The average American, tackling the subject of preparedness for the first time, will wade through reams of rhetoric until his mind is a mass of undigested military facts and fancies. Glib and generous are the admonitions to prepare; yet the sum and substance of much that is being spoken and written on the subject, when skimmed of patriotic phrases, leaves but a residue of glittering generalities.
After listening to all the speeches pronounced at national defense conventions, and after reading all the data appearing in print, the average American still realizes how little he knows of what is comprised in the term “citizen soldiery.”
If any economic revolution is to follow the drafting of the majority of our younger citizens into a national militia, the voter wants to know it before he supports the Continental, Federal or any other kind of army.
The economic side of the question is particularly puzzling. Our kings of commerce, who resolve their problems into terms of business, would rarely send their sons into the army to work up from the bottom. As a business proposition the army is negligible. Commercial and professional life offer more substantial rewards. On the other hand, if the available youth of the country were subjected to a short period of military service, would this handicap our national development? How has it worked out in other nations?
The three most thoroughly tested citizen services are the Swiss, the German and the French. The Australian system, although not tested long in time, has proved its value in a manner worthy of close study. But let us begin with the Swiss. All military authorities agree on the proposition that the descendants of William Tell have evolved a nearly perfect national militia system; but these authorities insist that the Swiss plan is essentially militia and not regular. This distinction need not bother us, for no one wants to turn the great mass of male Americans into professional soldiers. My dictionary defines militia as citizen soldiery, and it is on that basis I shall lay before you the workings of the Swiss system.
Briefly, military service is compulsory and universal, with almost no exemptions save for actual physical disability. Citizens excused from service, as well as those called but rejected for mental or physical deficiencies, in lieu of service pay three special taxes. As nearly fifty per cent of all men annually called to the colors are rejected, those taxes amount to quite a tidy revenue.
The military taxes must be paid by every Swiss citizen, at home or abroad, who is not enrolled in the active or reserve armies. So, in addition to the men rejected, all citizens excused from military service for whatever cause are liable for these assessments, which are of three kinds: first, a military poll tax of six francs (approximately $1.20); second, the military property tax, which is 0.15 per cent of assessed value of property exceeding in amount $200; and third, a military income tax of 1.5 per cent on income. Military taxes are paid only during military age limits; that is, from the ages of twenty to forty-four. As a concession to the depreciation of a man’s usefulness as a soldier with increasing age, the taxes are half the stated sums between the ages of thirty-two and forty-four.
Of course, these taxes are assessed in addition to all other payments to the State and they are rigorously exacted, but no one person can be assessed a total military tax to exceed $600.
With a people so devoted to physical exercise, the number of rejections must seem high. We reconcile the paradox when we understand that the physical tests of the Swiss army are more severe than in Germany or France. The Swiss system is extremely selective. For example, the endurance tests, adequately severe, take the character of long tramps across country, something after the fashion of the test former President Roosevelt inaugurated for swivel-chair army officers, and the men who show physical deterioration under this ordeal are passed over for the more fit. Of course, the organization of the Swiss army is based upon the expected average annual recruitment, and it would seriously inconvenience the training staff and tax the depots and supply departments if an unusual number of recruits were accepted. So whenever the “class” is exceptional, the standard is, in a sense, raised by more rigorous selection. In time of emergency, all available men conforming to regulation requirements would be accepted.
Theoretically, liability to serve begins when the citizen is seventeen years of age and ends at the close of his forty-eighth year. In practice, actual service begins at the age of twenty. For the first twelve years service is with the first-line troops, called the Auszug or Elite; the following eight years the Swiss passes in the first reserve, or Landwehr; and the last eight years of service is with the second reserve, or Landsturm. This division does no military service except in war time.
Under this system Switzerland, which boasts approximately 4,000,000 population, has developed a defensive army of 150,000 soldiers with the colors, 120,000 in the first reserve, and 250,000 in the second reserve—a total of over 500,000 trained fighting men. Pausing to consider that Switzerland is but one-third the size of the State of Pennsylvania, with about half as many inhabitants as crowd the Quaker commonwealth, we must admit that the Swiss system produces results. The total training of the Swiss infantry soldier is sixty-five days the first year (seventy-five days for field artillery and ninety days for cavalry), and only eleven days a year for seven (eight in case of cavalry) succeeding years. The first reserve, or Landwehr, is called out only once, for eleven days’ service.
