Norwich bulletin., 1918-01-29

piled would have been the thing es- sential to their success.
 So that from the very beginning it was a question of abstract specu- lation here, but a question of study there to find out where our shoulder to the wheel could be put.
 Told of Britain's Experiences.
 ''They realized that, and so Great Britain sent over to us MT. Balfour and General Bridges and staff of ex- perts. They came over here and you saw MT. Balfour in congress, at the White House and in public meetings group of experts whom they brought over with them you did not see much of, and yet they distributed them selves through the war department and their ordnance experts sat down with General Crozier, their supply ex- perts with General Sharpe and his as- sistants, their strategists sat down with the army war college, and all over this city there were these conf1- dential groups exchanging informa- tion, telling how the thing was over there, what we could do, what they ad- vised us to do, what experience they had in developing this, that and the other implement or supply, how cer- tain plans which one might naturally have evolved out of the past experi- ences of the world had been tried there and found not to work at all. & Exchanging Information.
 "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 welcomed him. It was a tremendous inspiration to see the hero of the Marue; but with him came this unobserved staff of fif- teen or twenty or twenty-five young men, the most brilliant men in the French army, strategists, mechanical experts, experts in arms, experts in supplies, experts in Industry and man. ufacture, and they told us not merely the formal and military problems, but they brought over with them men who were in from the beginning in their congratulations of their industries, in their mobilization of their industrial plants, and we sat sdoWn with them in | little groups until finally we collated, collected and extracted all the infor- nation which they could give us from l their respective countries. And every country which has been brought in the war has brought us that sort, or sent Us that sort of staff of experts, and it has been necessary to compare notes and with this as a basis, to form such an idea as might be formed of what was the thing for us to do over there. impossible to Draw Picture.
 But that was not enough They admitted that it was impossible to draw that picture. They could de- scribe to us and bring the specified tions and drawings for a piece of ar- tillery. but they could not tell us why the British theory of the use of arr tillery was by the British preferred to that of the French. They could not picture to us a barrage of heavy howit- gers as compared to a barrage of 75 guns They could not picture to us the association of aircraft, balloons and mobile aircraft with artillery uses. They could tell us about it, but even while they told Us the story grew old.
 Warned of Strength of Adversary.
 "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 versatile and agile adversary; that ev- cry day he revamped and changed his weapons of attack and his. methods of defense: that the stories they were telling Us were true when they Jeff France and England, but an entirely different thing was probably takins place there now, and they told us o1 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
 quantity, manufactured to take then
 from the industrial plants to the front
 were superseded by new ideas ant
 had to be thrown into the scrap heap They said to us, this is a moving
 picture: 1t is something that nobod1
 can paint and give you an idea of. I
 is not 8 static thing.
 Officers Sent Over to Observe,
 Therefore, it became necessary fol
 us to have eyes there in instant ant
 immediate communication with us, ant
 we sent over to France, General Per
 shing, and we sent with him not mere
 ly a division of troops-to that shal
 refer in moment-but we sent witl
 him perhapSsI can say safely the ma Jor part of the trained, expert per sonnel of the army. You know tn
 size of the official corps of the regu lar army in this country when the wa broke out. It was a pitiful handfu of trained men. and yet it was neces sary to divide them up and send owe to France officers of the highest dual ity so that they would be at the iron , and see in the workshops and in tn : factories and in the war offices, an in the armies, where consultation, would take place immediately back e the front so that they could see tn tmng with their own eyes, and sen
 us back the details by cable every da
 of the changing character of this wa Staff Experts Busy Every Minute. General Pershing's staff of expert l and officers over there runs into th thousands, and they are busy ever minute, and every day that the su 7 rises 1 get cablegrams from Geners Pershing from ten to sixteen and twen . H AeEaS long, filled with measurement