American Military Research Articles

The Veterans Affairs Disparity Paradox: Racial Disparities Among a Cohort of American Military Veterans with Prostate Cancer

Black men with prostate cancer have historically been found to have worse outcomes compared to other racial/ethnic groups. This finding has primarily been attributed to differences in genetics, health care access, and socioeconomic status. We sought to validate this relationship between race and prostate cancer specific mortality (PCSM) in a large national cohort of American veterans. We used a nationwide database of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) by means of the VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI). Our initial query captured 82,886 patients who were diagnosed with prostate cancer from 2000 to 2015 and had received radiation therapy as part of their initial treatment. To control for possible confounders, patients who received brachytherapy, surgery, or had metastatic disease at diagnosis were excluded. Covariates included age at diagnosis, T stage, Gleason score, PSA at diagnosis, administration of ADT, Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) score, tobacco/alcohol history, marital status, employment status, and median income. Patients who lacked data for covariates were excluded. We compared baseline characteristics between blacks and other racial/ethnic groups with Pearson’s chi-squared and Mann-Whitney U tests. We compared PCSM and non-prostate cancer mortality (NPCM) between groups using multivariable Cox proportional hazards models. Our final study cohort included 27,753 patients, of which 8,453 (30.5%) were black. At time of diagnosis, blacks were younger (64 vs 67, p<0.001), had a higher PSA (12.6 vs 10.2, p<0.001), and were more likely to have a CCI score of 2+ (24.5% vs 19.8%, p<0.001). Additionally, they were more likely to have T1 disease (72.6% vs 62.3%, p<0.0001) and slightly more likely to receive ADT (47.5% vs 46.1%, p=0.037). Blacks were less likely to have Gleason 8+ disease (20.6% vs 22.5%, p<0.001). Controlling for potential confounders, we found improved PCSM among blacks (HR 0.86, 95% CI 0.77 to 0.97, p=0.012). Increasing age, PSA, T stage, Gleason score, and CCI score were associated with worse PCSM. In addition to improved PCSM, we also found that black patients had improved NPCM compared to other racial/ethnic groups (HR 0.812, 95% CI 0.76 to 0.87, p<0.0001). Our discovery of improved prostate cancer specific mortality and non-prostate cancer mortality among black veterans demonstrates a unique racial disparity paradox that has not been seen in the general population. Further research is required to determine if our results are driven by systematic differences in the cohort or in VHA care delivery.

A Eulogy for the Two-War Construct

For the last generation, the American military has prepared to fight two simultaneous wars against regional powers, rather than defeat large-scale aggression by a peer competitor. While appropriate...

Lynn Dumenil. The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I; Elizabeth Cobbs. The Hello Girls: America’s First Women Soldiers.

The United States may have been actively engaged in World War I for only nineteen months, but the conflict had an outsized effect on American life. When the nation entered the war in April 1917, industry partially converted to wartime production, stimulating demand for labor at the same time that immigration plummeted, and the American military increased the number of troops from less than two hundred thousand to almost three million. The demands of mobilization invigorated new and existing institutions that often linked support or opposition to the war effort to their own agendas. When President Woodrow Wilson framed the war as an effort to make the world safe for democracy, many others appropriated that language to demand a measure of democracy in their workplaces, ballot boxes, homes, and beyond. It is in this tumultuous and contingent moment that Lynn Dumenil and Elizabeth Cobbs deliberate not just on what American women did during the war, but on how their actions in this critical period shaped their own lives and society in the years and decades after the war.

Ballistic Analysis of Polish Low-Vulnerability Gun Propellants

One direction of modern artillery ammunition development is to reduce its vulnerability to the effects of mechanical and thermal factors during transport, storage and operation. For LOVA, the reduced vulnerability of propellant explosives intended for loading into this ammunition is usually connected with a higher thermal ignition impulse threshold and reduced burning rate under low propellant gas pressure. Since 2016, work has been under way at the Military University of Technology (Warsaw, Poland), intended to develop a Polish low-vulnerability gun propellant for 120 mm tank ammunition. It was established during the initial stage of research and analysis, that the JA-2 gun propellant (more specifically, its energy and ballistics characteristics and geometrical dimensions of grains) will be the reference propellant for the low-vulnerability propellant in development. To this end, the authors performed closed vessel tests with JA-2 propellant (with seven-perforated grains designated LO5460). This paper contains comparative (with the JA-2 propellant) results of closed vessel tests of several propellant blends developed by the MUT Faculty of New Technologies and Chemistry research team. Closed vessel tests of these propellant blends were performed in the Ballistics Laboratory of the MUT Institute of Armament Technology using a manometric chamber with a volume W0 = 200 cm3. Experimental tests and theoretical analyses were performed based on provisions of the standardisation agreement STANAG 4115 [6], American military standard MIL-STD 286C [7] and original test procedures developed based on [8, 9]. The tests focused mainly on the issue of correlation between the chemical composition of the given propellant blend with the expected values of energy and ballistics characteristics in connection with the required shape of propellant grains.

