The Army as a Career

I

IT is a delicate matter to offer advice concerning the choice of a career. The selection of his life work is an intimate personal problem for the young man. It is easy for an older generation to intrude upon this intimacy, and rudely to ignore the romantic visions of youth, from the practical viewpoint of age and mature knowledge.

Ours is a material age, and Americans particularly are accused of being a ‘material’ people. In a world now discouraged and discontented, we alone have very great national wealth, and many of our young men appear to make the acquisition of wealth their chief aim in life. Such men confound the aim with the means of its achievement. Under the history of most of our great fortunes, however, lies a record of accomplishment. The youngster who wins his way from poverty to riches must have energy, enthusiasm, and ambition. He who strives only for gold may lose the treasure that was his inheritance. Accomplishment is truly the American aim, and success must accord with the Christian ideal of service. Men’s lives are their answers to the question of destiny; and America has called those lives great which have been of greatest service to mankind.

In this word service lies the measure of a career. To youth, peering forward through the obscurity of inexperience, the necessity of service in his own life is not always apparent, nor its meaning clear. If he will believe that service is not a compulsory process of subordinating his own aims, but is rather the means which will enable him to achieve them, he can pursue his ambition with a minimum of the confusion and stumbling which are often the experience of youth. In groping for the answer to ‘ What is a career?’ I conclude that there are as many careers as there are men and women. There is, however, a common denominator of success for all, and in this sense the successful career is service.

In choosing a life work the normal young American of good physique, proper home-training, and average attainments has early to elect between the pursuit of mere wealth, with the power it brings, and a career of accomplishment with less of material reward. If thoughtful, and capable of weighing considerations before making a choice, he will probably decide for or against an army career in the light of answers to such questions as these: —

Will it be congenial employment? Shall I like it? Does it offer sufficient remuneration to enable me to live decently, to marry, and raise the family to which every normal young American should look forward?

How does its opportunity for a service to country and humanity balance as against a career of commercial activity, with the power that attends success in business life?

What opportunity does it offer for distinction, for fame, for such accomplishments as will make my name live beyond me?

The reply to the first of these questions is so much a matter of individual taste that it may be answered only by the youth standing at the threshold. The old army life, so dear to our frontier days, of a small selected community socially sufficient to itself; of summer Indian scouting and winter garrison schools; of long isolation on duty in the distant West, with an occasional leave of absence and return to Eastern civilization, is a phase of our history which has passed with the buffalo and the blanket Indian. It was a life of romance and adventure, wherein survived something of the chivalry of a bygone age, and in which the lives of fair women and brave men were sweetened by mutual dependence and self-sacrifice. The last of those who knew it and loved it are now at an age when all the associations of youth are fast receding in the purple haze of memory. In its place have come tours of duty in the Philippines, Panama, Alaska, and Hawaii, stations near the larger cities, and much service with the citizen soldiery. So much of the future duty of our Regular-Army officer in time of peace will be with the National Guard and Organized Reserve that he can hardly expect more than two years with Regular troops in each grade, as he climbs the commissioned ladder. The posts with Regular troops will be small, and the social activities will depend upon the nearest city rather than on the garrison life which was so attractive in the Old Army. His brother officers will still be gentlemen — for the traditions of ‘an officer and a gentleman ‘ have stood the test of time, and outlasted many storms of legislative displeasure. Duty, Honor, Country, are still the watchwords of the Regular service — as the record of many a gallant officer, and many modest headstones in our national cemeteries and among the hills of France bear witness!

On duty detached from troops, the officer will find himself quite often the associate of civilians whose individual incomes far exceed his own. Since the World War the necessities of national economy have imposed upon the Regular Army much hardship through enforced life in temporary camps and cantonments. There are to-day many army families living in unpainted, unplastered wooden buildings, erected in 1917 for an average life of three years, and located in more or less barren and unattractive surroundings. These hardships are less felt, however, than would be the case in civil life; for the entire military community shares the same fate, and is spared comparisons with wealthy neighbors. Many an old wooden gymnasium, once used to train the great overseas army, or an old Liberty theatre, in which the Welfare Workers entertained the homesick recruits of 1917 and 1918, now lends itself well to decoration, and witnesses within its dingy walls hospitable occasions graced by gentle army women. The enjoyment of such gatherings is not destroyed by the flavor of a Spartan environment.

