[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 52 (Monday, April 28, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1897-H1900]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FUTURE OF THE U.S. MILITARY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Skelton] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, today is the first of three speeches I 
intend to make on the future of the U.S. military. This afternoon I 
will address the principles that should shape U.S. military strategy in 
coming years. In the second speech I will discuss whether projected 
budgets are sufficient to support U.S. strategy. In the final speech, I 
intend to consider how we are treating our most important resource for 
protecting national security, our people, the men and women who serve 
in the Armed Forces and the civilian personnel who support them.
  I intend to begin each of these speeches by making a simple point 
that Congress is responsible for ensuring that U.S. Armed Forces are 
prepared to preserve and protect the security of the United States. Let 
me emphasize the key phrase in this statement: Congress is responsible.
  Under the Constitution, it is the duty of the Congress, not of the 
President, let alone of the Secretary of Defense or the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff, who are not constitutional officers, to determine the size and 
composition of the Armed Forces. Article I, section 8 of the 
Constitution, which lists the powers of the Congress, makes this clear. 
It assigns to Congress the powers to raise and support armies, to 
provide and maintain a navy and to make rules for the Government and 
regulation of the land and naval forces.
  It falls to the Congress, therefore, to ensure that our military 
strength is adequate to defend our Nation and our national interests. 
Indeed, there is no more important duty placed upon us as Members of 
this institution than to provide for the common defense. It is a duty 
which we owe not only to our fellow citizens today, but to the 
Americans of tomorrow.
  We have a duty, as well, not to squander, through short-sightedness 
and neglect, the sacrifices which generations before us have made to 
grant us the peace and security with which we are blessed. We have a 
duty to future generations of Americans to pass on to them the legacy 
of peace, prosperity, and freedom which has been bequeathed to us.
  It is the Congress, therefore, which is ultimately responsible for 
approving a strategy to guide U.S. military policy and, above all, for 
establishing a proper balance between national strategy and the 
resources available to carry it out.
  Historically, Congress has often failed in this responsibility. In 
the years since the end of the cold war, many commentators have noted 
how badly the Nation has handled the aftermath of major conflicts in 
the 20th century. After World War I, after World War II, and after the 
war in Vietnam, we allowed our military forces to deteriorate to a 
degree that cost us dearly in the conflicts that inevitably arose later 
on.
  In fact, such a failure is not unique to this century. A few years 
ago, I discovered a speech made in 1923 by then-Army Maj. George C. 
Marshall that discerned a similar, though not quite identical, pattern 
of failure even earlier in our history.
  Major Marshall, of course, later became the most distinguished 
American soldier and statesman of this century, as Chief of Staff in 
the Army in World War II, Secretary of State in the early years of the 
cold war, and Secretary of Defense during the war in Korea.
  ``From the earliest days of this country,'' said Marshall in 1923, 
``the Regular Army was materially increased in strength and drastically 
reduced with somewhat monotonous regularity.'' It was perhaps 
understandable, he said, that there should be a reduction in the size 
of the military following a war. But, in fact, he discovered the 
pattern was not quite so simple.
  Often, following a war, the size of the Regular Army was increased 
above what it had been before the conflict, but then, within a very few 
years, or even a few months, in some cases it was reduced below the 
pre-war level. In struggling to comprehend this inconsistency, Marshall 
offered the following explanation:
  ``It appears that when the war was over, every American's thoughts 
were centered on the tragedies involved in the lessons just learned. So 
the Congress, strongly backed by public opinion, determined that we 
should be adequately prepared for the future, and accordingly enacted a 
law well devised for this express purpose. However, in a few months, 
the public mind ran away from the tragedies of the war and reasons 
therefor and became obsessed with the magnitude of the public debt and 
the problem of its reduction. Forgetting almost immediately the bitter 
lesson of unpreparedness, they demanded and secured the reduction of 
the Army, which their representatives had so recently increased for 
very evident reasons.''
  It is this pattern of failure that I fear we may now be repeating. 
For my own part, I have been debating whether the current era resembles 
more the period of about 1903 or the period of about 1923. At the turn 
of the century, the Nation had just won a short, popular war against 
Spain, after which, support for the Army and Navy ran high. But within 
a few years, funding for the military was reduced, in part because the 
world seemed to be comfortably at peace, and many believed that war had 
become impossible.
  Just a few years later, all of Europe was in flames, and by 1917, the 
United States had declared war on Germany, but without any degree of 
military preparedness.

