War are but seldom remembered.

The pleasing notion that, whenever war comes, money can obtain for
the nation all that it requires is still, it would seem, an article
of at least lip-faith with the politicians of the English-speaking
race throughout the world. Gold will certainly buy a nation powder,
pills, and provisions; but no amount of wealth, even when supported
by a patriotic willingness to enlist, can buy discipline, training,
and skilful leading. Without these there can be no such thing as an
efficient army, and success in the field against serious opposition
is merely the idle dream of those who know not war.

If any nation could improvise an army at short notice it would be the
United States, for its men, all round, are more hardy, more
self-reliant, and quicker to learn than those of older communities.
But, notwithstanding this advantage, both in 1861 and 1898 the United
States failed to create the thoroughly efficient armies so suddenly
required, and in both instances the unnecessary sufferings of the
private soldier were the price paid for the weakness and folly of the
politicians. In 1861 the Governors of the several Northern States
were ordered to call for volunteers to enlist for ninety days, the
men electing their own officers. It was generally believed throughout
the North that all Southern resistance would collapse before the
great armies that would thus be raised. But the troops sent out to
crush the rebellion, when they first came under fire, were soldiers
only in outward garb, and at Bull Run, face to face with shot and
shell, they soon lapsed into the condition of a terrified rabble, and
ran away from another rabble almost equally demoralised; and this,
not because they were cowards, for they were of the same breed as the
young regular soldiers who retreated from the same field in such