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The Commoner
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JBRUARY; 1918
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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.)
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