                              {time}  1415

  Marshall recalled seeing United States soldiers in France at the end 
of 1917 marching through the ice and snow ``without shoes and with 
their feet wrapped in gunny-sacks.'' The allies had to continue to hold 
the line for more than a year before the United States was prepared to 
participate in the final battles that brought the Great War to a close.
  In 1923, the United States had recently participated in what was then 
the most horrible war in human history. But the public mind, as 
Marshall lamented, had already forgotten the lessons of that war and 
the costs of unpreparedness. The majority in Congress could not foresee 
circumstances in which the United States would again embroil itself in 
Europe's conflicts, and support for military expenditures had 
dissolved. Less than 20 years later, we were engaged in an even more 
destructive global war, for which we were also terribly unprepared.
  Today, in the aftermath of a successful conclusion of the cold war 
with the USSR, we are well on our way to repeating the same mistake of 
denuding ourselves militarily. The world is no less turbulent or 
dangerous than it was during the cold war. Regional threats, along with 
rising terrorism and the possibility of nuclear and chemical weapons 
proliferation, should cause us to keep up our guard.
  Today, a few of my colleagues frequently challenge me with a question

[[Page H1898]]

that surely echoed through these Halls in 1903 or 1923. ``What is the 
enemy,'' I am asked? And with that question, there are many others. Why 
continue to support more spending for defense when the cold war is 
over? Why plan for two major regional wars when a second threat did not 
materialize during the Persian Gulf war? Why continue to pursue 
expensive, new, advanced weapons when U.S. technology was so dominant 
in Operation Desert Storm, and when no other nation is spending nearly 
what we do on military hardware? Why keep a robust force structure and 
a fair-sized personnel level?
  Today, and in the two speeches to follow, I will provide answers to 
those narrower questions. But to the broader question of what is the 
enemy, there is no clear and simple answer; as, indeed, there was no 
clear and simple answer that Marshall could have given in 1923.
  For my part, I think any attempt to see into the future is like 
looking into a kaleidoscope. We never know what new pattern will 
emerge. We only know that the colors making up the pattern will remain 
the same. In viewing the future of international affairs, we cannot 
foresee the new shape of the world, but we know that the colors are 
those of the human condition, including all the traits of human 
character and all the circumstances of human life that have ever led to 
war. Those colors have not changed, and the need to prepare for 
conflict has not diminished merely because an era of conflict with a 
particular foe has ended and a new era, of yet uncertain pattern, is 
emerging.
  So to respond to my colleagues who ask, ``what is the enemy,'' I say, 
true; today we cannot define precisely what the enemy is or will be. We 
can say, however, that we will fail in our responsibility in this 
Congress if, once again, we allow the armed forces to be unprepared for 
the enemies that may emerge.
  In fact, as I will argue today, a failure to support a strong 
military in the present historical circumstances would be even more 
unfortunate and more unforgivable than in the past for two reasons.
  First, today the United States is the only Nation able to protect the 
peace. In the past we were fortunate that allies were able, often by 
the narrowest of margins, to hold the line while we belatedly prepared 
for war. Bismarck once said: ``God protects fools, and the United 
States.''
  Today, no one else is capable either of preventing conflict from 
arising in the first place, or of responding decisively if a major 
threat to the peace does occur. While I trust in God, I believe God has 
given us the tools we need to keep peace, and it is our task to use 
them wisely.
  Second, and perhaps most importantly, if we fail in our 
responsibility to maintain U.S. military power, the United States, and, 
indeed, the world as a whole, may lose an unprecedented opportunity to 
construct an era of relative peace that could last for many, many 
years.
  Today, our military strength is the foundation of a relatively secure 
international order in which small conflicts, though endemic and 
inevitable, will not decisively erode global stability. As such, our 
military strength is also a means of preventing the growth of one or 
more new powers that could, in time, constitute a threat to peace and 
evolve into the enemy we do not now foresee.
  Because of this, the very limited investment required to maintain our 
military strength, though somewhat larger than we are making right now, 
is disproportionately small compared to the benefits we, and the rest 