Thus the first training period of the Swiss infantry soldier is one hundred and forty-two days. Beyond this time he spends the eleven days mentioned in the Landwehr with his company and in addition there are certain inspections prescribed that bring the entire time of training up to one hundred and sixty-three days.
The military instruction of the Swiss recruit follows accepted lines and begins with periods of elementary training in what is commonly known as the “awkward squad.” The teaching is carried on much the same as at West Point with the fourth-classmen or with newly joined recruits in any of our National Guard organizations. The recruits arrive and are divided into companies, sections, squads under competent instructors. The training proceeds. The men are taught the facings, marching in single and double rank, and given a full course of setting-up exercises. For a month the men are grounded in the rudiments of squad and section drill. The manual of arms is taken up as soon as the recruit has mastered the simple marching maneuvers and the facings. All instruction is conducted out of doors, and from the beginning war conditions are simulated. Sometimes stress of weather makes indoor drilling necessary, but this is rare. Armory drilling is scorned in Switzerland. In barracks the men are taught to keep their kit clean, to assemble and take apart their rifles, pointing and aiming drill, the theory of shooting and the Swiss regulations. Besides these military duties, recruits are taught to cook and are given some notions of hygiene.
With the exception of Sunday, work goes on without interruption for eight hours each day.
The Swiss recruit begins his target practice as soon as he has shown he is able to handle his army rifle. Each recruit is allowed ninety blank and two hundred ball cartridges. A man is allowed to expend fifteen ball cartridges in preliminary shooting, eighty in individual practice, and one hundred and five in field war practice. As soon as the recruits are graduated from the “awkward squad” and commence company drills, they are taken on marches, which are gradually extended till the men can cover twenty-five miles without unusual fatigue and spend two nights in bivouac.
The whole purpose of military training in Switzerland is to approximate war conditions as nearly as possible. So it has been said with truth that the progress of training of the Swiss militia is exactly the reverse in theory and fact of that in operation with the militia in the United States. Actual work under war conditions being the end and aim of the Swiss system, and the time of training being so restricted, the instruction begins and ends in the open country. To quote from a report of a former military attaché, Major T. B. Mott, U.S.A.:
“After a thorough course in the school of the soldier and squad, work out in the open fields is begun and the recruit comes face to face with the primitive problems of a campaign and learns at the very start ‘what he is there for.’ He is taught to march correctly in column, form line and march in line, but these exercises are made an incident of going to and coming from ‘work.’ The real business of his life, he learns, is to march steadily under a heavy pack, shoot straight, take cover, and obey his squad leader.... The fifth and sixth weeks entire are spent on a long march in rough country, where the battalion acts for the most part as if in the presence of an enemy, maneuvering by day, establishing outposts at night, and conducting combat exercises with ball cartridges.
“The contrast between this sort of militia training and that seen in America or England is most marked. The psychological effect on the men is certainly important. The first conceptions of the real business of a soldier, his whole reason for existence, are apt to produce a lasting impression on a young man. In our (American) service the recruit’s first enthusiasms are concentrated (and dissipated) in the grind of barrack-yard drill, where no man need, or is expected to use his head. As these same recruits, whether fourth-class cadets or regular enlisted men, grow old in the service, and in turn have to instruct others, the ideas crystallized in them during their first training prevail, and instinctively they give importance to the things that have been most deeply impressed upon them....
“In Switzerland there are no parades or reviews or drills beyond the company or battalion ... through the push of stern necessity the Swiss has sifted out the absolute essentials to fitness for war, and these essentials, field exercises and good shooting, he works at to the exclusion of everything else.”
Such in outline is the Swiss plan; but there are certain factors and conditions in the Alpine nation that make the development of a national militia a much simpler proposition than, for example, would be the case in the United States. In the first place, the Swiss are a nation of patriots. Reference again to my dictionary brings out the fact that a patriot is a lover of his country. Not to make any invidious insinuations about the quality of patriotism in this or any other land, if I were the chief of the World’s Bureau of Political Statistics, and had to compile a comparative table of the patriotic qualities of the peoples of the earth, I should begin with the Swiss and work down. A lover of his country. The phrase does not half convey how the Swiss feels toward his lakes and mountains. Why, he regards them with passionate adoration. The Swiss is a super-patriot.