One of the interesting phases of army life has always been the care-free manner in which an entire army community submits to being transplanted from the midst of a city to the frontier, or to tropical wilds, without much disruption of its social activities, and even with an increased development of camaraderie. When the nation returns to normal financial prosperity, and the reaction in Congress which follows each of our wars has once more spent itself, the proper housing of the Regular Army will doubtless receive its due attention, and conditions which are now disgraceful to our country will be remedied.

No man who yearns for sheltered case and the fleshpots is apt to adopt a military career. He who seeks the companionship of gentlemen and gentlewomen, and the attractions of a disciplined and orderly life, will find them in the army. For one who enjoys working with men in the open, with occasional opportunity for foreign duty, and the constant knowledge that he is preparing himself and those he commands to serve his country in her time of need, I know of no career more attractive than that of the American army officer. The profession of arms is one of the oldest, and there is none more honorable.

The remuneration of the army officer is quite moderate. He, frankly, is not so well paid as some branches of skilled labor, nor so liberally remunerated as many positions in civil life above the grade of laborer, but which demand less of education and character than does the army. The compensation of a major-general after twentysix years of service, including all allowances, may not under the law exceed nine thousand seven hundred dollars per year, less the liberal subtraction for income tax. A lieutenant in his first three years of service receives per year some twenty-three hundred dollars, including all allowances. Formerly army pay corresponded to rank, and was presumed to increase with added responsibility. It is now based upon length of service, and does not necessarily correspond either to grade or to responsibility. At the discretion of the President it may be slightly varied each year, to correspond to the rise or fall of the cost of living. There are fairly liberal allowances for quarters when not furnished in kind, and certain increases for growing family responsibilities. Medical attendance is free for members of the army and their families.

The average young man is apt to gauge a place by its remuneration and, from the foregoing, army pay may not seem attractive. With the army system of retirement, however, the pay may be considered in the nature of income drawn upon the investment of a commission. The problem of saving for old age does not have to be solved in quite the same way that it is by the civilian. Insurance can safely be carried, since steady pay is not threatened by sickness or absence from duty. In case of physical incapacity for active service, due to accident or broken health, the army officer is retired for life upon three quarters of the pay he is drawing at the time of such retirement. At the age of sixty-four, he is similarly retired. After thirty years of service he may, on application, be retired, at the discretion of the President; and after forty years he can demand it. If an officer dies while on the active list, his widow will receive a small pension; if he dies after retirement, the law provides no such pension. There is therefore the continual urge of economy throughout life, and constant facing of the fact that there is no other class of public servant from whom so much is expected in proportion to his pay as is exacted from the army officer.

The matter of pay is important when the officer contemplates marriage. In many walks of life wealth is the measure of the young man’s ability to support a family, and determines his eligibility in the mind of the potential father-in-law. This is not so literally followed in the army. There the rewards are of a different sort, and it is the unworldly fashion of the service to prefer reputation to riches, and honor to opulence.

A commission in the army gives the entry to as good society as there is in the world; and since frugality is demanded of all, there is little competitive dressing or spending. There is no stratum of our modern life in which there are relatively more happy marriages than in our good American army. In mere statistics army marriages stand next to the bottom in divorce ratios. In these days of the high cost of living no army officer can maintain a family on his pay without practising close economy, but in normal times, while lacking luxury, the life is comfortable. The delightful associations of army life make up in a measure for the absence of luxury. Service has its compensations.

The army career compares well, in its possibilities for service to country and humanity, with the power and opportunity that attend success in business life. The modern army officer must be a composite of business man, lawyer, statesman, and priest, as well as soldier. There is a popular misconception as to the usefulness of an army career, due to the belief that because soldiers are dressed alike, and drilled in masses, they are therefore stamped in a mould which crushes originality and initiative. There must be in the military organization discipline and teamwork; but beyond this, the army of a free people is made up of individuals, each with his own hopes and ambitions, and his own ideas of accomplishment. It is this development of individuality which has distinguished the American soldier above those of other countries, and which indeed is principally responsible for the success which attended our arms in the World War. The common tie among our soldiers is the sense of service. Their discipline during the World War was largely a self-imposed code, founded on their belief that it was necessary, in order to accomplish that for which they had come to France. In the army one serves the country, while finding at the same time an opportunity for development along a chosen line.