of the world, derive from it.
  My fellow Missourian, Harry S Truman, stated this clearly: ``We must 
be prepared to pay the price for peace, or assuredly we will pay the 
price of war.'' These two premises, that the United States alone is 
able to protect the peace, and that adequate, visible U.S. military 
power may prevent new enemies from arising in the future, are, it seems 
to me, the cornerstones of a sound strategy for the years to come. 
These are the premises that will guide my evaluation of the current 
reassessment of defense policy, called the Quadrennial Defense Review, 
or QDR, that the Defense Department is due to deliver to the Congress 
on May 15.
  In the remainder of this statement I want to discuss what I have 
heard of the strategy that is evolving in the process of the 
Quadrennial Defense Review, the QDR, what I see as its strengths, and 
how I think it might be improved.
  In carrying out this assessment, I will be referring on occasion to a 
draft of the QDR statement of strategy that was printed recently in a 
reliable newsletter called ``Inside the Army.'' To be sure, this is not 
the final draft of this strategy, which is still to be released 
officially. It remains subject to change. I will refer to it, 
nonetheless, because it reflects the thinking going on inside the 
Pentagon to date, and moreover, because I believe it is a good start in 
defining a military strategy for the future.
  That being said, I do not at all agree with the judgment, which 
appears to be emerging from the QDR, that the new strategy can be 
supported with a force smaller than the force determined to be 
necessary by the QDR's predecessor, the Bottom-Up Review of 1993.
  The key theme of the new strategy is that U.S. military forces must 
be able to shape the international security environment in ways 
favorable to U.S. interests, to respond to the full spectrum of crises 
when it is in our interest to do so, and to prepare now to meet the 
challenges of an uncertain future.
  So the three elements of the strategy are these: Shape, respond, 
prepare. To shape requires forward deployment of U.S. forces; various 
means of defense cooperation with allies, including security 
assistance; and joint trading with allies and others.
  To respond requires the ability to execute the full spectrum of 
military operations, including showing the flag to deter aggression; 
conducting multiple, concurrent, small-scale contingency operations; 
and fighting and winning major theater wars, including the ability to 
prevail in two nearly simultaneous conflicts.
  To prepare requires adequately sized forces for the air, sea, and 
especially the land; increased investments in weapons modernization; 
robust efforts to exploit the evolving revolution in military affairs; 
and investments in research and development that hedge against the 
evolution of unexpected but potentially dangerous developments in 
military technology in the future.
  Now, there are those who will say of this statement of strategy that 
it fails because it is not selective enough in defining for what 
challenges U.S. military forces should prepare. Some have complained 
that United States military forces are being used too often to respond 
to crises, like the conflict in Bosnia, that are not directly 
threatening to United States security. I have sometimes agreed with 
those complaints.
  Others with whom I have not agreed have argued that the United States 
should give up the Bottom-Up Review strategy of being prepared to 
prevail in two near-simultaneous regional conflicts, now called major 
theater wars, and instead prepare for one such conflict plus smaller 
peace operations.
  Still others say we should focus less of our effort on the current 
challenges to our security and devote much more attention to preparing 
for potential new threats from a peer or near-peer military competitor 
in the future.
  I think the QDR draft statement of strategy is preferable to any of 
these alternative views. As against those who would be more selective 
in identifying commitments, the emerging QDR strategy statements 
reflects the fact that Presidents have long been able to commit large 
numbers of U.S. troops to sometimes long-lasting operations abroad 
pretty much as they see fit.
  President Clinton has done so more than others, but he is not alone 
in asserting his authority as Commander in Chief to undertake major new 
missions abroad. Since Presidents can define what U.S. interests abroad 
are vital enough to require the commitment of U.S. forces, then the 
U.S. military will have to be prepared to carry out an extraordinarily 
broad range of tasks short of major war.
  It would be misleading, for military planning purposes, for a 
statement of strategy to identify only a narrow range of missions, 
when, in fact, the military can, at any time, be called on to carry out 
any imaginable kind of mission while still preparing for major wars.

