The Cordova daily times., 1918-02-08
BAKERS TALK
BEFORE SENATE
WAR COMM TEE

United States, on January 28, is given
by the Associated Press. The speech
+ created a profound impression. and is
the basis of the present hearings of
the committee. 1t is as follows:
Mr.. Baker took personal response.
bility for getting men under training
before their equipment was ready ito
+ the last shoe button" Such Officers
/ as Major Gen. Leonard Wood, he said,
4 have urged this policy. He described
| conferences that evolved the ordnance
program and its fulfillment, submit
ted documents to prove that France
and Great Britain were supplying ar
tillery and machine guns for the first
forces at their own urgent request in
order that ships might be used for
other purposes.
In all that was done prior to the
departure of the first troops, Gen
Pershing shared in the deliberations
and approved the decisions reached
Mr.. Baker declared, and now sur
rounded with staff of trained regular
officers, Pershing is in France as the
eyes of the army"
Every step taken has been founded
on his long daily cable reports of what
is going on at the fighting fronts.
Tables were cited to show that over
crowding in the camps and canton
ments had not been general and that
the sickness had come mostly in the
camps where medical opinion had
agreed it was least to be expected.
Analysing the efforts of the ord
nance bureau, the secretary said that
Gen Crozier had urged for years a.
great artillery preparation, and that
he at least had realized the time gun
making required. But even France
herself with the enemy at her throat,
he added, had not bee able to see
what vast gun programs the war would
lead into.
MI. bdhCA Oottu LIE peAIL
Certain Matters Decided Long Ago.
"Now, gentlement, about the plan of
the war. 1t will be remembered that
this war broke out in August, 1914
We went into it in April 1917, SO that
for two and one-half years, or more
than two and one-half years, the war
had been going on. 1t was not as
though war had broken out between
the United States and some country, t
each of them prior to that time having
been at peace with one another and
with everybody else; so that an i'm
mediate plan should be made in the
United States for conducting war
against it's adversary, but we were
coming into a war which had been
going on for two and one-half years,
in which the greatest military experts,
all the inventive genius, all of the in
dustrial capacity of the greatest coun-
tries 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.
at was not thing for us to decide |
ERE our theater of war should be.
The theater of war was France. 1t was
not for us to decide our line of COM
Our line of communica-
tons was across 5000 miles of ocean, |
one end of it infested 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 opposites
of No-Man's land in the trenches at a
death grapple with one another. Our
antagonist was on the other side Of
that line and our problem was and is
to get over there and get him.
Problem Hard to Grasp
1.-THE altogether unprecedented char
acter of that problem is the thing
every returning visitor tells us cannot
be described in words, cannot be put
down in reports; it is a 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
comprehended at all
$50 that from the very beginning it
was not question of abstract specu-
lation here, but question of study
there to find out where our shoulder
to the wheel could be put"
Mr.. Baker spoke of the visits of the
different foreign war commissions. and
continues:
''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
weaDO0s of attach and his ,,o.L. ~