The Bourbon news. [volume] (Paris, Ky.) 1895-19??, 1918-02-01

into a war which had been going on
for two and one-half years, in when
the greatest military experts, all the
inventive genius, all the Industrial
capacity of those greatest countries
in the world had for two and one
half years been solving the problem
of what kind of war it was to be and
where it was to be waged
1T was not a thing for us to de-
eide where our theatre of war
should be. The theatre of var was
France. 1t was not for us>to decide
our line of communications. Our
line of communications were across
5000 miles of ocean one end of it in
tested with submarines. 1t was not
for us to decide whether we would
have the maneuvering of large
bodies of troops in the open. There
lay the antagonists on opposite
sides of No Mans Land in the
trenches at death grapple with one
another Our antagonist was on the
other side of the line, and our prob
lem was and is to get over there and
get him.
ut was mob the problem of doing
it our way and letting everybody
else take care of himself. In the
first place, we were going to fight
in France, not on our own soil, and
lot on our adversary's soil, and
therefore at the very beginning it
was obvious that the thing we had
to do was not to map out an ideal
plan of campaign, not to have the
studies of Napoleon and everybody
In1c hn hn.,
way to get at some other country,
but it was the problem of studying
the then existing situation and
bringing the financial, the indus
trial and the military strength of
the United States into cooperation
with that of Great Britain and
France in the most immediate and
effective way.
THAT problem could not be de-
cided here. 1 fancy in this audi
ence there are men who have been
in the trenches. The altogether un-
precendented character of that
problem is the hting whech every
returning visitor tells us can not be
stated in words, can not be put
down in words; it is thing so diff
ferent from anything else that ever
went on in the world, so vast in its
desolation, so extraordinary in its
uniqueness that it must be seen and
studied on the ground in order to
| be comprehensive at all.
"It is easily imagined that we
might have perfected an army over
here and carried 1t across the ocean.
and found it wholly unadapted to its
task, and it might we'll have been
that the army that we sent over was
! just one thing that they did not
need and that some other thing
which we might have supplied would
have been the thing essential to
their success.
$50 that from the very beginning
! it was not a question of abstract
speculation here, but a question OF
study there to find out where our
shoulder to the wheel could be put.
They realized that.
and so they sent over to us Mr..
Balfour and General Bridges and a
staff of experts. They came over
here and you saw Mr.. Balfour in
the House of Congress and at the
White House and in public meetings
of one place and another, but the
group of experts whom they brought
over with them did not see much Of,
and yet they distributed themselves
through the War Department, and
their ordnance experts sat down
with General Crozier, their supply
experts with General Sharpe and
his assistants, their strategists sat
down with the Army War College,
and all over this city there were
those confidential groups exchang-
ing information, telling how the
thing was over there, what we could
do, what they advised us to do, what
experience they 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.
They were exchanging informa'
ton, 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 great figure here,
ond xyo xuolcOrnod him"