Evening star., 1916-01-16

| schedules kept.
The business of the staff before the
| war. to mention a few details, is to
have a system of intelligence planted
in the enemy's country which will keep
1t informed of the enemy's operation
throughout the war; to know how long
| 1t will take to send certain number
of troops to any given point and ex-
actly how to send them: SO to plan that
| the transport of food for millions of
men Will leave no man hungry at night
and the ammunition supply will leave
| no gun hungry: that communications
\ by wire of unit with unit are always
! intact: that each days plan of the geh-
, erals shall never interfere with any of
these requisites; that every square
yard, every tree. every house, lane and
street of the country where the
army is operating should be carefully
mapped. Besides this, the staff has to
| handle that vast force of human beings
organized into machine in battle to
make sure all regiments operate to-
| gether.
A staff ought to have men who know
railroading as railroad men know it.
| The German and French railroads have
worked like clockwork in this war.
| They have done the army's service and
yet kept the maximum of civil traffic
going. That requires the most careful
adjustment between the military and
civil heads. You cannot have it with
i army officers who know nothing of
| railroading trying to work with rail-
road officials who know nothing of mil
! itary methods and requirements. Yet
our staff has taken no real Step to-
ward cooperation with the railroads
| on a big scale in time of war.
! But the handling of a railroad system
! is only small part of a staff's duties,
| including everything from police work
and administration to instant decision
as to the next move in crisis of bat
tie. The British eXpeditionary force
went through the Mons retreat without
man missing his rations for day,
because the British did have a staff ade-
quate for d small army. Consider what
happened in Cuba. for we had no gen.
eral staff at all before the Spanish
American war.
Examples Of French Efficiency.
Like the railroad system, the better
the staff does it's work, the easier it
seems, the less fuss there is. You ma y
appreciate this by observation of eff
cient business concerns. The European
staffs make the running of great
army seem SO cimple. Sir John Jellicoe
makes the command of three thousand
ships seem so easy that you feel you
could do it yourself
Wherever we have maneuvers of
regulars and national guardsmen to-
gether on small scale, you will see
officers hurrying up and down warn
ing this or that regiment that it is out
of position, or this lot of transport or
that lone battery of guns that they are
on the wrong road. There is the same
kind of confusion that you will find
at the first rehearsal of play. The ac
tors may know their lines, but they do
not know their parts in relation to
those of the others. Our officers are
not to blame. They have had no prac-
tice- Nothing but practice can bring
good STAFF work" in the field. We had
il at the close of the civil war and we
could not have it at the notice of any
big war now.
Shall ever forget the first time l saw
the French army in action, which was
at the close of the battle of the Marne:
For three weeks that army had been
fighting, a part of the time retreating
Yet there seemed no confusion. The
observer came up with the motor trans
port in its proper place along the road:
section of cavalry ready in answer to
any call; the gun ammunition train, all
knowing how to screen themselves from
aeroplane observation-all certain of
their parts, while ahead one heard the
drumming of machine guns. the
cracking of rife fire under the canopy
of shell smoke from the hidden artil-
lery. Every officer knew the roads.
every clump of woods. every stream,
every hedge. the lay of all the ground
by reading his map. thing that can
not be learned in day-knew it all
as thoroughly as if he were on the farm
where he was brought up in child
hood
So IT must be on roads for front Of
, hundreds of miles. Otherwise. the COM
, mander- n-chief does not know what
to depend upon. There is danger
enough of having his machine broken
in battle. without it's being tied into
7 knots from lack of systematic co-ordi-
: nation in staff work" in the sheer
business of moving into action.
To show how these things are done.
! saw the French put 10000 men
through Calais in single day on a
single track railroad. There were sixty
trains. with a thousand men each--or Il
/ full battalion-ready to take the field.
! No battalion commander knew where
| he was going: that was not his busi-
ness. He had only to go aboard the
i train and keep on till u railroad staff
officer told him to disembark and some
other STAFF officer dispatched him to a
certain point on the map.
! Staff Must Foresee Every Need.
The plants of industrial enterprises