The Nevada County picayune., 1919-07-31
expeditionary forces. No other cargo will be carried

| VIII Dt cHTFleu.
 This little paragraph of the news will enable the people instantly to understand the huge bulk and volume of the story of the war as shown In the official papers and in the life his tories of each one of the 100000 men who went over to fight the Hun.
 Almost immediately after the first American expeditionary force was sent to France there sailed n company Of officers and men whose duty 1t was to gather the basic material for his tory of the American army's operations wherever they were carried out.
 Nobody knows how many histories of the war will be written. Some of them are under way now, but the one history which will be accurate beyond peradventure is the history which will be compiled from the actual field serv- Ice of supply, and operation orders of the American expedltionary forces. Specifically speaking. therefore, the history which will be of greatest ad- vantage to the man who wants facts without undue color will be the one which Is compiled from the orders is- sued from time to time. and from the reports made by the men who carried out the orders.
 Facts Without Prejudice.
 Other histories may be more hu- manly interesting and unquestionably they have the widest kind of sale. Some of them will approach accuracy, but none of them probably will reach 1t along every line to the goal. Fla voritism and prejudice frequently en- ter into histories which are written while the men who made the history still are living. Such thing Is al- most inevitable and the war depart ment knows 1t. The history of the war which the department will com pile will contain nothing except what was done and how 1t was done.
 A vast deal of inaccurate history already has been written. The won der is perhaps that 1t contains as few errors as 1t does
 Splitting Fleet Arouses Debate.
 Secretary of the Navy Daniels order to split the American navy fleet into | two fleets, one to do service on the Atlantic and the other on the Pacific. has caused somewhat lively contro- versy in naval circles, and to some ex- tent in civil circles.
 Some of the naval officers say that 1t Is bad strategy to separate the ships, that either fleet could be de- stroyed after separation by concen- tration in force of an enemy. Some other officers are inclined to believe that with the Panama canal in good working order, and with the virtual certainty that an alarm of war would precede actual hostilities by some weeks. the concentration necessary could be accomplished before the en- emy could strike.
 Fo- great many years there was an insstent demand from certain quar- ters that large fleet be stationed in l the Pacific ocean. Some men said that the danger of war lay in the East and nowhere else. Then came the Eu- ropean war and such danger as there was for us lay In the west of Europe. l One naval officer has said that guess i ing about where war Is to come from thing to do Is to have ships enough to make certain that we can meet the enemy quickly, either East or West.
 Favor Battle Cruiser.
 Seemingly however, there is no chance that the United States mate rially will increase its naval forces In the immediate future, although there are six battle cruisers now building which 1t Is intended to complete. They will be among the most formidable 1 fighting ships atloat because they will combine terrible offensive qualities with high speed. Naval experts the world over seem to believe that the battle cruiser is the ship upon which reliance must be placed,
 When the German sailors sunk their i ships in Scapa Flow the word went out l that some of the ships destroyed were l the greatest fighting machines that ever sailed the seas. In one sense they were, but in another sense they were not. The Germans constructed l some of their great dreadnnughts Tor use only In seas close 10 home. Sev- eral of these great ships were sunk by the Germans in Scapa Flow. While these vessels of the Germans were terrible fighting agents they could not have been used fur from the home base. They were built for North-sea purposes, and as most of them were built prior to 1914 proof is thus adduced that they expected to fight either the English navy, or the ships of the French. expecting the main fight to take place in the North sea close to their home base.
 These big dreadnaughts of the Ger mans were built for heavy fighting purposes and not for cruising pur- poses. It Is doubtful if their crews | coulG have lived on them for any great