The next factor bearing largely upon the problem of speeding up the soldier-making plant is the physique of the raw material. Search as you may the Swiss vocabularies—French, German and Italian are the languages spoken—and you will find no term for molly-coddle. After spending some time in Switzerland I am convinced that both soil and climate preclude the cultivation of the said human species. Of course, imported varieties thrive in the steam-heated hotels perched on the sides of the mountains, but no indigenous specimens exist. At a guess I should rate the Swiss as the physical equals of the best human beings produced on this globe. You cannot live in Switzerland without taking exercise. The character of the terrain demands it. So, making a virtue of necessity, the average Swiss, boy and man, takes more general exercise than the upper-class Englishman.
Finally, the tradition of William Tell inspires the race. The Swiss are a nation of sharpshooters. Up to within fifty years the organic law of the land prohibited any male from taking unto himself a mate until he furnished proof that he owned a musket and convinced the authorities that he knew how to use it effectively. One of the first provisions of the Swiss Constitution decreed that every citizen must be ready to defend his country. Under this law, as soon as the state could afford it, every male in the Alpine nation was furnished a gun and ammunition. The ancient idea persists today. Every village has its rifle range. Consistently the descendants of William Tell have adopted target shooting as their national game. In these perilous times it is a more-to-be-recommended sport than baseball.
Taking it for granted that some of my readers have not heard the story, I give here a conversation which took place several years ago, when the Emperor of Germany was the guest of the President of the Swiss Republic. Wilhelm was in a waggish mood.
“What is the total fighting force, Mr. President, Switzerland could muster in an emergency?” asked the Emperor.
“Some five hundred thousand men at a pinch,” the Swiss President replied.
“So few!” exclaimed Wilhelm. Then, with a mischievous twinkle in his large eyes, he continued, “Why, I could send two and a half million men to attack Switzerland. What would happen then?”
The President answered, with a rather bored air:
“In that case, sire, I fear each Swiss soldier would have to expend five cartridges.”
If you have ever seen the Swiss shooting clubs in action you will know the President was no braggart.
I am firmly convinced that, instead of a rattle, the infant Switzer is given a miniature rifle. From earliest days his associations center round firearms and musketry practice. Be he the child of even the poorest peasant, his first recollections are of seeing his father cleaning and polishing a Swiss army rifle. That weapon is a household god. Sometimes, if he is good, the youngster may draw the oiled rag through the barrel during the cleaning process. He will trail his father to the village range. He will hear scores discussed, his father’s chances of winning a local prize, and how warmly his mother would welcome the prize money. His youthful experiences may include following the great federal shooting matches at Fribourg.
Imagine the sensations of the American boy if he could combine a week’s picnicking with a championship baseball game each day, and you will conjure up something of the feeling of the Swiss child when attending the great triennial shooting competition. The prize winners in the shooting contests fill the same niche in the Swiss small boy’s heart-shrine as Christy Mathewson does with the American youth. In a sentence, the whole population of Switzerland interests itself in shooting, and can shoot.
Thus, the raw material furnished, being one part patriot, one part physical fitness and one part sharpshooter, the problem of producing an army in Switzerland is readily solved. All that is necessary is some supplementary special training in team-work. Every American knows the significance of that word, and I do not hesitate to pronounce that the whole secret of an efficient army is compassed in the team-work idea.
When he is nineteen the young Swiss presents himself at the mayor’s office of his town and undergoes a rigid physical and moderate mental examination. If he passes the physical test, which includes running and walking endurance trials, and fails mentally, he is sent to night school until it is time to report for military training. Physical failure debars a man from service. Such a misfortune is considered almost a social calamity. The town belles have little time for those rejected on this count. The severity of the examination is attested by the fact that, out of approximately 40,000 young men who annually present themselves, 20,000, or 50 per cent, are rejected.
The following spring the accepted recruit receives notice directing him to report to the nearest training ground—there are eight scattered over Switzerland—and then he begins his sixty-five days’ work in the Recruit School. Here the tyro soldier is supplied with a uniform, complete accoutrements for field service, a rifle and ammunition. This equipment is his property until the end of his liability for military service. When not in use he keeps the complete outfit in his home.
This Swiss militia is a business army. From the first the recruit is trained under field conditions—no fancy manual-of-arms exercises in million-dollar armories; no reviews; no parades. The recruits devote a full eight-hour day to intensive training. All exercises take place out of doors. The corps of instructors, a specially trained staff, who perform their never-ending duties with religious idealism, cram more specific military instruction into a given time than is the case with any other army in the world. A fourth class-man at West Point—and he has few idle moments—has a sinecure compared with the Swiss recruit. Night work, long, fatiguing marches and trench digging bring no let-up in the usual eight-hour-day schedule of exercises. The men come through the course as lean as leopards. Perceptions are razor sharp. Faculties are on edge. This sixty-five-day period of concentrated military toil completed, the militiaman goes home. He has a solid foundation in all the duties of a soldier.