Barack Obama, Syria, and the Exertion of American Military Power

This article reviews American policy toward Syria since the onset of its civil war there. It concentrates on debates and decisions about the use of American military power to influence events there. Before 2014, President Barack Obama consistently refused to use military power and, while he did initiate military action against the Islamic State in the summer of 2014, many in and out of the administration thought he should do more. This article identifies reasons for Obama’s hesitance and argues that some of his pre-2014 fears about using military power have been realized in later years.

Lessons From America’s First ‘Professor President,’ Woodrow Wilson, for America’s Second ‘Professor President’ (Whenever That May Be)

Of all American Presidents, Woodrow (PhD 1886, Johns Hopkins; lecturer and professor for 24 years, 1886-1910, at Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, New York University, Princeton) is the only one who had been a career academic, professorial intellectual prior to entering politics; and his-pre-Presidential electoral political career was only two years (Governor of New Jersey) prior to assuming the Presidency. While other persons have been elected after having served short-terms as professors, Woodrow was America’s first, and so far only, real “Professor President.” Examining American politics as we approach the elections of November, 2018, we have seen the American electorate turn against both career politicians, and, in the accusations surrounding Republican Trump, a turn against individuals wealthy from investments. Considering that wealth from investments enriches many leading Democrats, this is an issue that affects not only Trump’s Republican Party, but also the Democratic Party. Thus the American people may find it wise to put into the Presidency a person whose life proves a character that has neither a desire for personal vast power, nor a desire for personal vast wealth. Such a person might well be a career – as Woodrow was. As we peer forward past the 2018 elections into the 2020 Presidential campaign year, and to subsequent election years, the most electable Presidential candidate likely will be found in the ranks of today’s Professors, to become America’s second “Professor President,” after the first one, Woodrow Wilson. In two prior papers on SSRN, the author has examined Professor President Wilson's conduct at the end of World War I. This present paper examines many actions by the from the outset of his Administration, including: 1913, March 18: Refuses to Commit the United States to Interfere in the New Republic of China Despite the Request of American Investors. 1913, April 6: Welcomes the New Republic of China “Into the Family of Nations.” 1913, October 27: Declares Policy Limitations on the Use of American Military Power, Which Continue Today, More Than 100 Years Later. 1914, April 6: Apologizes to Colombia for T. Roosevelt’s Actions Regarding Panama, and Offers to Pay Colombia $25 Million; T. Roosevelt Prevents Senate Ratification of the Treaty Throughout Wilson’s Admin-istration Because Refuses to Withdraw the Words of Apology. 1914, April 9: Restoring Democracy in Mexico Wrecked by Taft: Tampico, Veracruz, and Mexican Dictator Huerta’s Arms-Ship the Ipiranga. 1914, August: 59 Million English-Speaking People and 252 Million People of India – More Than 300 Million People – Are Put to War by British King-Emperor George V, Without Those 300 Million People Having Any Vote. 1916, June: Americans Invade Mexico Because Pancho Villa Invaded the U.S. 1917, April: Popularity Among Americans for Fighting in World War I. 1917, May: Communicating to Americans Reasons to Fight, and for the Draft. 1917, May: Ruins His Chance to Promote Democracy in Russia After the Abdication of the Czar, Serving Britain and France, But Leaving Democracy in Russia Vulnerable to 1917, October: Lenin the Bolshevik/Communist, Now In Charge of Russia, Implements His Long-Planned Mass-Murder Program to Create Mass Terror. 1918, September: Documents Purportedly from the Bolsheviks/Communists. 1919 Postscript: Why a Popular War Led America to Dislike War. More than half the paper is in the section Wilson Ruins His Chance to Promote Democracy in Russia After the Abdication of the Czar, Serving Britain and France, But Leaving Democracy in Russia Vulnerable to Lenin. This is a study in how to promote democracy in previously anti-democratic cultures - and how to ruin the chance, through misjudgments and temptations to be too supportive of yet other cultures, that are not inclined to promote democracy anywhere else. Throughout the paper, the focus is on lessons that America's second Professor President can learn from America's first Professor President. The paper examines Wilson's admirable ideals, and his often-flawed efforts to implement those ideals. Also noted periodically is how Wilson's true protege, Franklin Roosevelt, kept all the ideals, and, having learned from his mentor's implementation errors, found a way to bring to reality what Woodrow envisioned but was unable to make real.

