Page:Harris Dickson--The unpopular history of the United States.djvu/175

The Work of Warsmiths soldiers, leaving merchants, artisans and farmers to pursue the arts of peace. Commerce flourished, universities sprang up, and civilization throbbed at the pulses of the world.

To-day, with the submarine, the aeroplane, huge cannon, abstruse mathematical calculations of range, electrical appliances, scientific explosives — the thousand and one inventions now adapted to the trade of war — to-day it is quite inconceivable for a raw recruit to be of the slightest service. We must have men who know exactly what they are doing, else our republic passes into ancient history with the graves of Greece and the ruins of fallen Rome.

Yet, in spite of this, some residue of prejudice yet remains against a powerful standing army, it being feared as a tool that might be used by selfish ambition. In the old countries standing armies originally flaunted the banners of great feudal houses — Bourbon, Hohenzollern, Romanoff, Hapsburg. But the free soldiers of a Republic, fathers, brothers, [157]