The annual eleven-day terms of instruction are picnics compared with the Recruit School. Of course, a man is assigned to his home company. The work begins with an inspection and company drill. For two days this instruction proceeds in all detail; then the men are marched to a point where three other companies are met, thus forming a battalion. Exercises for this larger unit continue for two or three days, when the battalion marches to a regimental camp. The same process is repeated until the company passes through brigade, division and corps training. Sometimes the work terminates with a march in field order. All this instruction takes place within eleven days. Under this system, supplemented by universal musketry practice, Switzerland turns out a force entirely competent for home defense in 142 days’ actual training.
Is national life affected by this training favorably or unfavorably? A Swiss would laugh if you asked him that question. Discounting the patriotism of the people, you have the answer when you know that the majority of Swiss citizens who have migrated to other countries, return each year for their military service. Democracy is never imperiled, for all officers are selected step by step from the ranks. I have seen General Wille, the commander-in-chief of the forces of Switzerland, in Berne, and no officer could possibly show less military swank.
Comparative figures on the efficiency of men who undergo the military training and those who do not are not always obtainable. Insurance actuaries figure that it adds an average of five years to a man’s life. Since the system was inaugurated, the work of the juvenile courts has perceptibly slackened. The training helps in the matter of obedience and orderliness, and this shows in every field of industry. It is the opinion of some of the big business men of Switzerland that the plan is responsible for the speeding up of all work in factories. The habit of concentration developed because of intensive training, according to a Zurich steel magnate, is a mental improvement that has indirectly solved some of the Alpine nation’s tremendous railroad engineering problems.
To avoid military training interfering with economic life, the men for the different arms in the Swiss service are selected largely according to previous occupation. Engineers are assigned to the engineer corps, telegraphers to the telegraph companies, young farmers to the cavalry, the mountain guides and climbers to the mountain artillery. So, in his training every advantage is taken of a recruit’s trade or profession, both to help the service and improve the man’s efficiency. This method tends to lessen the amount of special training required.
Another feature of the Swiss plan is an insurance issued by the State on behalf of every soldier, so he is covered from loss in case of accident in the line of peace service. Again, a common-sense measure is a present-day tax against the cost of future wars. For fifty years and more Switzerland has been accumulating a fund to pay the pensions resulting from any coming conflict. This sum now amounts to $4,000,000.
Though the budgets vary somewhat each year, it can be stated that the approximate expenditure of Switzerland on the army, annually, is $7,000,000. Practically all of this amount is expended upon the 150,000 troops of the first line. The reserve forces cost the State little or nothing for their upkeep.
The remarkable showing in cost is due to the fact that officers and men are paid only during periods of training, and then merely sums considered sufficient to cover living expenses. No table of payments to regular troops being in existence, the militia do not expect a professional salary. The highest officer in the army in time of peace, a colonel, gets $3.40 a day while on instruction service, and $4.00 a day in active duty. Under all circumstances the private receives the sum of 16 cents per day. Here is another proof of the patriotism of the Swiss. The American soldier costs the nation about thirty times as much as the militiaman of Switzerland. In contra-distinction, it might be said that the Swiss army is thirty times as effective as the American. And this is not due so much to universal liability to training as to the thoroughness with which the Swiss have worked out all the details to enable the forces to take the field at an instant’s notice. It has been the custom to say that republics never prepare sufficiently for war emergency in times of peace. Switzerland is the exception to this rule. Twice France has proved to be unequal to long-expected attack. In the United States the tendency is to leave all questions connected with the organization of military forces for settlement until the moment war is declared. Such is said to be the distinctive trait of democracies. If this be true, the day is not far distant when popular systems of government will cease to exist. The Swiss, who are a people of the most advanced type of democracy, find no menace in an army of half a million men. The mountain nation sees nothing undemocratic in arranging every detail of the work entailed in organizing against war; no infringement of the rights of the people in teaching them to be able to meet an adversary upon at least equal terms. In the last analysis, it is most important for a republic to train its citizens for defense, as they are the bulwark that fends the freedom of the democracy.
Switzerland needs no committee of boosters. It comes as near the Utopian democracy in its concept as will be found on this footstool of Providence. Here every fit male has rigorous military training; yet the country remains without a taint of militarism.