Social Attitudes of South Koreans Revealed in Opinion Surveys of American Military Government of 1946

본 논문은 1946년 미군정이 실시한 여론조사에 나타난 남한사람들의 사회인식을 연구한 것이다. 일부 학자들은 당시 미군정의 우익성향 때문에 여론조사가 우편향되었다고 주장하지만 실제로 미군정은 오히려 좌우합작을 지지하는 중도세력이었기 때문에 오히려 극단적인 우익 적인 성향을 경계하였다. 그럼에도 불구하고 당시의 여론동향은 우익이 우세했고, 특별히 서울지역에서는 더욱 그랬다. 여론조사에 나타난 남한인들의 정치성향은 약 70% 가량이 우익인사 내지 우익정당을 지지했고, 절대다수가 신탁통치를 반대했으며, 정부 형태로는 대의민주주의와 삼권분립을 지지했다. 특별히 미소공위에서 이승만과 김구를 제외시키려는 소련의 태도에 대해서 강력하게 반대했다. 이런 점에서 해방직후 한국인의 정치지향은 우익, 즉 서구민주주의라고 말할 수 있다. 그러나 여론조사에 나타난 남한인들의 경제성향은 극단적인 공산주의도 극단적인 자본주의도 다같이 배격하고 있다. 남한인들은 분명하게 북한식의 토지개혁을 지지하지 않았다. 일본 기업에 대해서는 국유화에 찬성하고 있으나 일본의 토지에 대해서는 국유화와 사유화가 비슷하며, 남한 대지주들의 토지에 대해서는 유상매매에 대한 지지가 많았다. 이것은 경제정책에 있어서 온건한 유럽식 사회주의를 지향한다고 볼 수 있다.This paper studies the social attitudes of South Koreans indicated through an opinion poll conducted by the American Military Government in Korea (AMGIK) in 1946. Some scholars criticized that this poll was politically biased due to AMGIK’s perceived, right-wing tendencies at the time. However, the AMGIK actually held a middle way supporting for coalition of the lefts and the rights, and were weary of extreme right-wing tendencies. Nonetheless, the public opinion at the time was predominantly right-wing, especially in Seoul. About 70 percent of South Koreans in the polls supported rightists or right-wing parties; a large majority opposed Trusteeship and people’s democracy and preferred to a representative democracy and separation of legal, administrative, and judicial powers. In particular, the opinion polls indicated that the public strongly opposed the Soviet’s disposition to exclude Rhee Syungman and Kim Ku from the US-USSR Joint Commission. In light of this, it can be said that the political orientation of South Koreans immediately after its liberation was right leaning-as in, oriented towards a Western democracy. However, the polls indicated that South Koreans economic preferences were strongly against both extreme communism and extreme capitalism. South Koreans clearly did not support North Korea’s land reform in the polls. With respect of Japan’s companies, the public opinions favored nationalization of them; but with respect to Japanese’ lands, public opinion viewed nationalization as well as privatization of them. With respect of farm land of South Korean large land owner, there was much support for selling confiscation and selling distribution. So, in economy policy, public opinions resembled a moderate European social democracy.

