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i i 31
The Commoner
MBRUAftY, 1918.
ec'y Baker Reyiews Work of War Department
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A Washington special to the New York
orld, dated Jam 28, says: Newton D. Baker,
retary p war, today presented the case of
e administration in the matter of the con-
ct of the war
Ho answered the charges that were made by
nator TJhamberlain, which alleged the col-
pse of the military establishment, and went
yond that to include in his statement a cora
ehensive survey of what the war department
d done, of how It had been done, of why it
d been done, of the results thus far achieved
d of the promise of the future.
or four hours the secretary addressed the hear-
g arranged by the senate committee on milia
ry affairs. In that time he spoke between
,000 and 40,000 words. He avoided any
ndency to pass' a personal judgment upon the
orations of his department, leaving such con-
nalrvnof frt fa ilrnmn liv flio fonfo 1i nraeonfaH
v5' 1!nd the opinion offered by experts.
His easy manner, his well pitched voice, his
nency of speech and his grasp of the subject,
eld the 400 or 500 men and women wh,o heard
im in close attention. He spoke extempor-
neously, referring now and 'then to statistical
ta that lay before him. on the table. He was
rely interrupted. ,
It is merely a statement of fact to say that
r. Baker produced a deep impression. This
i attested by- the expressions of the members
f the committee, including several who had
pposed the secretary on previous occasions,
id it is further proved by the impression pro-
uced upon the President, who was described
being more than satisfied with the secretary's
position and certain that it will carry convic-
on to the country at large. He received a
mplete transpript immediately upon the close
'., the session , j
5 The secretary rdeveloped his theme largely
ong the linesof showing that the underlying
rinciples animating theconduct of the war-were
asonable, well considered, authoritative and
cacious.
He reached an important climax and stressed
W importance when he declared that a real
Pleasure of America's preparation and particip
ation lay in tne tact that we snail nave more
han half a million troops, in France early in
his year, and by the end we shall have more
han 1,500,000 ready for the front, well trained
and wholly equipped, ready to- bear their share
f the burden.
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"
UNITED
KIVAR PROBLEM FACED BY THE
STATES
Secretary Baker closed his testimony before
the senate committe with a general statement
of the war plan and how it was developed. He
fsaid:
"Now, gentlemen, about the plan of the war.
lit will be remembered that this war broke out
in August. 1914. We went into it in April,
11917, so that for two and a half years, or more
than two and a half years, the war had been
going on. It was not as though war had
.broken out between the United States and some
country, each of them prior to that time hav
ing beeu at peace with one another and with
everybody else, so that an immediate, plan
'should be made in the United States for Con
ducting war against its adversary, but we were
coming into a war which had been going on for
two and one-half years, in which the greatest
military experts, all the inventive genius, all of
the industrial,' capacity of these greatest coun
tries in the world had for two and one-half
- iinnn orklvJncr'fJiA .nrnhlom nf what. lrinri nf
1? ycaia uctxj. ev& w" f.w.-.- .-, -
war it was to be and where it was to ue waged.
"It was not a thing for us to decide where
our theatre of war should be. The theatre of
k war was. Franco. It was not for. us to aeeioe
our line of communications, uur line or com
munclations ?as across three thousand miles
of ocean, one ' end -of it infested with sub
marinep. It was not for us to decide whether
we would 'have the manoeuvring of large bod
ies of troopsvintthe open. There lay the antag
onists on opposite sides of No1 Man's Land in
the trenches at a, death grapple with one.an-
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y;HOW NATION MAKES WAR, AS RE-
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VEALED BY BAKER
A Washington special to the Now York
World, dated Jan. 28, says: Here are
some of the striking points made by Sec
retary Baker before the senate military
committee today:
We will havo 500,000 men in France
early In 1918 and we will havo 1,500,-
000 ready to ship to Franco during 1918.
At this hour we iave a fighting army in
Franco, seasoned and trained in the war
fare.
The German governmen. is still mysti
fied regarding the number of men now
in France.
We are in the war to hit and to hit
hard. Our problem is not one of star
playing, but of team playing.
France and Great Britain are supplying
artillery to the American forces, because
they themselves "wished to do so, as they
had an excess on hand ah,d wished to
save ships for more vital necessities.
Ships are the crux of this problem, and
every time wo can use French industrial
resources instead of making and sending
our own products we are doing it.
The American army in France, large
as it is, and the American army to be
sent there, large as that Is, are and will
be provided with artillery of the type
thov want as rapidlv us they cqn uee 't.
When we went into the war the stand
ard of the array uniform was 75 per cent
wool and 25 per cent cotton. But now
every yard is of virgin wool, with a large
increase in its strength.
There is no discrim'nationin the
n a i '' -n.
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ft
ft
ft
treatment of white and negro troops. '
Sixty million shells are under manu-
facture for delivery th's year. ft
No array ever, assembled anywhere wnn
ever fed as ably, as well, as nutritiously ft
and as anpetizijigly.
Gen. Wood was recognized by common ft
consent in the army as the most canab'e ft
to select camp sites jand inaugurate a ft
training camp system.