[[Page H1899]]

  Indeed, the key flaw of the Bottom-Up Review was that it failed to 
take account of the demands that would be put on forces by missions 
other than the requirement to be prepared to fight two nearly 
simultaneous major regional conflicts.
  As against those who would give up the Bottom-Up Review's two-war 
requirement, that, to me, is a prescription for giving up on being a 
superpower. If we lack the ability to respond to a second crisis should 
a first arise, then in every case we would be hesitant in committing 
our forces to action in the first instance. Would we really respond to 
Saddam Hussein, for example, at the cost of critically weakening our 
deterrent posture in Korea? That is a choice we should never have to 
make.
  As to those who would spend less on maintaining current readiness in 
order to invest in future technology, I do not agree that we are in a 
``threat trough''. On the contrary, the evidence of recent years is 
that the world after the cold war is more turbulent than ever. We have 
to be prepared to deal with today's conflicts, or we may be critically 
weakened by confronting the challenges of the future by failure to 
preserve the peace today.
  So a new statement of strategy that calls for forces able to shape, 
respond, and prepare seems to me to be a valuable contribution to the 
debate about U.S. military preparedness. It is a demanding strategy, 
and under current circumstances, one that will be challenging to 
fulfill. It is a matter of great concern to me, therefore, that 
everything I have heard about the rest of the QDR is at odds with the 
requirements implied by the new statement of strategy.
  Earlier this year Secretary Cohen assured the Committee on National 
Security that the QDR process would be driven by the strategy, not by 
the budget.
  The new strategy, it seems very clear, requires forces perhaps larger 
and certainly more flexible than the forces required by the Bottom-Up 
Review. The QDR strategy maintains the requirement to prepare for two 
major regional conflicts, now called major theater wars, and adds to 
that requirement the need to shape the environment, respond to lesser 
crises, and prepare for the future. It cannot be done with less. Yet, 
the QDR is, by all accounts, looking for cuts in the size of the force 
structure. Indeed, the draft statement of strategy to which I have been 
referring hints at reasons for cutting forces, despite the strategy.
  One way to cut, it says, would be to rely more on reserves. Another 
is to rely more on allies. I believe that these are merely transparent 
excuses for making reductions in forces required by budget constraints 
and not driven by considerations of strategy. The bulk of reserve 
forces are already built into war plans in a wholly integrated fashion, 
and other forces constitute a valuable strategic reserve. To depend on 
allies to be able to carry out our own strategy is the height of folly. 
At the very least, dependence on allies may force us to limit our 
strategic goals or make us hesitant to act.

                              {time}  1430

  Also, it is not clear that we can depend on the allies to provide 
forces of the quality we maintain in our own forces. We can and should 
expect the allies to contribute in the event of major conflicts, as 
they did during the Persian Gulf war, but we cannot afford to assume 
allied participation in making our own plans. The strategy emerging 
from the QDR is appropriately broad and demanding. The remainder of the 
QDR should address frankly what forces and what weapon investment are 
needed to carry it out.
  Mr. Speaker, the time is now for the Congress to learn from the past 
and not repeat the mistakes of our predecessors, mistakes that allowed 
unpreparedness and led to battlefield disasters such as the costly 
defeat at Kasserine Pass in North Africa in World War II and the 
destruction of Task Force Smith in the Korean war. Such unpreparedness 
is paid for in the blood and lives of young Americans.
  The warning of Major, later General, George C. Marshall in 1923, 
though not heeded by his generation, should be heard by our generation. 
This Congress must not fail in this responsibility.
  Mr. Speaker, the 1923 Marshall speech follows for the Record.

                   (By Major George C. Marshall, Jr.)