Social Attitudes of South Koreans Revealed in Opinion Surveys of American Military Government of 1946

Social Attitudes of South Koreans Revealed in Opinion Surveys of American Military Government of 1946

Operation Thin Mint: Popular Geopolitics of Care and Post-9/11 Girlhood

In response to the events of 9/11, the Girl Scouts of San Diego created a service programme within the annual Girl Scout cookie sale called Operation Thin Mint, which sends cookies to soldiers serving overseas. Representations of American patriotism and national identity are featured prominently throughout the cookie sale as girls come to embody America’s role in overseas military conflicts, an embodiment of everyday geopolitical processes that frame the US military as protector of American innocence, ideals and values. Scouts come to engage with political and economic systems that position them beyond their communities as they ‘sell the nation’ to consumers as a form of care, blurring the boundaries between the public and private spheres as well as the local and global. Based on an in-depth ethnographic study on the Girl Scout cookie sale, this article will examine the complex gendered relationship between the American military, girls’ bodies and care.

Solid-state bonding of silicon chips to copper substrates with graded circular micro-trenches

Silicon (Si) chips of 5 mm × 5 mm were bonded directly to copper (Cu) substrates using solid-state process at 300 °C without using any die-attach materials. A static pressure of 6.9 MPa was applied. To deal with the large mismatch in coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) between Si and Cu, graded circular micro-trenches were fabricated on the Cu substrates. The micro-trenches provide space for Cu material to move into during the bonding process where the Cu surface incurs plastic deformation to conform to Si bottom surface for intimate contact. The micro-trenches also help relax stresses on the bonding interface caused by the fact that Cu contracts significantly more than Si during cooling down. The results obtained are encouraging, implying that the concept of using micro-trenches work. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images on cross sections of bonded structures show that Si chips were well bonded to Cu substrates without voids or defects on the interface and without any cracks on Si chip. Shear test were performed on six samples. It turned out that, of all six samples, the Si chip fractured first and the entire Si bottom surface was stilled well bonded to the Cu substrate. The average breakage force of Si chips on six samples is 13.5 Kgf. The breakage force of the joint cannot be determined but is certainly higher than 13.5 Kgf, which is more than twice of the specification American Military Standard. The new chip bonding structure with solid-state process reported in this paper eliminates the use of die-attach materials and the thermal resistance associated with the die-attach. It also removes the operating temperature limit constrained by the melting temperature of die-attach materials. We except this new bonding structure design to be a valuable alternative to high power and high temperature devices.

Book Review: The Unmooring of American Military Power

Book Review: The Unmooring of American Military Power

American Military Superiority and the Pacific-Primacy Myth

The claim that the United States seeks primacy – a concept distinct from military superiority – in the Asia-Pacific is fundamentally wrong.

The Darker Side of American Military Mental Healthcare—Part Three: Five More Harmful Strategies to Manage Its Mental Health Dilemma

As we reported in the previous two articles in this series, the U.S. military has actively attempted to deal with its mental health dilemma by utilizing 10 approaches. These strategies function to help the military avoid learning its war trauma lessons to the contrary, and it appears that their approach is to prevent or reduce mass psychiatric attrition and exorbitant costs associated with psychiatric treatment and disability pensions, to the clear detriment of its fighting force and their families denied adequate mental healthcare. In this final review, we examine the remaining five harmful approaches designed to prevent the so-called evacuation syndromes that the military worries might arise should psychiatric lessons of war ever be implemented, such as eliminating stigma and elevating mental health services on par with medical services. The five avoidance strategies we cover include (6) delay, deception, and delay; (7) faulty diagnosis and “backdoor” discharges; (8) maintaining diffusion of responsibility and unaccountability; (9) provision of inadequate, experimental, or harmful treatment; and (10) perpetuating neglect, indifference, and self-inflicted crises. We conclude our analysis by asserting that the U.S. military has tried every conceivable way to unburden itself from the psychological realities of modern warfare, with the notable exception of actually committing to learning its war trauma lessons and genuinely implementing the required policies for good.

Ethical Lapses and the Military Profession

In a recent issue of this journal, we published an article titled “Fault Lines of the American Military Profession”. Donald S. Travis subsequently wrote a Dipustatio Sine Fine rejoinder that raised a number of criticisms of our piece and suggested several ways forward. For our part, we detect three serious problems in Travis’s analysis and offer a single syncretic response. Our solution builds on the insights of Travis’s critique while avoiding the pitfalls of his specific line of reasoning. We conclude by urging others to continue to debate and research these very consequential and timely issues.