In the long uneventful drowsy days of peace between our Spanish-American War and the stirring times of nineteen seventeen, the average American citizen thought of his Regular Army only as an organization which was comfortably housed in military posts, whose original location had been due to something connected with Indian wars and frontier protection, or as standing guard at picturesque and rather useless old forts, conveniently situated with reference to fashionable summer resorts along the seacoast. He understood that it drilled a little, danced a good deal, paraded on national holidays, and performed a number of other vague and unimportant duties — all at considerable cost to the taxpayer. If it be true that the ideal self-government can come only through knowledge, the average American citizen’s pre-war knowledge of his Regular Army would have entitled him to little participation in those historic institutions through which he thinks that he governs himself.

With the coming of the World War, the transformation of our young manhood into the great National Army, to be commanded and administered largely by officers trained in the Regular Army, brought home to the average citizen the fact that in the regular establishment lay much of the hope for success in the great military adventure which our country was undertaking beyond the sea. A year’s contact on the Rio Grande border during the threatened trouble with Mexico had brought the National Guard and Regular Army into closer understanding than had ever before existed in their history, and had strengthened their mutual esteem. The Regular Army, as the repository of the military traditions of our country, the exponents of the latest military teachings of the world, with the indispensable habit of discipline, and long experience in handling soldiers, enjoyed the confidence of the citizen soldier to a higher degree than ever before.

The national administration wisely kept high army appointments out of politics when we entered the war, and to a larger extent than had been the case in our other wars made its appointments in the higher grades on a merit basis. It was thought as wise to keep the highest command in the hands of the Regular Army as it is to appoint only lawyers to the Supreme Court, and to keep only experienced navigators on the bridge during a storm at sea. The war ended so quickly after we began to get our divisions to France in effective numbers that there was little opportunity for that rise to distinction through the actual practice of war which, during any long conflict in which our country has hitherto been engaged, has always brought to high rank our best type of citizensoldier. Consequently the commanderin-chief, the army commanders, corps commanders, and the majority of the division and brigade commanders were officers of the Regular Army. So too, in the higher grades of the staff, the leaven of the mass came from the Regular establishment.

The strength and support brought to our military establishment, both in the army and in the War Department, through the splendid men who came to it from every field of business and professional life, can never be calculated. It was the support of her gallant sons which has never failed our country in her time of need, the memory of which may well alleviate the indifference that still half stuns the demobilized soldier in this land of short memories and brief regrets. With all this array of business and professional training at the disposition of the high command, and the rallying of our incomparable young manhood to the colors, the intelligent direction which the Regular Army was able to give to our military effort resulted in a share of the credit for the final triumph of the Allied arms, the assessment of which we may confidently leave to history.

Since December 1918, when the victorious armies of the Allies marched to the Rhine, the presence of our contingent there, though small in numbers, has been the strongest steadying influence for peace in that war-weary region. Its attitude has been that of a mediator, seeking to allay misunderstandings and irritation, and so conducting itself as to reflect credit on the American name. The hauling-down of our flag from the silent fortress of Ehrenbreitstein in January last, closed, at least for the time, our military adventure across the Atlantic, — the greatest the world has ever seen, — in which the nation transported its men by millions across three thousand miles of ocean, and counted the cost in billions, as well spent in a good cause.

II

From the days of Lewis and Clarke, in the first years of the nineteenth century, the development and settlement of our country was largely through the agency of the Regular Army. It conducted practically all the preliminary explorations. It constructed the early roads, built bridges and canals, conducted the surveys and made the maps in the winning of the West. Army engineers initiated most of the accurate methods now employed in our geodetic, topographic, and hydrographic surveys. When our pioneers went west, they traveled by routes laid and constructed by the army, and were protected by its frontier stations. They settled on lands surveyed by it, and the validity of their titles rested on such surveys. The linking of these outposts of civilization with the East was accomplished through railroads located, and in many cases constructed, by the army. Up to 1855 practically all railroads in this country were projected, built, and sometimes operated by our military establishment. The Baltimore and Ohio, the Erie, Northern Central, Boston and Providence, New York, New Haven and Hartford, and Boston and Albany were thus located, constructed, and initially operated.