       Mr. President and Gentlemen:--
       I must ask your indulgence this afternoon because, until 
     General Gignilliat requested me to make this talk the latter 
     part of the morning, I had no expectation of participating in 
     this meeting.
       You gentlemen, I am sure, are all interested in the 
     National Defense, and I would like to talk to you for a few 
     minutes regarding the effect of our school histories on this 
     question.
       The Army, which is the principal arm we depend upon for the 
     defense of the country, can hardly be called the result of a 
     slow growth. Its history has been a series of ups and downs, 
     a continuing record of vicissitudes, with which you may be 
     somewhat familiar in more recent years, but I cannot believe 
     many people understand or are aware of what has happened in 
     the past, because it seems improbable that what has happened 
     should continue to happen if our citizens were familiar with 
     the facts.
       In looking back through the history of the infantry 
     component of the Regular Army, we find that from the earliest 
     days of this country, it was materially increased in strength 
     and drastically reduced with somewhat monotonous regularity. 
     From eighty men immediately after the Revolutionary War, it 
     was increased to sixteen regiments, about as many regiments 
     of infantry as we have today. In 1798, two years later, it 
     was reduced to eight regiments. With the War of 1812, it was 
     increased considerably and then decreased immediately 
     afterwards. I am not talking about the temporary army, but 
     the Regular Army. Another increase came during the Mexican 
     War, about trebling its size; and immediately thereafter came 
     the inevitable reduction. In the early months of the Civil 
     War it was increased from about eight regiments to sixteen. 
     But the odd phase of this policy develops in 1866. Then the 
     war was over, but the infantry was increased to forty-six 
     regiments, and suddenly, but a few years later, reduced to 
     twenty-five regiments, with which we entered the war with 
     Spain. In 1901, this number was increased to thirty. Just 
     before our entry into the World War, Congress provided for 
     sixty-five regiments. Thereafter you cannot get an accurate 
     parallel, because the Congress varied its method. Instead of 
     authorizing regiments, it gave us numbers.
       When the World War was over, in the summer of 1920, they 
     gave us 285,000 men. Nine months later this was cut to 
     175,000. Three months later, came a cut to 150,000; followed 
     six months later by a further cut to 125,000. And just by the 
     skin of our teeth we got through this last Congress without a 
     further cut to 75,000.
       The remarkable aspect of this procedure to me, and I think 
     to any one, is that both increases and reductions should have 
     been order after the war was over and all within a brief 
     period of time, which can be measured in months. A decrease 
     following the establishment of peace is readily understood, 
     but the combination of two diametrically opposed policies is 
     difficult to comprehend.
       In searching for reasons to explain this inconsistency, it 
     appears that when the war was over every American's thoughts 
     were centered on the tragedies involved in the lessons just 
     learned, the excessive cost of the war in human lives and 
     money. So the Congress, strongly backed by public opinion, 
     determined that we should be adequately prepared for the 
     future, and accordingly enacted a law well devised for this 
     express purpose. However, in a few months, the public mind 
     ran away from the tragedies of the War and the reasons 
     therefor, and became obsessed with the magnitude of the 
     public debt and the problem of its reduction. Forgetting 
     almost immediately the bitter lesson of unpreparedness, they 
     demanded and secured the reduction of the Army, which their 
     representatives had so recently increased for very evident 
     reasons. Now what has occurred but recently has many 
     precedents in the past. There are numerous ramifications of 
     the same general nature, but the astonishing fact is, that we 
     continue to follow a regular cycle in the doing and undoing 
     of measures for the National Defense. We start in the making 
     of adequate provisions and then turn abruptly in the opposite 
     direction and abolish what has just been done.
       Careful investigation leads to the belief that this 
     illogical course of action is the result of the inadequacies 
     of our school histories so far as pertains to the record of 
     our wars, and in a measure, to the manner in which history is 
     taught. During the past few months, the War Department has 
     been concerned as to what might properly be done to correct 
     the defects in the school textbooks which are now being 
     published. Naturally, it is a matter that must be handled 
     very carefully. The Department is loathe to take any positive 
     action, because immediately the Army would be open to the 
     criticism of trying to create a militaristic public opinion. 
     Furthermore, criticism of the existing textbooks would 
     probably arouse the hostility of the publishers, and 
     particularly, of the authors.
       Following a discussion between General Pershing and a 
     prominent publisher, several of the more recent school 
     histories were submitted to the Historical Section of the War 
     College, and each reviewed by a number of specially qualified 
     officers. When these reviews were assembled and digested, it 
     became apparent that what had been done in the past, was 
     again in the process of repetition. A reading of these 
     reviews convinces

[[Page H1900]]