LOS LÍMITES DEL PODER MILITAR ESTADOUNIDENSE

Este artículo realiza un análisis de la intervención militar estadounidense en Afganistán e Iraq. Estas campañas han puesto a prueba la imponente maquinaria bélica americana y han revelado tanto el cambiante rostro de la guerra como los límites del nuevo estilo militar surgido de la Revolución en los Asuntos Militares. Ello está obligando a Washington a revisar la estructura de fuerzas y mandos, el catálogo de capacidades, el patrón de despliegue global y a rede nir el proceso de transformación militar del país para enfrentarse con éxito a los requerimientos presentes y futuros.

American Military Culture and the Strategic Seduction of Remote Warfare

This essay endeavours to answer the question of why the US National Security establishment puts such ever-expanding faith in remotely piloted drones in a strategic bombing role in fighting twenty-first-century wars. This essay argues, one: the use of strategic air power has been shaped by long-term historical factors surrounding an imbalanced emphasis on the science of warfare in the United States military beginning in the nineteenth century stretching back to the founding of the US Military Academy at West Point. Two, twenty-first-century drone warfare fits into the larger historical context surrounding the development of a uniquely American version of strategic bombing theory during the inter-war period and carried out in World War II. That theory promoted a technological determinism that lives on despite the repeated failure of strategic bombing to live up to expectations largely because the creation of the independent Air Force in 1947 rested upon the perceived achievements of US strategic bombing during the war.

Localizing the Reynolds case: a comparison of two American military atrocities in the Far East in Cold War 1957

ABSTRACT This paper’s main focus is the case of the killing of Chinese citizen Liu Ziran by the American soldier Robert G. Reynolds in Taipei on March 20, 1957. Following this unfortunate event, a United States court-martial was inappropriately held in Taiwan. Reynolds’ acquittal provoked a violent response from the Chinese people. The riot on May 24, 1957, is best interpreted within a framework of nationalism rather than Cold War discourse. That same year, in the Girard case, another American soldier killed a Japanese woman in Japan. Due to the unequal positions of Taiwan and Japan in US Cold War strategy, these two killings were handled differently and led to dissimilar reactions. Washington viewed Taipei as somewhat of a troublemaker rather than a reliable ally and expressed great suspicion of Chiang Kai-shek and his eldest son, Chiang Ching-kuo. The US government had already declined to support Chiang Kai-shek’s plan for parachute raids in China. Meanwhile, Chiang’s authoritarian regime created a hotbed for the outbreak of nationalism. The people of Taiwan experienced a “pawn complex” and, in the Reynolds case, gave vent to accumulated ideological and social pressures.

Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815–1917 by J. P. Clark

Reviewed by: Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815–1917 by J. P. Clark Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh (bio) Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815–1917 j. p. clark Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017 336 pp. J. P. Clark's Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815–1917 fills an important gap in our scholarly understanding of an important institution—the nineteenth-century US Army officer corps. Its wider event horizon due to its uncharacteristically broad chronological range allows for a study of different generations of professional officers that traces how the American army's leadership cadre evolved in relation to developments in both American military history and larger civilian society. Each generation of officers defined, debated, and experienced distinctly [End Page 599] different conceptions of military professionalism. Clark's analytical approach allows his monograph to discern both the American Army's institutional continuities and the significant changes it experienced over the course of the nineteenth century leading up to World War I. Clark lays out four generations of officers—a foundational generation of veterans of the War of 1812 and antebellum graduates of West Point, a Civil War generation that fought in the nineteenth century's longest conflict, a post−Civil War composite generation of mostly West Point graduates grappling with the earlier conflict's consequences, and a Progressive generation commissioned after 1890 that imported civilian ideas of centralization and bureaucratization into the army. Clark's approach allows him to examine the interaction between predominately military factors (e.g. the size and scale of American wars and the structures of American military institutions) and larger trends in American culture and society. Like many historians, between the analytical poles of continuity and change, Clark gravitates toward the latter—and he also locates the primary causal forces of change in larger American society. As he puts it, "the vertical ties of continuity within the military are less important than the horizontal ties across society. Therefore, each professional generation is more a product of its time than a creation of military institutions" (9). Clark's approach thus eschews an abstract and social-scientific notion of professionalism, perhaps best embodied in Samuel P. Huntington's The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (1957). While that work is dated and challenged by most historians, if still cited due to its importance and influence, American military institutions (as Clark himself well knows) remain heavily influenced by conceptions of professionalism that claim to be timeless and enduring. Even the use of history in the American military's educational apparatus tends to gravitate toward the discovery of "lessons learned," which can be applied across wide stretches of time and place. In contrast, perhaps the most trenchant lesson Clark draws from his work for the current American profession of arms is a generational gap in the present US Army between general officers who led troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as senior officers, and junior officers who began their careers in those conflicts at the small unit level. As Clark puts it, "bridging the gaps between these quite different frames of reference is not impossible, but it is unlikely because the bureaucratic artifacts that give an army substance—doctrine, regulations, training plans—rarely [End Page 600] make explicit the assumptions on which they are based. … The most insidious divides are those that go unnoticed" (xi). Among most professional academic historians, Preparing for War would find ready agreement regarding its argument for the primacy of historical change over political scientists' search for timeless continuities, but where Clark's work makes its biggest contribution is in its longer distinctive chronological spread. William Skelton's An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784–1861 (1993) covers the creation of a professional officer corps, but excludes from its coverage the Civil War. It also covers the creation of an American military profession, as opposed to its continuing evolution. Samuel Watson's magisterial two-volume study of the Jacksonian and antebellum US Army, Jackson's Sword: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1810–1821 (2012) and Peacekeepers and...

