Bisbee daily review., 1918-01-29
BAKER answers CRITICS OF DEPARTMENT
BEFORE SENATE military COMMITTEE IN
DETAILED EXPLANATION AND STATEMENT

2 but the group OF experts whom they
& brought over with them you did moi
: see much of, and yet they distributed
I themselves through the war depart
ment. and their ordnance experts SAT
down with General CrOZier. their sup
ply experts with General Sharpe and
I his assistants. their strategists sal
down with the army war college, and
all over this city there were these
confidential groups exchanging infor
nation. telling how the thing was over
there, what we could do, what they
advised US to do. what experience
they had had in developing this. that
and the other implement or supply,
how certain plans which one might
naturally have evolved out of the past
experience of the world had been
tried there and found not to work at
all
Ask For Troops
They were exchanging information
giving US all that they thought was
helpful And then came Joffre, with
his wonderful reputation and his great
and charming personality. and he
made a great figure here and we vel
coined him Il was a tremendous in
SEPARATION to see the hero of the Marine.
but with him came this unobserved
stan of fifteen or twenty or twenty
FIVE young men, the most brilliant men
in the French army-strategists, me
chanical experts, experts in arms. ex-
perts in supplies. experts in industry
and manufacture and they told US not
merely the formal and military prob
lens, but they brought over with them
men who were in from the beginning
in their organizations of their in
dustries, in their mobilization OF their
industrial plants. and we sat down
with them in little groups until finally
we collated and collected and extract
ed all the Information which they
could give US from their respective
countries. And every country which
has been brought in the war has
brought US that sort, or sent us that
sort of a stat OF experts, and it has
been necessary to compare notes and
with this as a basis, 10 form such an
idea as to what was the thing for US
to do over there.
But that was not enough. They ad-
mitted that il was impossible TO draw
that picture They could describe to
US and bring the specifications and
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
barrage of IS nm guns They could
not picture to US the association of
aircraft. balloons and mobile aircraft
with artillery uses. They could tell
Us about il. but even while they told
US the story grew old
The one thing they told US from
the very beginning to the end was that
this war, of all others, was not a static
thing; that our adversary was a versa
tile and agile adversary; that every
day he revamped and changed his wea-
pOns of attack and his methods of de
tense; that the stories they were tell
ing US were true when they left Eng
land and France, but an entirely differ
ent thing was probably taking place
there now, and they told US of large
supplies of weapons of one kind and
another which they had developed in
France and England. and which even
before they got them in sufficient ouan
titles manufactured 10 take them from
the industrial plants to the front, were
superseded by new ideas and had TO be
thrown into the scrap heap.
They said to US, this is moving
picture; it is something that nobody
can paint and give you an idea II is
not a static thing.
Therefore it became necessary for
us TO have eyes there in instant and
immediate communication with US and
we sent over to France General Perish
ing and we sent with him not merely