     one that our military history would probably suffer another 
     repetition.
       It is apparent that you can talk about the present National 
     Defense Act as much as you please and of the scheme of 
     military education provided in the Reserve Officers' Training 
     Corps Units, etc., but we will repeat our errors of the past 
     unless public opinion is enlightened, and public opinion in 
     these matters depends in a large measure on the written word 
     of our histories, except for a few months immediately 
     following such a National calamity as the World War. It 
     is almost purposeless for the War Department to attempt to 
     make an impression on Congress which is not in accord with 
     public opinion.
       When a boy goes to school he studies history. Thereafter I 
     believe less than five per cent of the men of the country 
     continue this study. You gentlemen are of a class apart, and 
     if you were not familiar with the important facts of our 
     military history, certainly no other class of men will be. 
     The lasting impression of the American man on what has 
     happened in the past, is absorbed from his school history. I 
     remember studying Barnes' American History, and I still have, 
     I suppose, the same feeling I acquired then regarding the 
     English nation and the British Army, so depicted in 
     Revolutionary days. In the course of my present occupation it 
     has become necessary for me to learn something of the actual 
     facts in the case, which I have found are often strikingly at 
     variance with many of the ideas Mr. Barnes implanted in my 
     mind.
       You gentlemen are no doubt familiar with most of these 
     facts, but I believe there are some of them of which even you 
     are not aware. Certainly the average man is in the dark as to 
     the difficulties our military leaders have invariably 
     encountered. Take the history of the Revolutionary War for 
     example; I imagine there are but few men today who have even 
     a vague idea of Washington's troubles in maintaining his 
     Revolutionary Army,--what they actually were and the causes 
     that lay behind them. Virtually the same difficulties 
     continued to arise in the history of our army and with the 
     same basic reason for their recurrence. Is the average boy 
     given an idea of the lessons of these incidents?
       What has the American youth been taught of the War of 
     1812--that it was one of the most ignominious pages in our 
     history,--wonderful on the sea, splendid at New Orleans,--but 
     in almost everything else, a series of glaring failures and 
     humiliating occurrences? Were you given any such idea as 
     this? In the Mexican War the operations of our armies were 
     carried out in very shipshape fashion, thanks to a long 
     period in which to prepare. But I doubt if there are more 
     than a few people who know that after the capture of Vera 
     Cruz, General Scott's army, preparing for its advance to 
     Mexico City, was well nigh emasculated and rendered impotent 
     by the policy of the Government which permitted a large 
     proportion of the Volunteers to secure their discharges and 
     return home. It has been alleged that this course was 
     intended to wreck any political aspirations of General Scott. 
     But it was an American army on foreign soil far from home, 
     that was imperiled in this fashion.
       We find almost an exact repetition of this incident in the 
     Philippines in 1809, when the obligation of the Government to 
     return home the state volunteer troops, left a small force of 
     the Regular Army besieged in Manila until fresh quotas of 
     volunteers could be raised in the United States and 
     dispatched seven thousand miles to its support. We do not 
     realize how fraught with the possibility of National tragedy 
     were these occurrences. Think what the result might have been 
     had our opponent been efficient and made us pay the penalty 
     for such a mistaken policy.
       Until recently the Civil War formed the major portion of 
     our military background. In your study of the history of that 
     period was your attention drawn to any conclusions? As to 
     why, for example, the North experienced so many difficulties 
     and failures during the early years of the war, and the South 
     was so uniformly successful? There are very definite reasons 
     for this and therefore, lessons to the drawn, but the one 
     time school boy when he casts his vote at the polls, or 
     represents his District in Congress, must as a rule, base his 
     action on false and misleading premises.
       Popular American histories of the World War would more than 
     startle the German reader. It is possible that he might think 
     he was reading of some other struggles in which his country 
     had no part. I will venture the assertion that for every boy 
     who comes out of our public schools realizing that over a 
     year elapsed before America's soldiers could make their first 
     attack on the enemy,--for every youth so informed, there will 
     be a thousand whose attention is not called to this, but who 
     can recite the date on which we entered the war. This may 
     seem a small matter, but it will have a definite effect on 
     every paragraph of legislation attempted for the National 
     Defense.
       We talk of Valley Forge in Revolutionary days, and do not 
     realize that American soldiers experienced something very 
     like Valley Forge over in France in the fall of 1917. I have 
     seen soldiers of the First Division without shoes and with 
     their feet wrapped in gunny-sacks, marching ten or fifteen 
     kilometers through the ice and snow. You do not have to go 
     back to Washington's army at Valley Forge for a period of 
     hardships experienced, because of unpreparedness. I have seen 