, There are things that co.uld hnve been ft
better done, but our pffort is to learn. ' ft
The German array, best prepared in tbe- ft
world, furnlRhes on obsolete rifle for ft
practice until men learn to take care of ft
a better weapon.
We have built in France docks, terra- ft
linals, sent over dock1 machinery, cranes,
ojeven piles, warehouses at ports of dlsejn-
barkation for the storage of vast supplies
needed before distribution. We aro tak-
. ing over and are in process of rebuilding
ft a railroad 600 miles long from our ports ft
ft.j',ot disembarkation to our baseof oper- ft
ation. . it
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"It was not the problem of doing it our way
and letting everybody else take are of himself.
In the first place, we were going to fight in
France, not on our own soil end not on our ad
versary's soil, and therefore at the very begin
nings it was obvious that the thing we had' to do
was not to map out an ideal plan of campaign,
not to have the War College, wlthits specula
tive studies of Napoleon and everybody else,
map out the theoretically best way to get at
some other country, but it was the problem of
studying the then existing situation and br'ng
ing the financial, the industrial and the military,
strength of the United States into co-operation
with that of, Great Britain and France in the
most immediate and effective way. That prob
lem could noi.be decided here
"I fancy in ,fchis audience there are men who
have been in the trenches. The altogether unr
precedented character of that problem Is the
thing which every returning visitor tells us
i... -.... oTifayrmiat Tia nn thi ntherf?'dfi njkT nnt h described in words, can not be nut
of that Line; and, our problem, was andjsjttt get ' 'down in reports. It lsva thing so'different from
'over there andS'gefc tim. J&hB" ' "',anytllinS,else that ever went on In the world,
bo vast in Its desolation, so extraordinary In its
uniqueness that It must bo seen and studied on
tho ground In order to bo comprehended at all.
"It is easily imagined that wo might havo
perfected an army over here and carried it
across the ocean and found it wholly unadopted
to its task, and It might well have been that tho
army that wo sent over was Just one thing that
they did not need, and that some other thing
which wo might havo suppl'cd would have been
the thing essential to. their success.
"So that from tho very beginning it was not
a question of abstract speculation hero, but a
question of study there to flftd out whore our
shoulder to'tho wheel could be put.
CONFIDENTIAL EXCHANGES
"They realized that, and so Great Britain
sent over to us Mr. Balfour and Gen. Bridget
and a staff of experts. They came over hero and
you saw Mr. Balfour in tho house of congress
and at tho White house, in public meetings at
one place and another, but tho, group of experts
whom they brought over with them you did not
see much of, and yet they distributed them
selves through the war department and their
ordnance expert sat down with Gen. Crozlor,
their supply experts with Gen. Sharpe and his
assistants, . tholr strateg'sts' sat down with the
army war college, and all over this cltyj,here
were these confidential jy'dups exchanging, in
formation, telling how th'c thing was over there,
and what wo could do, what they advised us to
do, what experience they had had in developing,
this, that and the other implement of .supply,
how certain plans wh'ch one might naturally
have evolved out of the past experience of the
world had been tried there and found not to
work at all.
"They were exchanging information, giving
us all that they thought was holpful'and, then
came Joffre, with his wonderful reputation and
..his great cliaflh'Ing personality, and he made' a
great figure here and we welcomed him. it was
a tremendous inspiration to see the hero of the
Marne, but with him came th's Unobserved staff
of fifteen or twenty or twenty-five young men,
the most brilliant men ir the French Army, stra
tegists, mechanical experts, experts in arms, ex
perts in supplies, experts in industry and manu
facture, and they told us not merely the formal
and military problems, but they brought ov-r
with them men who were in from the bog'nning,
in their re-organizations of their industries, in
thoir mobilization 'of their industrial plants, and'
we sat' down with them in little groups until
' finally we collated, and collected and extracted
all the information whih they could give us
from their, respective countries.
"And every. country wYiich has been brought
in tho war has brought (is that sort, or sent us
that sort of a staff of experts, and it has been
necessary to compare notes, and with this as a
basis, to form such an idea as might be formed
of what was the thing for us to do over there.
GREW OLD IN THE TELLING
"But that was not enough. They admitted
that it was impossiblo to draw that picture. They
could describe to us and bring the specifications
and drawing for a piece of artillery but, they:
could not tell us why the British theory of the
use of artillery was by the British preferred to
that of the French. They could not picture to
us a barrage of heavy howitzers as compared to
a barrage of 75 mm. guns. They could not pic
ture to us the association of aircraft, balloons
and mobile aircraft with artillery uses. They
could tell us about it, but even while they told
us the story grew old.
"The one thing they told us from the very be
ginning to the end was that this war, of all oth
ers, was not a static thing, that our adversary
was a versatile and agile adversary, that every
day he revamped and changed his weapons of at
tack and his methods of defense, that the stories
they were telling us were true when they left Eng
land and France, but an entirely different thing
was probably taking place there npw; and they
told us of largo supplies of weapons of one kind
and another which they had developed in France
and England and wh.ich,toeven before they got
them in sufficient quantity maufactured to take
them from the industrial plants to the front
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