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Show ARE WE READY? Now that the militia arc going to the front, one trios to imagine what wouhl happen if wc really bad a v.ar with Mexico. Would wc be able to obtain iu a few months a sufficient number of trained men to conquer tho Mexicans without undue delay? Bryan has told us that: in ca?c their country called, "a million freemen would spring to arms between sunrise and sunset," or something' of that ridiculous ridic-ulous sort. Asido from the fact that there would bo no arms to spring to for at leant 500,000 of theae patriots, the Bryan hyperbole has merits as pure elo-. elo-. fjueuce. But nowadays war has less to J do with eloquence and poetry than ever ! before. It has become a gigantic bus- ! iness, and the business must be a going j concern in practically every respect j years before the actual declaration of j war is made. We may assume, therefore, that the , United States could not raise a great j army in a short time, that is to say, an army trained and equipped to deal with situations like Verdun. On the other hand, we probably would bo surprised, in case of wnr, to see the tremendous amount of material ready for au army, and not wholly raw material. i First of all, the regular army could furnish, at least Uu.OQO first-class troops for immediate work. Tho fact that in a month we were able to increase the regular army by only 3500 recruits is a rather sad commentary upon our handling han-dling of a standing army, but we know that when war comes wc shall got all tho men wo need. Tho 3500 recruits arc mere "rookies. They are no better bet-ter and no worse than several huudred thousand who would volunteer immedi- ately if the president called for volun teers.. It ife unwise to assume, moreover, that all who Would enlist would be untrained. tSomo aro splendidly trained as the result re-sult of service iu European armies. What percentage of these solidcrs would spring to such arms as we have available avail-able wo do not kuow, .but we are rather dimly conscious that there- must be an immenso number of available men among the, Germans, Italians, Austrians, Russians, Greeks and Scandinavians. Theu there are tho Spanish war veterans, vet-erans, the men who have served with tho regular army and militia in other ' years and, above all, the militia itself. It will be objected at tho outset that our chief difficulty would be to obtain officers. The European contingent doubtless could furnish hundreds of officers, the Spanish war veterans and the former militiamen many others. Then, too, there are the men trained in our land grant colleges and in scores of private military academies from the Atlantic At-lantic to the Pacific. When the military-minded man sneer-ingly sneer-ingly remarks that we could not obtain au army which would compare favorably with the armies of Belgium or Serbia, he is adopting a narrow point of view.; He forgets the potentialities of a nation of 100,000,000 people. The Spanish war revealed tho fact that there was in civiliau life much trained material for thi flrmv nm-? v(Mi fnr tlif linvv Thprr was a dearth of efficieut officers, not because good material did not exist, but .because for political reasons men like liryau were given commands. And yet the Third Nebraska, at whose head Bryan rode proudly and stoutly as colonel, was not without trained officers. offi-cers. At his side, as an humble second iu command, was Colonel Vifquain, a Frenchman who had fought for France and had won a brilliant reputation iu our civil war. Euglaud 's experience has warned us that even our richness of material cannot can-not insure quick success, although our own experience in Cuba and the Philippines Philip-pines might argue to the contrary. Coordinating; Co-ordinating; all our magnificent- resources would be the work of many months Fortunately, as has been the case with England, we would have considerable time for preparation after the war began. Surely the regular army and the 100,1)00 or more militianinn could cope with the Mexican situation adequately ade-quately for at least, four or five mouths, nud by that time the new recruits, whipped into shape and fairly wol! officered, offi-cered, would be readv fur the front. |