     so many horses of the First Division drop dead on the field 
     from starvation, that we had to terminate the movements in 
     which they engaged. One night I recall Division Headquarters 
     being notified that the troops in an adjacent village were 
     out of rations and the animals were too weak to haul the 
     necessary supplies. The question to be derived was, should 
     the men be marched to the rations and the animals left to 
     die, or would it be possible to secure other transportation. 
     That was in the fall of 1917. It was a small matter but it 
     reflects the general condition of unpreparedness with which 
     we entered the war, and it was only the strength of our 
     Allies who held the enemy at bay for more than a year, that 
     enabled us to fight the victorious battles which ended the 
     war. The small boy learns that we were successful in the end, 
     but he is carefully prevented from discovering how narrow has 
     been the margin of our success. Good luck has always seemed 
     to be with us and the attending circumstances seem to prove 
     Bismarck's saying that ``God takes care of the fools in the 
     United States.''
       Some of these days, now that we are a dominant, if not the 
     dominant power in the world, we may have to make good without 
     Allies or time or fortuitous circumstances to assist us.
       There seems to have been a conspiracy to omit the pertinent 
     facts or the lessons of our military history which would 
     prepare the boy to be an intelligent voter or legislator. So 
     long as this is the case, we will continue in a series of the 
     errors I have been describing.
       The study of ancient history reveals innumerable 
     occurrences which have that exact parallel in modern times. 
     There must be some lesson to be drawn. For example: General 
     Pershing recently called attention to the fact that while the 
     Peace Conference was sitting in Paris in 1919, building up 
     the Treaty which we did not accept, there were English 
     soldiers at Cologne, American soldiers at Coblenz, and French 
     soldiers at Mayence, and a general reserve at Treves, 
     (General Pershing's own Headquarters). Eighteen hundred years 
     before, during a prolonged peace, Roman Legions were 
     stationed at Cologne, Coblenz and Mayence, with a reserve of 
     ten thousand at Treves. The setting was identical with the 
     recent deployment of the Allied troops along the Rhine. There 
     must be some lesson to be drawn from this repetition of 
     history, that is of much more moment that a recollection of 
     the date of the signing of the Peace Treaty.
       The other day I had occasion to look up something regarding 
     Phillip Sheridan, who was one of the five Generals of the 
     Army, of which General Pershing is the most recent, and 
     General Washington was the first. After locating my 
     information, I read a little further and came across, what to 
     me, was a most remarkable coincidence.
       General Sheridan after the Civil War was sent abroad to 
     observe the operations of the Prussian Army in the Franco-
     Prussian War. He joined the Staff of the Emperor William west 
     of Metz on the eve of the Battle of Gravelotte. The day after 
     this fight, riding in the carriage of Bismarck, he drove 
     through Point-a-Mousson. This town was the right flank of the 
     American army in the St. Mihiel operation. Turing west, 
     Bismarck and Sheridan drove on to Commercy and were billeted 
     there for the night. They followed the exact route of the 
     American troops being transferred from the St. Mihiel front 
     to the Meuse-Argonne. From Commercy, Sheridan passed on to 
     Bar-le-Duc, and he describes how he stood on a little portico 
     of that town and watched the Bavarians marching through the 
     Central Place as they turned north towards the Argonne in the 
     great maneuver to corner McHahon's French Army on the Belgian 
     frontier. American troops followed this same route and 
     executed the same turn to the north, and I happened to have 
     watched them pass through the Central Place of Bar-le-Duc. 
     With Bismarck, Sheridan drove north to Clermont, following 
     the principal axis of the advance taken by the American army 
     in September, 1918. After a night's billet in that village, 
     they drove through a series of towns, later to be captured by 
     the Americans from Bismarck's descendants, and billeted in 
     Grandpre at the other tip of the Argonne Forest.
       Now comes a more remarkable coincidence. General Sheridan 
     describes how he drove from Grandpre through the Foret de 
     Dieulet into Beaumont, where a French division had on that 
     morning been surprised and captured by the Germans. this was 
     the opening phase of the Battle of Sedan. Our Second Division 
     passed through that identical Forest at night and surprised 
     Germans at roll call in the early morning in the streets of 
     Beaumont.
       Accompanying the entourage of the Emperor William, General 
     Sheridan pressed on to Wadelincourt, and from a hilltop 
     nearby looked down across the Meuse at the French Army, 
     cornered but not yet captured, at Sedan. A battalion of the 
     Sixteenth American Infantry on November 7, 1918, pressed 
     forward to that same hill and looked down on the Germans in 
     Sedan. Is not this a remarkable coincidence, and does it not 
     point to the uncertainties of the future and the necessity of 
     being prepared for almost any eventuality?
       I hope you will pardon my very disjointed remarks and I 
     deeply appreciate your kind attention. (Applause.)
       The President, Dr. Newhall: ``Factors Contributing to 
     Morale and Espirit de Corps,'' by General L.R. Gignilliat.
     
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