Frustrated Ambition: General Vicente Lim and the Philippine Military Experience, 1910–1944 by Richard B. Meixsel

Reviewed by: Frustrated Ambition: General Vicente Lim and the Philippine Military Experience, 1910–1944 by Richard B. Meixsel Maria Felisa S. Tan RICHARD B. MEIXSEL Frustrated Ambition: General Vicente Lim and the Philippine Military Experience, 1910–1944 Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018. 351 pages. Together with Josefa Llanes Escoda and Jose Abad Santos, Vicente Lim is memorialized in the Philippines's 1000-peso banknote. But sadly, no in-depth biography over the past decades has been written about him by any Filipino scholar or historian probably due to the lack of written sources. The closest to a biography there was on Lim was the compilation of his letters to his wife and sons, To Inspire and to Lead (1980), which was published privately by his granddaughter Nieves Lim Ledesma. It is thus commendable that an American military historian, Richard Meixsel, has written a biography on Lim: Frustrated Ambition: General Vicente Lim and the Philippine Military Experience, 1910–1944. The author is an associate professor of history at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA. Meixsel has also written articles on Philippine and US military history, and he is the author of two books, Clark Field and The US Army Air Corps (2002) and Philippine–American Military History, 1902–1942: An Annotated Bibliography (2003). Frustrated Ambition contains eleven chapters that trace Lim's military career and his involvement in every significant military development in the Philippines. Unlike the standard biography where the focus is on a [End Page 407] single person's life, this book juxtaposes Lim's story with the formation of the Philippine Army. The amount of detail on the history of the Philippine Army and the various personalities involved with the institution is both the book's strength and weakness. While the idea of interspersing facets of Lim's story with that of the Philippine Army is an interesting one, it overwhelms the reader with too much information on the Philippine Army, leaving too little on Lim in most chapters. This difficulty can be gleaned for instance in chapter 4, where the author provides a lengthy discussion on the origins of the Philippine military system and then, toward the end of the chapter, merely quotes a lecture that Lim delivered arguing that the Filipinos recruited to the Philippine Army should be military-minded (91). From these eleven chapters, the information pertaining directly to Lim can be summarized as follows: Born on 5 April 1888 in Calamba, Laguna, Lim graduated from the Philippine Normal School and later taught for six months at a public school in Santa Cruz, Laguna. In March 1910 Lim began his military career when he was accepted in the US Military Academy at West Point, New York. He was the first Filipino to graduate from West Point, after which he received his commission as a second lieutenant. After Lim returned to the Philippines in 1914, he joined the Philippine Scouts and was subsequently assigned to Fort San Pedro in Iloilo. During his stay at the fort, Lim disclosed that he was not happy with the way his American commanding officer was treating him, but he neither explained how nor stated the reason why he was treated that way. He reported the American officer's behavior to higher authorities, and the officer was relieved (33). Although membership in the Philippine Scouts represented the peak of one's career for both Filipino officers and American enlisted men, Lim was not satisfied with this achievement; he kept looking for opportunities to expand his military education and experience. In 1916 he was attached to the Philippine Constabulary (PC), then the country's militarized national police. Lim had hoped to head the PC. However, the US War Department turned down Gov.-Gen. Theodore Roosevelt's request for Lim's leadership of the PC not because of his qualifications but probably because of his character (72–73). Lim had a temper, and he lacked tact, allegedly not an easy person to get along with (105). [End Page 408] The National Defense Act of 1920 permitted Filipino Scout officers to attend service schools in the US. Lim took advantage of this opportunity to further improve his military education. From 1926...

