LAND AND WATER 
February 17, 1916. 
learn;; his lesson?, anrl if lie has greater resources than his 
antagonist, in the cncj he will win. 
Against material preponderance, if it be reasonably 
liandled. the most inspired generalship will beat in- 
clfertiial wings. Hannibal in the long ran is worn down 
by tlic much inferior Scipio. Napoleon falls beneath the 
accumulated weight of the Allies. But — and it is a vital 
proviso — the nation which is strongest in human and 
material resources must learn to use these resources. 
Until it learns to use them it will go on being beaten. 
That was the fate of the North. It had to assemble 
its greater man-power, it had to train it, it had to find a 
Commander-in-Chief who could use it reasonably well, 
it had to discover how its greater wealth could be best 
applied to cripple its adversary. It took it four years to 
learn these things, and when it had learned them it won. 
There was a time when it looked like never learning them, 
and in consequence it was very nearly beaten. 
Is that position so remote from our own ? We 
and our Allies have greater reserves of man-power than 
the Teutonic League, but at the begining of the war it 
was not oganised in armies. Like the North, Britain, 
and to a large extent Russia and France, have had to 
improvise their armies, and Britain, hke the North, had 
not only to do this but to improvise more or less an army 
system. Again, we and our Allies, like the North, have 
greater wealth, but wc have had to learn how to mobilise 
that wealth for war. We and our Allies have command 
of the sea, as the North had, and we have to learn how to 
use that command of the sea to the uttermost so as to 
stifle the enemy. Lastly, we have to find the leaders — 
admirals, generals and statesmen — who can so use our 
strength in personnel and materiel that we get the good of 
it. These were the problems of the North and they are 
ours. When we solve them, as the North did, we shall 
be victorious. 
. Let us look a little more closely at these urgent 
questions. Abraham Lincoln was beyond doubt one of 
the two or three greatest men ever born of our blood. 
He seems to me to be in many respects the foremost states- 
man of our race^-foremost in courage and in the essen- 
tials of wisdom — since Chatham. But as a war minister 
Lincoln had his job to learn, and he took a long time 
learning it. If he had died before Gettysburg history 
would have recorded that he was a great leader of his 
people, a great inspirer, a great prophet, but it would 
also have recorded that he was one of the worst war 
ministers that ever hved. He had no natural aptitude 
foi the task, except an iron courage, exhaustlcss patience, 
and a calm beUef in God. He was a man of peace, as 
remote as John Bright from any dreams of military glory. 
But he had that complete intellectual honesty which can 
look squarely at factr, even unwelcome facts, and after 
many tips and downs he led his people to victory. Let us 
see how it was done. 
How the Armies were Raised. 
His first business was to raise the men. He had 
about 18,000 regulars, most of them serving on the 
Western frontier, and he had four-fifths of the regular 
officers. A good many of these officers had had ex- 
perience in the Mexican war fourteen years before, just 
as many of our officers in 1914 had had South African 
experience. Lincoln showed how little he appreciated the 
magnitude of the coming conflict by asking for only 75,000 
vohmteers, and these to serve for only three months. 
Then came the battle of Bull Run, which opened his eyes. 
He was empowered by Congress to raise 500,000 
volunteers for three years' ser\'icc, and a little later the 
number was increased to 1,000.000. Recruits came in 
magnificently. If wc remember the small population of 
the North I think we must rank the effort as among 
the most remarkable ever made by a system of voluntary 
enlistment. The President began by asking for 600,000 
men, and he got 700,000. After Fredericksburg he asked 
for 300,000 more and he got 430,000. Then he asked for 
another 300,000. of which each State should provide its 
quota. But he onlv got 87,000, a little more than a 
quarter of his demands. The South, it should be remem- 
bered, had for many months before this adopted con- 
scription. It was now a year and a half since the first 
battle, and the campaign had entered on that period of 
drag which was the tim.e of blackest depression in the 
Korth. Then Lincohi took the great step. The North was. 
of all parts of the world at the moment, that in which the 
idea of indi\ddual liberty was most deeply implanted. 
It was a country which had always gloried in being un- 
mihtary, in contradistinction to the effete monachies of 
Europe. The American Constitution had shown the most 
scrupulous regard for individual rights. The mode of 
political thought which we call democracy — for demo- 
cracy is rather a mode of thought than a system of 
government — was universally accepted. The press was 
unbridled, and the press was very powerful. The country, 
too, was full of philosophic idealists who preferred dogmas 
to facts and were very vocal in the papers and on the 
platforms. Moreover, there was a General Election 
coming on, and, since the war had gone badly, there was 
a good chance that Lincoln might be defeated if he in any 
way added to his unpopularity. 
Lincoln and Compulsion. 
There were not wanting crowds of men — some of 
them very able and distinguished men — who declared that 
it was far better to lose the war than to win it by trans- 
gressing one article of the current political faith. There 
were others, Lincoln's friends and advisers, who warned 
him solemnly that no hint of compulsion would ever be 
tolerated by free-born Americans, and that if he dared 
to propose the thing he would have an internal revolution 
to add to his difficulties. Again and again he was told 
— in langtiage familiar to our ears — that the true friends 
of the enemy were the Compulsionists. Remember, too, 
that Lincoln was in the fullest sense of the word a demo- 
cratic statesman, believing that government must not 
only be for the people, but by the people. W'hen he was 
faced with the necessity of finding some other way of 
raising men than as volunteers, he was faced with the 
task of jettisoning— I will not say the principles, for 
they are hardier plants — but all the sentiments' and 
traditions of his political life. 
But Lincoln, being a very great man, knew that it 
was the business of a statesman to lead the people, to act, 
to initiate a policy-, and not to wait like a dumb lackey 
in the ante-chamber of his masters. He knew that 
politics should be not an abstract dogma, but a working 
creed based upon realities. He knew also that in a crisis 
it is wisest to grasp the nettle. He saw the magnitude 
of the crisis, that it was a qiicstion of life or death, what- 
ever journalists or demagogues might say. So he 
took the plunge, and on March 3rd, 1863, a law was passed 
to raise armies by conscription. He answered those who 
met him with the famous "thin edge of the wedge" 
argument in words which should be remembered : that 
" He did not believe that a man could contract so strong 
a taste for emetics during a temporary illness as to insist 
on feeding upon them during the remainder of a healthful 
life." There was some resistance at the start. There were 
violent mass meetings and much wild talk, and there were 
riots in New York, where a number of lives were lost. 
But the trouble soon passed and the good sense of the 
country prevailed. 
It was one of the two greatest acts of Lincoln's life ; 
the other was when he decided to fight for the intcgrit}? 
of the nation. And like all great acts of courage it had 
its reward. Four months later Gettysburg was won, 
Vicksburg surrendered to Grant, and the tide turned. 
Recruits came in — 300,000 in October 1863, nearly 
1,300,000 in 1864, and the curious thing is that 85 per 
cent, of them were volunteers. The effect of con- 
scription was to revive voluntary enlistment. The total 
number of recruits in the Nortji from first to last was 
3,000,000, and thai out of a population of 20,000,000 
is surely a remarkable figure. The men had been found, 
the resources of the North were fully mobilised, and two 
years after the passing of the Act came that April day 
when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomatox. 
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