se would be different. But for defense against any possible
landing of a hostile army on our shores, our available force ought
to be so overwhelming in numbers as to far more than compensate
for lack of experience. Yet it must not be forgotten that some
training is _indispensable_. No possible advantage in numbers can
overcome the disadvantage resulting from total ignorance of tactics
and of the use of the modern long-range rifle. Good parents who
apprehend evil effects from giving their boys military training
ought to reflect that the boys will go, all the same, whether
trained or not, when the country is threatened with invasion.
Then, if ignorant, the will simply be doomed to fall the victims
of skilled marksmen to whose shots they know not how to reply.
Possibly the most cruel fate which American parents could prepare
for their sons would be to keep them in ignorance of the highest
duty their country may call upon them to perform, so that, unable
to offer and effective resistance to invasion, they could only die
in a hopeless effort to do their duty as citizen soldiers and
patriots--or, worse, live only to be driven in disgrace from a
field which a little education would have enabled them gloriously
to win.

There should be, under State authority, a general enrolment and
organization of all the young men who have received military
training, and places of rendezvous fixed at convenient centers at
or near railway-stations. Officers of all grades up to that of
colonel should be appointed in advance, and occasional musters held
under State laws, even if military exercises were not attempted.

Our colleges and high schools, besides the military academies of
the country, are even now educating a fair percentage of young men
to be officers of such an organization of enrolled regiments as
that here suggested. This percentage could easily be increased in
accordance with the demand. Besides, the retired men of the
regiments of the National Guard in the several States might furnish
some officers for the enrolled militia. But those well-trained
and fully equipped regiments would be required to move with full
ranks at once to the place of danger. Hence their active members
would not be available in the great expansion of the army in the
first period of war. The organization of the first reserve must,
for this reason, be entirely independent of the National Guard.

A great and very important advance has already been