River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1911-05-04
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all over the country at widely separated mill
tary posts
Extreme mobility, which in the case of the
American army has been so strikingly put to
the test by the double quick advance on the
Rio Grande, is the attribute above all
others for which our military experts have
been working ever since the Spanish-American
war. The United States needs a mobile
armed force as does other nation on the
globe Indeed it is absolutely imperative.
The explanation is found OF course in the
immense extent of the republic and our far
flung coast line. To protect so extensive a
territory needs an armed force that can move
with extreme rapidity from place to place. The
fact that broad oceans separate from the
nations that, in the event of trouble, would
prove our most formidable foes, presumably
insures us reasonable warning of attempted
invasion but even with this leeway it needs
quickmoving soldiery to rush at short notice
TO any threatened point of attack
The circumstance that the rushing of troops
to southern boundary left the Atlantic
coast virtually unprotected is being made an
argument for a larger regular army by the
advocates of such an organization. However,
our military experts have not waited upon a
,arger army to perfect a state of military pre-
paredness.
But whatever the merits of this question of
4 large standing army the military experts
nave not waited upon It's solution. Ihey nave
gone right ahead, bending every energy to
make force of considerably less than 100000
men equal in emergency to a body of sodery
several times as numerous. To that end Uncle
Sans soldiery, with due acknowledgement of
he modern tendency of specialization, have
been rendered as versatile as possible in the
arts of warfare. And, best of all, there has
been cultivated the fire alarm" propensity to
cut and run for scene of trouble at the
rrip Tn how rarf ~ he nro-
oaratons, too. the administrative officials in
every branch of the army have kept constant
y IN mind this aim and purpose.
OF all the preparations for war which have
gone forward under a clear sky perhaps the
most wonderful have had to do with the trans
Oortation arrangements Our military experts
have awakened to the fact that the United
States is the greatest railroad country in the
world and that even in the event of the most
serious conflict it is unlikely that many of
these communicative lines would be seriously
nterfered with Why not then make these
annihilators of time and space a military as
set Indeed it is imperative to do If the
army is to be rendered mobile force, for no
other utility can serve as the twentieth
Jury substitute for the forced marches of 9TH
or days. Consequently, whereas European ma
lions with their circumscribed areas and per
Tect highways have been experimenting with
military automobiles and other innovations our
war department officials have been wrestling
with the problems of the makeup and han
hling of troop trains, and designing special
kitchen cars and hospital cars and the like.
The first try-out of the plans that have been
In the making these past dozen years has come
in the case of the recent hurried advance to
Texas.
If a chance visitor could have been in Wash
ington in the early days of the Spanish war
and then again when the recent hurry call to
the Gulf coast was given he could not fail to
be impressed with the contrast,-the turmoil
and confusion of 1908 with the well-oiled pre-
cision of the present execution of prearranged
plans That 10000 men could be moved dis
lance of thousands of miles along a score of
different arteries of traffic without apparently