The Unpopular History of the United States by Uncle Sam Himself/Introduction
INTRODUCTION
For three years the world has been talking about war. So has Uncle Sam. Everybody listens. So do I. Yet, while listening with both ears, I fail to comprehend. I know absolutely nothing of military science. Do you?
Highly specialized officers have explained to me the object of certain mass formations, problems of range and parabola, and remaining velocities. All of which goes right over my head. War news and technical discussions produce little or no effect upon me except that of helpless horror. And that is how the average American feels, although dimly realizing that the life or death of his country, and of world-wide republican institutions, hang in the balance. The average American is eager and anxious to know, so he can do something, and do it well.
Our Uncle Sam, being a plain-spoken and practical person, admits that he generally makes a muss of soldiering, and has set his head to find out why. Uncle Sam has been lying awake at nights ruminating over the salty facts. Having learned better, he does better. He is doing much better now, and means to get ahead of the best before he plows this furrow to the end. Uncle Sam can accomplish whatever he tries, and, believe me, he is trying.
But he needs help, help from you and help from me, from every loyal citizen in the United States. Therefore Uncle Sam desires that all of us should consider what has gone wrong in the past, so that we may avoid the same blunders in the future. Just now we have the errors of our allies to warn us, and no legislator with mule sense should set his foot in a hole when there is a sign board standing right before his nose to point it out.
The average American does not understand war. This present affair is so prodigious that it passes beyond his mental jurisdiction. As for myself, martial science must be reduced to words of one syllable, or I don’t get it.
It goes against the grain to accept statements that we hate to believe, facts that jostle us out of pet notions which are the pride and heritage of every school boy. Patriotic speakers are constantly declaiming “Paul Revere,” “Ring Out for Liberty,” and “Barbara Frietchie,” but never disturb the fakes and the fabrications.
I was a grown man, thirty years old, struggling to hoe off my beard with a safety razor, before it dawned upon me that the military history of my country had not been one long unbroken series of Star Spangled victories. Like all other school boys I had been fed up on 4th of July orations. I believed in fairies, in Jack the Giant Killer, in the Boys of ’76. I almost believed that a lone and gray-haired farmer with a fife, and a bloody rag around his head, flanked by two small drummer boys, had chased the British army from off our sacred continent. I half-way believed that. Did you?
The truth is that Uncle Sam has abandoned the precarious system of volunteer militia, which was born with this republic, and adopted the essentially democratic principle that national defense is the paramount duty of every citizen. Defense of the republic—like taxes and jury duty—constitutes an obligation that cannot be laid upon the backs of a few willing horses who would be ridden to death. All must serve their turn; each must do his bit.
This fair and equal method has been put in operation. It is working well, so well that we Americans, without too greatly shocking our national pride, can now turn back to the discards and discuss the reasons.
Patriotic school histories teach us that we have been victorious in all our wars. Millions of intelligent men accept these statements, stand convinced of our natural prowess, and see no cause for changing a method under which we have apparently achieved success. But the present war has overturned all theories, established new standards, and the triumph of yesterday becomes the inevitable failure of to-day. To provide against the possibility of failure Uncle Sam now pursues the most businesslike plan of organizing and employing his enormous potential strength. Things are being done, in Washington and throughout the country, competently done, to build an army from the bottom up, and of magnificent material. They are doing what has never been done before, training forty thousand officers—forty thousand youngsters who throw into their work every faculty of nerve and brain and sinew that they possess. Whatever men may accomplish, that accomplishment will be theirs; of that the nation can rest assured. Yet the bulk of our people, no matter how wise and patriotic, are uneducated in military details. The grim facts of our blunders may startle you as they startled me. You may be incredulous, just as I refused to believe. Bear this in mind: No statement is herein made except upon authority of Brevet Major-General Emory Upton, as contained in his “Military Policy of the United States.” These are no hostile slanders to be resented and refuted, but are expressly endorsed by our own government, and furnish the most potent reasons for casting aside the volunteer system so prolific of disaster.
Each detail might be verified by page references to General Upton’s work, but it is considered better not to confuse and complicate so brief a synopsis.
For the purpose of further informing the people as to this radical change of their military system, Uncle Sam has given me his reasons in language so simple and direct that even you and I may understand.