The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1918-01-31
GREAT AMERICAN ARMY
WILL BE SENT TO FRANCE.
CONTINUED from page |, column 81

made in the United States for con-
Quoting war against its adversary
but we were coming into a war which
had been going on for two and one
half wears. in which the greatest mil
ilary experts, all the inventive ge-
MUS, all of 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 10 be waged
1T was not a thing for us to de-
eide where our theatre OF war shoulo
be. The theatre of war was France.
1t was not for us to decide our line
of communications. Our line of COM
munications was across 5000 miles
of ocean. 1t was not for us to de-
eide whether we would have the ma
noeuvreing of large bodies of troops
in the open. There lay the antago-
nists on opposite sides of No Mans
Land in the trenches at death grapple
with one another Our antagonist
was on the other side of that line
and our problem was to get over and
get him.
''It was not 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 not on our
adversaries' 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 war college with it's
speculative studies of Napoleon and
everybody else map out the theoreti-
cally best way to get at some other
country, but it was the problem of
studying the then existing situation
and bringing the financial, the in
,dustrial 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 l fancy in this audience
there are men who have been in the
trenches The altogether unprecedent-
ed character of that problem is the
thing which every returning visitor
tells us can not be described in words,
cannot be put down in reports; it is
thing so different from everything
else that ever went on in the world,
so vast in its desolation, so extraor-
dinary in it's uniqueness that it must
be seen and studied on the ground
in order to be comprehended at all.
Study From Beginning.
$50 that from the very beginning
it was not question of abstract spec
ulation here but a question of study
there to find out where our shoulders
to the wheel could best be put.
"They realized that. And so great
Britain sent over to us Mr.. Balfour
and General Bridges and a staff of
experts. They came over here and
saw Mr.. Balfour in the house of con-
gress and at the white house and at
public meetings, but the group of ex-
perts whom they brought over with
them you did not see much of and
yet they distributed themselves
through the war department and
their ordnance experts sat down with
General Crowder, their supply ex-
perts with General Sharpe and his
assistants; their strategists sat down
with the army war college and all ov-
er this city there were these confiden-
til groups exchanging information,
telling how the thing was over there,
what we could do, what they advised
us to dc, what experience they had
had in developing this, that and the
other implement of supply, how GER
tain plans which one might naturally
have evolved out of the past expert
ences 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 a great figure here and
We welcomed him. 1t was a tremen-
dous inspiration to see the hero of
the Marne; but with him came his
were constantly being changed so that
men fresh from the front could be
here to advise with us, and in addi-
tion to that every one of them had
to be a university professor, going
out into the life of the community
and selecting men who had mechan-
ical experience and knowledge and