Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Our Army is so small and so much scattered that it is very difficult to
give the higher officers (as well as the lower officers and the
enlisted men) a chance to practice manoeuvres in mass and on a
comparatively large scale. In time of need no amount of individual
excellence would avail against the paralysis which would follow
inability to work as a coherent whole, under skillful and daring
leadership. The Congress should provide means whereby it will be
possible to have field exercises by at least a division of regulars,
and if possible also a division of national guardsmen, once a year.
These exercises might take the form of field manoeuvres; or, if on the
Gulf Coast or the Pacific or Atlantic Seaboard, or in the region of the
Great Lakes, the army corps when assembled could be marched from some
inland point to some point on the water, there embarked, disembarked
after a couple of days' journey at some other point, and again marched
inland. Only by actual handling and providing for men in masses while
they are marching, camping, embarking, and disembarking, will it be
possible to train the higher officers to perform their duties well and
smoothly.
A great debt is owing from the public to the men of the Army and Navy.
They should be so treated as to enable them to reach the highest point
of efficiency, so that they may be able to respond instantly to any
demand made upon them to sustain the interests of the Nation and the
honor of the flag. The individual American enlisted man is probably on
the whole a more formidable fighting man than the regular of any other
army. Every consideration should be shown him, and in return the
highest standard of usefulness should be exacted from him. It is well
worth while for the Congress to consider whether the pay of enlisted
men upon second and subsequent enlistments should not be increased to
correspond with the increased value of the veteran soldier.
Much good has already come from the act reorganizing the Army, passed
early in the present year. The three prime reforms, all of them of
literally inestimable value, are, first, the substitution of four-year
details from the line for permanent appointments in the so-called staff
divisions; second, the establishment of a corps of artillery with a
chief at the head; third, the establishment of a maximum and minimum
limit for the Army. It would be difficult to overestimate the
improvement in the efficiency of our Army which these three reforms are
making, and have in part already effected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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