An army officer built the best locomotive of his time, after his own designs. Another was chosen by the Russian Tsar to build the railroad from Moscow to St. Petersburg. He died before its completion, but a brother officer carried his work to successful termination. The army built the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and the old Cumberland Pike from Maryland to Missouri. Practically all our federal and state boundaries were surveyed by it. The Washington Monument, the wings and dome of the national Capitol, the old Post Office Building, the Government Printing Office, the Library of Congress, the War College, the Agricultural Building, the Washington Aqueduct, the parks of the District of Columbia, are the work of military engineers. Army engineers supervised the Lincoln Memorial. Their part in the river, port, and harbor development for a century past is well known, and these activities are still going on as part of a coördinated scheme for the entire country. They are studying present commercial facilities, the hinterlands which can be served, their proper development, and the factors which advance or retard their progress.

Within the present generation our country has faced the problems — always difficult for a representative government — of new possessions. Alaska, Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and the Canal Zone have presented each its problem, and the major part of the solution has been directed by or through the Regular Army. In the Klondike it was the army that opened the harbors, and built the roads and trails leading to the gold. It surveyed the lands and policed the frontiers. The link which bound the Klondike to civilization was the cable laid and operated by the army.

The Philippines, Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, and Panama all have histories of achievement, histories in which the forces of civilization have struggled against reaction and backwardness. That civilization is triumphant is due largely to the constructive work of our Regular Army. Building up public utilities, eradicating decimating diseases, educating the children, creating institutions of self-government, and protecting such institutions from retrogression — in all these the Regular Army has left its record of the day’s duty well done. These are generalities (rue of all lands where our flag has flown outside of our continental limits.

To particularize as to Panama, we made success out of the failure of our predecessors on the Isthmus. The Canal was built under the worst possible initial conditions of sanitation, and in the face of tremendous engineering difficulties. In the last four months of 1922 our government collected a million dollars per month in canal tolls. Seventy-five great steamship lines serve the world through the Panama Canal. Its equipment as a base for fuel, repair, and supply is complete. Incidentally, it is a tremendous military asset for national defense. So long as it remains in our possession it doubles the value of our navy, though its total cost was only approximately that of ten modern battleships, with an average life of ten years before overtaken by obsolescence. Our occupation already exerts a powerful influence over the neighboring nations to the south. They are beginning to undertake necessary improvements under the stimulus of increased prosperity brought by the Canal. The building of the Canal was a monumental accomplishment worthy of any nation in any age.

So much for the peace-time opportunity for service to mankind and country which the army afforded its officers in the era ending with our entrance into the World War. After the Armistice the cry of American Relief stirred the army in France almost as had in other days the slogan, ‘Westward Ho!' Except for the titular head, and some minor officials and employees, the American Relief in Europe after the Armistice consisted of three hundred and twenty officers, and nearly five hundred enlisted soldiers constituted the missions and agencies which distributed relief. In addition, a great amount of convoy and courier service, and much handling of supplies, was done by the American Expeditionary forces. The American Relief was little more than an army activity. Russian Relief has been a similar activity, whose management and administration have been principally the work of army officers.

Our pioneering days in distant lands have perhaps ended. On the eve of a period of construction and progress, which we hope will be one of the greatest our country has known, the army is, however, once more a pioneer. A very significant influence in standardization of manufacture has been exerted by the War Department in its planning for the mobilization of national industries in time of war. The tractor industry has come of military experiments in design of tanks and artillery tractors. The activities of our air service are preparing the way for an aviation industry, and keeping the art alive in the meantime. The aerial development of the army is not only real preparedness, but promises an extension to commercial life. The army has likewise pioneered in radio. It modifies commercial apparatus for military purposes, but its research and development are continually presenting solutions of difficult problems. Among these are the loop, which to some extent superseded outside antennæ, and led the way to the radio compass; besides the invention which applied radio principles to commercial telephones, and made possible broadcasting over telegraph, telephone, and even power lines. The army telephonesystem is second to only one other on our continent.

