The feeling that the army was underpaid was as common as that it was unappreciated. Officers, thinking only of the men in civil life who succeeded, complained that they could not associate with the outside world because they had not the money to keep up their social end. The dream of every officer was of a great conscript army, like the French or German. This meant promotion, of course, and that the army would count for something in the country, though the thought was not consciously selfish on the part of the best men. It was professional and natural human ambition, based on the conviction of the necessity of military training for every citizen. Without it an officer could not be a good soldier. It was a better spirit than that of the time-servers of class C, who were interested in promotion alone, and in passing the time.
The prospect of Japan taking the Pacific Coast was the main item of propaganda before the Great War began. Then Germany, or the victor in the war, was seen devastating our coasts, his great guns toppling our cities in ruins, and his infantry sweeping across country, perpetrating the horrors of Belgium. Any officer who knew his profession in the large, knew--despite the figures assembled for its proof--that the transport of forces for a successful invasion was out of the question; but such methods of making the flesh creep alone could awaken an indifferent public to the necessity of an adequate army and the value of military drill to our heterogeneous population. The regulars saw us depending against trained hosts upon citizens in shirt-sleeves and the undisciplined National Guard. "They" of the outside world were concerned only with their own prosperity--undisciplined, utterly without the military sense or spirit. War was a biological necessity. There had always been war, and there always would be war. One day we would find ourselves at war. The nation would call for soldiers, and the little band of regulars would go forth to sacrifice. Meanwhile, in the midst of ignorance, they would keep the altar fires burning, and remain true to the traditions of their profession.
Then a miracle happened. The dream of the regulars came true. There were to be no political generals: none were to be rewarded with commissions for raising regiments, as in the Civil War. We were to have the draft; all direction was to be left to the professional. The nation signed a check upon all our resources, human and material, to be filled out by them. Our people offered all they had in order to save civilization. Their thought was the interest of their souls, their country, humanity, and their future happiness and prosperity.