The army should be cut away entirely from all participation in the civil affairs of the country, and should devote itself to its legitimate field of getting ready for a possible war and fighting it for us if it should ever come. Instead of blocking the way for the adoption of a comprehensive plan for river regulation and flood protection throughout the country for fear of interference with their existing privileges and authority, their work should be concentrated on the field they are created to fill. That field is the protection of the country from internal disturbance or external invasion. The civil affairs of the country should be conducted through organized machinery created for civil purposes, and not complicated with the red tape and rule of thumb methods of the War Department. For this work, initiative, constructive imagination and scientific genius must be evoked, and these the Army has not. So long as they cling to this field of work, just that long will progress be delayed, and the legitimate work of the Army be neglected. CHAPTER V _The system of national defense for every nation must be adapted to the conditions and needs of that nation. All nations are not alike. Each has its distinct problems. The solution, in each case, must be fitted to the nation and its people. There is no system now in operation in any other country that could be fitted as a whole to the United States. A system must be devised that will be applicable to the needs and conditions of this country._ The Swiss system is ideal for Switzerland. A mountaineer is a soldier by nature. Switzerland has a soldierly citizenry and can mobilize it instantly as a citizen soldiery. The Swiss system would have fitted Belgium in spots, but not as a whole. It is adapted to a rural people, who are individually independent and self-sustaining, but not to a manufacturing community, where the people cannot exist without the factory, or the factory without the people. It would be impracticable to adopt the Swiss system as a whole in the United States. It would fit some communities but not others. Military training would be beneficial to all boys, but our public school system is controlled by the States, counties, and local districts, and not by the nation. To adapt it to the Swiss system of universal military training in the public schools will require a propaganda to educate public sentiment that will necessitate years of patient work. A generation will pass before we will be able to mobilize a force for national defense from Reservists who will have received their military training in the public schools.