Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
But war has never been a mere matter of men and guns. It is a thing of
disciplined might. If our citizens are ever to fight effectively upon a
sudden summons, they must know how modern fighting is done, and what to do
when the summons comes to render themselves immediately available and
immediately effective. And the government must be their servant in this
matter, must supply them with the training they need to take care of
themselves and of it. The military arm of their government, which they will
not allow to direct them, they may properly use to serve them and make
their independence secure,-and not their own independence merely but the
rights also of those with whom they have made common cause, should they
also be put in jeopardy. They must be fitted to play the great role in the
world, and particularly in this hemisphere, for which they are qualified by
principle and by chastened ambition to play.
It is with these ideals in mind that the plans of the Department of War for
more adequate national defense were conceived which will be laid before
you, and which I urge you to sanction and put into effect as soon as they
can be properly scrutinized and discussed. They seem to me the essential
first steps, and they seem to me for the present sufficient.
They contemplate an increase of the standing force of the regular army from
its present strength of five thousand and twenty-three officers and one
hundred and two thousand nine hundred and eighty-five enlisted men of all
services to a strength of seven thousand one hundred and thirty-six
officers and one hundred and thirty-four thousand seven hundred and seven
enlisted men, or 141,843, all told, all services, rank and file, by the
addition of fifty-two companies of coast artillery, fifteen companies of
engineers, ten regiments of infantry, four regiments of field artillery,
and four aero squadrons, besides seven hundred and fifty officers required
for a great variety of extra service, especially the all important duty of
training the citizen force of which I shall presently speak, seven hundred
and ninety-two noncommissioned officers for service in drill, recruiting
and the like, and the necessary quota of enlisted men for the Quartermaster
Corps, the Hospital Corps, the Ordnance Department, and other similar
auxiliary services. These are the additions necessary to render the army
adequate for its present duties, duties which it has to perform not only
upon our own continental coasts and borders and at our interior army posts,
but also in the Philippines, in the Hawaiian Islands, at the Isthmus, and
in Porto Rico.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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