In addition to the new officers made necessary by the new contingents, 512 officers are authorized, to serve as instructors in military schools and colleges and with the National Guard. A regular army reserve is established, into which the recruit passes automatically after three years of active service. For four years thereafter he is liable to be recalled to the colors. There is further provision for increasing the reserves by direct enlistments. The bill contemplates and provides for 50,000 reserve officers, excluding the officers of the National Guard.
Whether the bill provides for 75,000 men or 60,000 men in the active regular establishment is not of immediate consequence. Everyone save Colonel Roosevelt and a few soldiers who jump when he barks, knows that it is not possible, in the present prosperous condition of this country, to recruit the regular army up to either of the two figures named. It might be done, perhaps, by lowering the enlistment standards, and, of course, it could be done by decreeing some form of compulsory service, but not otherwise. If the nation should lose a large part of its prosperity and unemployment become widespread, instead of almost unknown, the case would be different, but even the Colonel, although he does advocate compulsion, would hardly advocate the use of economic pressure to overcome men into the army's ranks. 