The activities of the Army Chemical Warfare Service promise one of the greatest opportunities for service. The deadly mustard gas is being hopefully tested for use in treatment of tuberculosis. The use of war gases in medical treatment of influenzas and similar diseases is very encouraging. This branch of the army has apparently solved the problem of safe and effective fumigation of ships, warehouses, and other insect and animal refuges. Teargases have been demonstrated as effective in controlling criminals, and in supressing jail deliveries and riots. The gas-mask has been tried out with success for mining, and the army has produced the only substance protecting miners against carbon-monoxide gas. The control of the boll weevil will come from the same source. The Chemical Warfare Service has led the way to the foundation of an American dye industry that should one day be one of the great national assets.

The army has played an important part in the development of the steel industry. It was the original market for steel, and led the entire industry in the specifications for design. The army specifications for high-grade steel have generally been fifty per cent more severe than any others, thus promoting the production of superior quality. Alloy steels were introduced by the army ordnance department. For years the Watertown Arsenal was the leader in metallurgical study, preceding the creation of the Bureau of Standards, and it exerted a strong influence in stimulating the work of the technical schools. Scientific management was largely born of army arsenal methods, and the first card-system of shopreturns was devised at Frankfort.

The Federal Power Commission, organized under the War Department, is now studying the proposed development of waterpower in excess of twenty million horsepower, or more than twice the existing power development of our country, and more than the combined potential resources of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Arctic and Baltic drainages of Russia — the principal water-power region of Europe. The chief engineer of the Commission and his assistants and the chief counsel are army officers. Within two years it has studied projects for development of resources under federal control amounting to six times the aggregate of projects for the development of resources under federal control in the preceding twenty years.

Army engineers lead in flood prevention and are assisting in forest protection. During the past year over one hundred thousand square miles of forest lands were constantly and effectively patrolled by army fliers, and over fifty per cent of the twelve hundred and forty-eight fires occurring in the national preserves of California, in the critical three months of the danger season, were reported by the aerial patrols.

The memory of the service of the army in the San Francisco earthquake in administering the forces of order is still gratefully cherished at the Golden Gate. In the Galveston disaster of 1915 it made a record of heroic achievement. Its constructive value was fell in the Mont Pelée cataclysm, and during every great Ohio and Mississippi flood, for many years.

The chief coördinator under the Director of the Budget is an army officer, and is assisted by nine others. The army furnishes a governor-general to the Philippines, an ambassador to Cuba, a fuel administrator to the great State of New York, a Director of the Budget, the active member of the Alaskan Roads Commission, the governor and the chief engineer of the Panama Canal and Zone, and the chief administrator of the railways of Alaska. The Assistant-Secretary of War, with his army assistants, is performing one of the most complicated and extensive tasks that has ever confronted an industrial organizer, in the army plans for industrial mobilization in event of war.

The Act of June 1920, gave this country the first real military policy it has ever had, and made it permanent, subject only to the pleasure of Congress. The function of the Regular Army in this three-part army of the United States, is the chief concern of this act, and is the paramount opportunity of our times for service to kin and country. The military policy itself is a conservative insurance policy against war and internal disturbances. In addition to assisting to train the National Guard and Organized Reserve, the Regular Army constitutes the first line, which, in time of national danger, would guard strategic points on our frontiers against invasion, while behind such protection there would be formed the armies necessary to guarantee our national safety in the war to follow. It further constitutes at the present time the dependable land force available in case of internal disturbance, and against destructive radical forces which are steadily working to overthrow our governmental institutions and loot the products of our industry. It is insurance of the participating kind. The training for national defense will always bring returns to the country in the physical and hygienic betterment of the young manhood of the nation. The draft statistics of the World War showed that about fifty per cent of our young men have disabling defects, most of which can be corrected by physical training and instruction. This is one of the most serious and interesting aspects of the army opportunity.

