It is not contended that this country should spend _less_ than $100,000,000 a year on its army, _but it is contended that it should not spend more_. And for what it does spend it should get larger results. $100,000,000 a year ought to be enough to maintain an army enlisted to the full strength of 100,000 men to which the army is now limited by Act of Congress. In addition it should support the necessary organization and training schools to furnish all the officers required for the National Construction Reserve and for the National Homecroft Reserve. The officers of the Homecroft Reserve should be permanently located as residents of the community where their regiment is established.
The officers for the National Construction Reserve should be attached to the Regular Army except when detailed for the work of training those reserves during the period set apart for that work each year. At least one-half of the rank and file of a regular force of 100,000 men in the Standing Army should be composed of men trained for service as officers in the National Construction Reserve, and available for instant transformation into such officers. The training of those officers should be one of the most important functions of the Regular Army. The Army should forthwith take up that work and cease any further connection with the civil work of internal improvements.
_If the Standing Army of the United States were increased to an actually enlisted strength of 200,000 men as is now being urged, it would mean the addition of another $100,000,000 a year to the military burdens of the people of the United States, and we would still be without any adequate national defense in case of war with a first-class power._
Now compare the plan for a Homecroft Reserve and its results, from the financial point of view, with this proposition to increase the Regular Army to a total strength of 200,000 men.
The annual cost of an increase of 100,000 men in the Regular Army would be $100,000,000 a year; or $5,000,000,000 in fifty years. Every dollar of that huge sum would be drawn from the people by taxation. When spent it would be gone, leaving nothing to show for its expenditure. The economic value of the labor of 100,000 men would be wasted. That would be another $5,000,000,000 in fifty years, estimating the potential labor value of each man at $1000 a year. That makes the stupendous total economic loss and waste of money and human labor of ten billion dollars in fifty years,--an amount ten times as large as the whole national debt of the United States,--an amount as large as the combined national debts of Great Britain and France, which an eminent authority has said are so large that they never can be paid.