England and Neutral Trade (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: COMMENT The Study of Military History and the Present War.? In a recent speech Lord Sydenham is reported by the London Times to have said: "The conduct of the war and the handling of the many questions which the war raised have so far been simply deplorable. The reasons are obvious. We have endeavored to wage war, on a vast scale, by methods which had grown up in peace, and the country lacked leadership. We have pitted our amateurs against the German professionals, with results that were inevitable. Mistakes are always made in war; but we have made no mistakes, naval or military, in the past two and one- half years, which the study of naval and military history might not have averted. Sound knowledge is the most important requirement of Governments." The Position of the National Guard.?It is now possible to form a better estimate of the results of sending the National Guard to the Mexican border. For the time being, at least, it kept us out of war. When Mexican sentiment was at a high pitch, at the time of Carrizal, the movement borderwards of a great mass of guardsmen was undoubtedly the chief factor in causing pacific counsels to prevail on the Mexican side. Further, it was the retention of the guardsmen on the border which alone made it possible to maintain the handful of rifles, guns and sabres, under General Pershing, in Mexico for seven months and finally and without molestation to withdraw them. So much for what the Guard did on the outside; as to what it accomplished in the way of training and discipline during its six months stay on the border, opinions differ widely. [204] Some officers have stated publicly that the Guard was thereby proved futile for purposes of national defence. Societies and persons having the avowed purpose of promoting the cause...