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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 1918)
ifiiwgFi '-ISSrSmle The Commoner HJT i ijf JBRUARY; 1918 m 4s - ns VJ 'IvSUi .. . .' V'.t M .-$ !- French people rose with a sense of gratitude nopeiuinesajnat naa never oeen in tneiu oe- ' HEARTEN THE $RENCH "Of course they welcomed .the British, but tir need was not so great. when the Brittfih int. Of course, they welcomed the British, hut &re wore ties between them and us which had been between thorn and the British, and so ten our troops wont there was an Instant and kmtanepus rise in the morale of the French, it an, equally instant ana spontaneous lnsiBt- 36 that these soldiers who came from America iQuid continue to come in an unbroken stream. "And so we made the election. "We decided to send the regular army as a whole, but to vxd regular- divisions and national guard di- talons, selected according to the state of their jparation, and. keep back hero some part of te trained force in order that it might inoculate fith its spirj and its training these raw levies rjhicn we were training, ana one arter anotner Lese division? have gone oyer until In France iere is. a fighting army, an army trained in the Jentlals and In the beginnings of military dis line and practice, and trained, seasoned flght- r'g In this kind of a war on the actual battle- elds where It is" taking place. "Early in thlr war when Joffre was here and rhen Balfolir was here, they said to us! 'It may ike you some, time to get over to us a fighting emy, but you are a great industrial country, our Ian-power is fully engaged in our industries and our military enterprises: send over artisans, .special engineering regiments and troops of a ichnical character, and although it was not tnown here at the outset, and only a phrase in le emergency military legislation shows the hing was thought as a possibility, yet in a very lort time We hid organized encineerinjr rerl- lents of railroad men and sent them over there tnd were rebuilding behind the lines of the British and French the railroads which were be- ig carried forward with their advance, recon ducting their broken engines and cars, build- ig new railroads, both back of the French and British lines, and. those regiments were of such Quality that at the -Cambria assault, carried on y Gen. Byng, when the Germans made their mnter attack, our engineer regiments threw lown their picks and spades, and carried their nHfles into the battle and distinguished them- jlves by gallant action in, the war itself. WORK OF THE RED CROSS "Very early In this war Great Britain, through Balfour and his assistants, and France through 'offre, said to us, 'Send us nurses and doctors.' iy, before we were scarcely in the war Amer ican units organized in advance and anticipation by the Red Cross, which was taken over into Ithe service of the United States through the Surgeon General's office, were on the battlefield, and there are tens of thousands of men in Eng land and in France now who bless the mission !of mere: upon which the first American appeared in France. "Our surgeons have set up hospitals Immedi ately behind the lines. They have been, made military in every sense of the' word. They have not been especially fortunate in escaping attack gfrom the air, and our early losses in this war were the losses of Red Cross nurses and doc tors and orderlies and attendants in hospitals and ambulance drivers who were sept over, to assist our allies in these necessary services, thus not only rendering assistance, but acquiring skill and Lnowledce of the circumstances and sur roundings, so'that when our own troops catde in large numbers they could render like services to our own forces. ' "But thatwaa not enough. It was. suggested that further groups of mechanics might be need s'' ed. Nay,, we jbegan, to see that we were going to fie over tnere, in large rorce, ana tne question that then had to be answered was, How will we maintain an army in France? Special studies had to be made cf that problem, and this is what they showed: They showed that the railroads and the facilities in France had during this war been kept in an excellent condition; far better than all others supposed possible under war con ditions. And yet those railroads were used to the maximum to take care of the needs of the French and British themselves, and that when our army became a great army, it would be necessary for. us to huild back of our own line an independent line of communication. "In ether' words, France was a white sbe6t' of paper so far as 'we were concerned, and on' iliat we had not' only to write an armyKbut we hid to write the means of maintaining that army, and frqnr the first time when a careful and sci entific study of the opportunities of France to help us were made, from that hour until this, we have been building in Franco facilities, instruments, agencies, just as many as are here in the United States and more, many of them' of tho same character. "For instance,' the French had haturally re served the best ports in Franco for their own supply. The channel ports have been reserved t for the British. When we came in, it was ' necessary for us" to have Independent ports of entry, in order that there niglit not bo confu sion and admixture of our supplies, going through these ports of disembarkation with those of other nations. We were given several ports. As you perhaps recall, the ports of Franco are tidal ports, ports with deep water and tidal ba sins at high tides, with Insufficient water for landing at the docks when the tide Is out. "As a consequence, the construction of docks and wharves in ports of that kind Is very much more difficult than where you have a deep sea harbor, and all you need to do Is to erect a pile Vharf. We have had to build docks, we have had to fabricate in this country and send over dockhandling machinery; we have had to send front this country even the piles to build the docks. We have had to have Gauntry cranes, manufactured in this country, sent over to be erected on those docks; we have had to erect over there warehouses at the ports of disembark ation in order that those vast accumulations of stores and supplies which go over can be prop erly, housed and cared for, until they can be dis tributed into the interior. RAILROAD TAKEN OVER. "We have had to take over, and are in process of rebuilding and amplyfying, a railroad 600 miles long, in order to carry our products from our ports of disembarkation to our general bases of operation. And all of that, gentlemen, has to be done, not only studied out as a necessary thing to do, but when so studied out and report ed here the manufactories for those things have ) to be