Government on a Neighboring Planet

72:11.1Grad­u­ates of the fed­eral mil­i­tary schools may be com­mis­sioned as “guard­i­ans of civ­i­liza­tion” in seven ranks, in ac­cor­dance with abil­ity and ex­pe­ri­ence, by the pres­i­dent of the Na­tional Coun­cil of De­fense. This coun­cil con­sists of twenty-five mem­bers, nom­i­nated by the high­est pa­ren­tal, ed­u­ca­tional, and in­dus­trial tri­bu­nals, con­firmed by the fed­eral su­preme court, and pre­sided over ex of­fi­cio by the chief of staff of co-or­di­nated mil­i­tary af­fairs. Such mem­bers serve un­til they are sev­enty years of age.

72:11.2The courses pur­sued by such com­mis­sioned of­fi­cers are four years in length and are in­vari­ably cor­re­lated with the mas­tery of some trade or pro­fes­sion. Mil­i­tary train­ing is never given with­out this as­so­ci­ated in­dus­trial, sci­en­tific, or pro­fes­sional school­ing. When mil­i­tary train­ing is fin­ished, the in­di­vid­ual has, dur­ing his four years’ course, re­ceived one half of the ed­u­ca­tion im­parted in any of the spe­cial schools where the courses are like­wise four years in length. In this way the cre­ation of a pro­fes­sional mil­i­tary class is avoided by pro­vid­ing this op­por­tu­nity for a large num­ber of men to sup­port them­selves while se­cur­ing the first half of a tech­ni­cal or pro­fes­sional train­ing.

72:11.3Mil­i­tary ser­vice dur­ing peace­time is purely vol­un­tary, and the en­list­ments in all branches of the ser­vice are for four years, dur­ing which ev­ery man pur­sues some spe­cial line of study in ad­di­tion to the mas­tery of mil­i­tary tac­tics. Train­ing in mu­sic is one of the chief pur­suits of the cen­tral mil­i­tary schools and of the twenty-five train­ing camps dis­tributed about the pe­riph­ery of the con­ti­nent. Dur­ing pe­ri­ods of in­dus­trial slack­ness many thou­sands of un­em­ployed are au­to­mat­i­cally uti­lized in up­build­ing the mil­i­tary de­fenses of the con­ti­nent on land and sea and in the air.

72:11.4Al­though these peo­ple main­tain a pow­er­ful war es­tab­lish­ment as a de­fense against in­va­sion by the sur­round­ing hos­tile peo­ples, it may be re­corded to their credit that they have not in over one hun­dred years em­ployed these mil­i­tary re­sources in an of­fen­sive war. They have be­come civ­i­lized to that point where they can vig­or­ously de­fend civ­i­liza­tion with­out yield­ing to the temp­ta­tion to uti­lize their war pow­ers in ag­gres­sion. There have been no civil wars since the es­tab­lish­ment of the united con­ti­nen­tal state, but dur­ing the last two cen­turies these peo­ple have been called upon to wage nine fierce de­fen­sive con­flicts, three of which were against mighty con­fed­er­a­tions of world pow­ers. Al­though this na­tion main­tains ad­e­quate de­fense against at­tack by hos­tile neigh­bors, it pays far more at­ten­tion to the train­ing of states­men, sci­en­tists, and philoso­phers.

72:11.5When at peace with the world, all mo­bile de­fense mech­a­nisms are quite fully em­ployed in trade, com­merce, and recre­ation. When war is de­clared, the en­tire na­tion is mo­bi­lized. Through­out the pe­riod of hos­til­i­ties mil­i­tary pay ob­tains in all in­dus­tries, and the chiefs of all mil­i­tary de­part­ments be­come mem­bers of the chief ex­ec­u­tive’s cab­i­net.