time of peace. It is imperative that such civil control should prevail. Were it otherwise, the same danger of military domination in government affairs would arise that would result from the maintenance of a standing army in this country large enough to serve as a national defense in time of war with any first-class power. _And the establishment of a National Construction Service as a Reserve force, enlisted for work to be done under civil control in time of peace, but available for military service in time of war, constitutes one of the most practicable plans for creating a Reserve from which an army for national defense could be instantly mobilized in time of war._ The plan proposed by the War Department, of a short term of service in the regular army, followed by liability to service in a reserve made up of men discharged after this short-service term, could never be worked out effectively. The impracticability of that plan has been clearly shown by Representative James Hay, Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives, in a recent magazine article in which he says: "Military authorities, backed by the opinions of many persons high in civil life, insist that we should be provided with an adequate reserve of men, so that we may in any time of trouble have men who will be prepared to enter the army fully trained for war. In this I concur; but in a country where military service is not compulsory the method of providing a reserve is an extremely complex problem, one that has not yet been satisfactorily solved by anybody. It is proposed, among other things, to have short enlistments, and thus turn out each year a large number of men who will be trained soldiers. Let us examine this for a moment and see where it will lead, and whether any good will come out of it, either for the army or for the country.