carried on in this country and the things shipped over there nails, crosstles, spikes, fish plates, engines, cars, buildings. We have had to build ordnance depots and repair shops and Ijreat magazines of supply in the Interior. All of that problem has been carrying forward step by step. The plans for a single ordnance repair shop, which I saw some time ago, covered acres and acres of ground, designed over here, the ironwork fabricated over here, built here, disas sembled, put in ships and carried abroad to be reassembled over there. "We have had to build barracks over, there for our soldiers, and in the mean time to billet them around in the French villages. Buildlng bar racks over there and building them .here is a very different thing, gentlemen. "When we summoned the lumber industry of this country to produce' the lumber to build our own cantonments it came In great and steady streams from all over the country, huLwhen we talk about building barracks in France, it means this: It means to organize,. as we have organized, Tegiments of foresters and sending them over in to the. -forests of France, which they have as signed to us for our use, cutting down the trees, setting up sawmills, making the lumber of va rious sizes, transporting it to places where it is to be used and then finally using, , PLANT CORN IN FRANCE " "We have had to go back to ,tb.e planning of the qorp In JTrance in order that we might some time make a harvest. Our operations began in the forests of France, not in the lumber yards, as they did in this country. , "That great staff uMder Gen. Pershing's di rection, containing so many men from the'Amer ican army enriched by captains of industry and masters of technical performance In this coun try, all of these large industrial operations un der general direction, such as the railroad and dock buildings,, under former Vice-president of the Pennsylvania railroad Atterbury and men of that quality and experience summoned in to aid him, those are the men who are carrying forward these operations, which are quite as ex pensive as tb.ose which are carried-on over hero and of far greater difficulty, because it means getting material by cable as to sizes and speci fications, haying it fabricated here and sent across through those infested 3,000 miles of ocean' and then set up1 on' that side. "In addition to that, on the other side it has been necessary for us to build hospitals', and that is where the major need for hospitals mar I be. It has been necessary for the surgeon gen ' eral's staff to be divided In this fashion and to . select supplies and procure materials, and t supervise the construction of these hospitals and to man them and equip them. THE WAR'S CHANGES "All of that has gone on contemporaneously with tho work which has been done In this coun try, and then In ordor that another elomont may be added to this kaloidoscoplc character which this war necessarily has, I call your attontlon to a thing which you already know. This war had a more or less set character until the Russian situation changed, and it has changed in thj last few months. When we had gotten more or less used to the situation created by the uncer tainty as to Russia, there came the great Italian defeat, which called for even greater changes In our plans in many ways. "So that what might have boon a perfectly acceptable plan as to major op erations prior to the change in the Rus sian situation, or prior to the change in the Italian situation, had to be rcstudlcd in stantly) and for that reason, among others, there is now organized, as you know, in France, pur- suant to the suggestion of Mr, Lloyd Goor(go, the Rapello Conference of the supreme war council and tho United States Is represented on that by the chief of staff of the American army and the major international arrangements in regard to the military worked out there, while Gen Persh ing and his staff of experts are working out theso other questions. "That is a picture of what has been going on over there, gentlemen. On this side much of that has had to be done and in addition to it all the things' we have done, and I ask you to v re member among tho achievements on this side is tho building of this army, not of 10,000 or 100, 000 or 500,000 but of substantially 1,600,000 men. NO ARMY IN HISTORY SO RAISED AND CARED FOR, RAILER STATES "Andvnow, le't mo be frank" with you, and 'let your judgment be frank with me about this. Has any army in history, ever, since the beginning of time, been so raised and cared for as this army has? Can the picture bo duplicated? We have raised this army, taking the regular army and the national guard, raising It to war strength and supplementing It by the operation of a draft, and there are senators In this room who said to me with grief when wo proposed that that form of raising the soldiers be had, they shook their heads and said, 'Mr. Secretary, It can't be done. It is too sudden to address to the Amer- ican people that mode of selecting soldiers.' "And yet, has any great enterprise within - the knowledge of any man in this room ever been carried out with more unfailing justice, with more intelligent explanation and commend ation to the good sense of patriotism of the .American people, and has any great revolution ary change In our mode of practice ever been ac cepted so splendidly as the operation of the se lective service system? "We have got those young men in camp and they are surrounded from the day they left home until the day they come back to it, if in God's providence they can come back, with more agen cies for their protection and comfort and health and happiness, physical, spiritual and mental, than any army that ever went but on a field. ' CLASSIFICATION OF MEN. "They are classified Ijy, a systqm under classi fication so that men who have mechanical in stincts and training will be given mechanical op portunities in tlje army. The 'round' man is not sought to bo put into the 'square' place. The American people have supplied liberally for the purpose. The Y. M. C. A., the Knights of Co lumbus, the Young Women's Christian Associa tion, the Training Camp Activities committee, the Training Camp Athletic committee, have all been brought in to live with the soldiers, and by, virtue of activities started in the war de partment the communities which surround these camps have been instantly gotten away from tho notion which used to be prevalent of a certain alienation between a civilian soldier group, and these soldier boys in 'these camps have treen. adopted into the homes and hearts of the people among whom they live. No such relation has ever existed between an army and a civilian pop ulation as exists with regard to this. (Cortlnued on Page 11.) I