Build the ships and train
to arms,
Make your millions
fighting strength
That shall frighten war’s
alarms
Ere they reach
a challenge length.
He was immediately assailed as a militarist, and yet,
had we but taken those preparatory steps, millions
of lives might have been saved.
And thus we approach one of the problems which this
book is designed to solve. There are eight million
men in this country between the ages of forty-five
and sixty-four. Probably we may count upon another
million from the men of sixty-four to seventy who
would be “prospects,” as the mining-men
say. These men represent nine-tenths of the financial
and executive strength of the United States.
When I started the experiment of the Senior Service
Corps at New Haven, in the spring of 1917, all my
men were over forty-five, and several of them had
passed the seventy mark; yet all found increased health
and efficiency from the prescribed regime. There
was a distinct gain, not only in health, but in spirits
and in temper. Nerves that had been at high tension
relaxed to normal. Effort that had seemed exhaustive
became pleasurable. The ordinary problems of
business or finance, once so apt to be vexatious,
lost their power to produce worry. In fact, these
men had renewed their youth; they had altered the
horizon-line of advancing age, across which only clouds
of doubt and apprehension could be seen, to that of
youth, radiant with the sunshine of hope and the promise
of accomplishment.
[Illustration: Initial hike of
first Senior service corps]
This war has started some new thoughts and has given
emphasis to others that may not be new but which have
never been forced home. One of these is the value
of physical efficiency. A social scientist said
some twenty years ago that the “greatest nation
of the future would be the one which could send the
most men to the top of the Matterhorn.”
Nations now realize that in such a time as this all
men up to forty may be required for the firing-line;
and this means that all the men from forty to seventy
must be rendered especially efficient and physically
fit in order to stand back of the fighting forces
as a dependable reserve—money, power, and
brains.
[Illustration: Hike of A Senior
corps]
[Illustration: These men, although
over forty-five years of age,
marched for over four hours
without discomfort]