"For Conscience Sake": Quaker Campaigns Against Legislative Chaplaincies, 1789–1797

"For Conscience Sake":Quaker Campaigns Against Legislative Chaplaincies, 1789–1797 S. Spencer Wells (bio) In November 1791, Free Quaker Samuel Wetherill made a provocative overture. Standing before Philadelphia's Society for Attaining Useful Knowledge, the former Friend took the United States fledgling federal government to task for obliging American citizens to "maintain or contribute to maintain a ministry which their conscience disapproves." It did so, he asserted with the impassioned zeal and "independence of a freeman," by requiring Americans to pay taxes towards the support of congressional chaplaincies. Because the practice threatened to invade the "rights of the people" it deserved no "legislative sanction." Wetherill made his concluding point with adamancy: the congressional chaplaincy deserved to be abolished forthwith.1 While American chaplaincies, both civil and military, have come under increased historical scrutiny in recent years, early national criticism of governmental chaplains has not been fully accounted for. According to common understanding, only a few late-eighteenth century Virginians spoke out against chaplains serving in the nation's legislative halls. Baptist leader John Leland in 1790 within the pages of the Virginia Chronicle spoke out against the "unconstitutional" practice of "paying the chaplains of the [national] civil and military departments out of the public treasury." James Madison privately concurred somewhat belatedly almost three decades later in letters to sympathetic colleagues. Both individuals are seen as exceptions rather than the rule. To be sure, chaplains serving in state and national legislative bodies did not inspire widespread resistance among citizens of the early American Republic. But condemnation of the ways in which such appointments unduly mixed church and state did spread beyond select presidents and evangelical leaders alone. Though Friends are not often recognized for the part they played in calling for the disestablishment of state churches in the wake of the American Revolution, throughout the 1790s a select number took it upon themselves to [End Page 1] speak out against chaplaincies in an organized public fashion. Where Wetherill chose to address his pointed comments to an assembly of his peers, Quakers belonging to Virginia Yearly Meeting pressed further afield, repeatedly petitioning their state assembly to do away with its own democratically elected chaplains. Though both endeavors proved unsuccessful in the end, close examinations of Friends' short-lived campaigns against state and federally-sponsored chaplains not only provides evidence that criticism of state-sponsored chaplains was more widespread than previously imagined, but also provides clues as to why Quakers have been so often overlooked in previous studies of early national chaplaincies and the separation of church and state.2 Critiquing Chaplaincies: Samuel Wetherill, Free Quaker When Samuel Wetherill laid out his précis against congressional chaplains he well understood the dangers of mixing religion and politics. Little more than a decade before, Wetherill found himself on the short end of Quakers' disciplinary stick after tendering his loyalty to Pennsylvania's revolutionary government. Following his disownment in 1779 for setting Friends' calls for neutrality at naught by "making himself a party in the public commotions" then "prevailing," Wetherill began taking steps to gather similarly excised Friends under a common religious roof. The resulting community of faith, The Society of Free Quakers, attempted to assert their continued allegiance to Quaker principles such as the Inward Light, even as they concurrently ended practices of disownment in their own society. Wetherill's brush with Quaker discipline tinged the remainder of his life. Thereafter, Wetherill increasingly devoted himself to protecting the freedoms of conscience and private judgment whenever and wherever he believed them to be threatened with attack—both within the church and the larger American polity.3 By 1791, most Americans accepted governmental chaplains as a matter of course. During the War of Independence, the Continental Congress hired chaplains to open their deliberations with prayer, while Commander-in-Chief George Washington went out of his way to issue calls for chaplains to accompany the troops he commanded in an effort to instill order, decorum, and Christian patriotism within the ranks. Though members of the Constitutional Convention did not hire a chaplain, the first Federal Congress lost little time appointing their own. Shortly after convening in April of 1789, the Senate quickly moved to create a five...