This is an age when many serious people are studying problems of race betterment. The World War gave the opportunity for a survey of the physical condition of the nation. The majority of our World War recruits were narrowchested, awkward, and under weight in proportion to height. Many basic diseases and disabilities, such as weak arches, weak backs, malaria, social diseases, incipient tuberculosis, and numerous other troubles were discovered in time and eradicated. Inoculations and prophylactic treatments resulted in new minimum records for prevalence. The occurrence of these diseases throughout the country has been much lessened as a result of the medical administration and training of young men during the war. Camps were made models of neatness, and personal sanitation and hygiene were taught as fundamentals. This experience will largely govern the administration and conduct of the summer training camps under the Act of June 4, 1920.

Such achievements are the work, not only of the medical officer, but of his line brother. Yellow fever, malignant malaria, and tropical anæmia have largely disappeared from our neighbors to the south as the result of great constructive work by the Army Medical Corps. It is a work in which line and staff pull together in the team. The influence of the summer camps is a continual education against intemperance in all its forms. There can be no higher usefulness than to share in this regenerative work. The common thought of the best statesmen in our hundred and fifty years of national life has been that a programme for continued peace is best served by plans for defense. The army has always stood for peace. ‘ I know of no war in which America has been engaged, offensive or defensive, which was brought about by army pressure, or, indeed, stimulated by military desire,’ said Secretary of War Baker.

The power that comes to the successful leader in civil life is very great. With such power comes the obligation for service. It is met in a very splendid way by many great chiefs of finance and industry, of whom all Americans are proud, and to whom humanity owes a great debt. But in civil life such opportunity comes to a man as the result of success, and when his years are few. In the army the opportunity is present all through life, and the improvement of such opportunity for service is itself the success one seeks, and it depends only upon the individual desire and ability. The accumulated experience which makes the officer of value to his country in a time of great emergency is itself born of what he has made of his opportunity for service to others.

What does the army offer in the distinction which ambitious men seek? How shall one’s name live after him? Does the military brow ever wear the laurel? The Regular Army has furnished two Presidents of the United States and one of the Confederate States. Senators, cabinet ministers, members of the lower House, state officials, ambassadors, and ministers have been proud to point to a Regular Army record. The army has furnished forty-six presidents to universities and colleges, and a great many professors. It has graduated eighty-seven presidents of railroads and other great corporations. A bishop of the Episcopal Church, a graduate of West Point, gave his life as a lieutenant-general in the Confederate Army. The military establishment has to its credit a great number of editors, clergymen, engineers, bankers, judges, consuls, artists, and authors.

History will honor the names of a great many professional soldiers of the United States Army. The verdict of history is generally just. In our country, or any country with a tendency toward pure democracy, the professional soldier seldom finds favor with the politicians. It is well recognized that the regular officer and soldier, being without the vote, are generally without much serious representation among the statesmen of the Republic. The reaction which seems inevitable in the United States after every war has sometimes resulted in belittling the accomplishments of our successful soldiers during their lifetime. The full recognition of our great leaders of the Civil War was long delayed, and in some cases never granted. Sheridan received a full generalcy only when the world knew that he was dying. Forty years after the Civil War was ended, a succession of lieutenantgenerals was appointed who had held only insignificant rank in that great conflict, but Meade and Thomas went to their graves unrewarded.

A certain grim philosophy prevails among officers of the army, and it is recognized that the best reward that can come to the American officer as he nears the end of his career is the approbation of those with whom he has served. If those who knew him best, who have shared with him the dangers of flood and field, the vicissitudes of peace and war, of prosperity and adversity, appraise him as a real man, when the riderless horse with the reversed boots is led slowly behind the flag-draped caisson, and the volleys and the trumpets sound in his honor for the last time, the servant of his country may well trust his fame to the verdict of history.

There is much about the army that is naturally dear to one who has given his best years to it. The heart of any true soldier must tell him that his is one of the noblest professions. Prophecy of the future does not lie within the soldier’s domain, yet he, like others, may read the future by the past. Looking backward, he can find predecessors among those who in all ages have been great through service. At the waning of his days, if he has kept the faith and held aloft his standards, Duty, Honor, Country, he who chooses the army as a career will merit that tribute which the poet gives — and which can be won by neither wealth nor wile: —