Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-07-31
No Wonder Germany Quit
NUMBER THIRTY-SEVE

lone day in the autumn of 1917
young officer who had just re-
turned from school at Fort Sill came
to me and showed me a brand new
French map said Major Frank C.
Mahin, of the Army Recruiting
Station, 325 Market street, Harris
burg, explaining that the French
and English had developed new
system of map making which was
very wonderful. He then showed
me how one could locate pin point
on the map by intersections, called
'co-ordinates.' During his lengthy
explanation | sat silent and smil-
ing which finally brought the ques-
ton as to whether | had ever seen
or heard of the system. | said Son,
| admire your enthusiasm, but you
possibly don't know that we started
making maps by squares and using
the coordinate system of reading
early in 1902. When the great war
settled down to trench warfare the
Allies discovered their maps were
useless for accurate work, so they
came over here and our much ma
ligned Regular Army taught them
how to make and use maps. For
years l have worked with maps
made on the coordinate system,
some of them made fifteen years
ago, so your dope is old stuff, Son.
| have found that it is the opinion
among the general public that
Uncle Sans Army learned all about
war from the French and English
and that the late war was entirely
different from any previous war.
Strange as it may seem the general
public is wrong. There is not one
thing that has been used in this war
that is new. True, there have been
marvellous, incredible improvements
On things used in previous wars
but that is all; they are improve
ments and not new discoveries or
Inventions. Even our American maps
have been improved upon and the
system slightly changed. People
think gas is something new yet it
dates back to the days of Alexander
the Great in authentic history.
Liquid fire is merely an improve
ment on Greek fire that has been
IN use 1000 years and more. Trench
warfare runs back beyond the days
oI history hNe or six thousand
years. Grenades seem a new de-
parture, but where do you suppose
the English, German, Russian, and
the other Grenadier Guards got
their names? Why! back in the
sixteenth century, when hand gren-
AIDES first came into use. Rifle
grenades came in about the middle
of the Seventeenth century. but
were never very successful The OBJ
servation balloon has been in usa
for over 100 years: aeroplanes were
used in the Balkan and Italian
Turkish wars. Machine guns of
various types have been in use for
hfty years. Railway artillery was
used in the siege of Petersburg, dur
ing the Civil War. Helmets and
body armor are of course merely a
relapse to medieval days. The use of
sigma! rockets runs back at least
two hundred years. And thus II
goes, improvements in evervfhing
but nothing new. 1 heard a French
Staff officer lecture on the tactics
and troop handling of trench war
rare and he wound up his lecture
by saying the clearest, most per-
fect exposition of the subject u,os
contained in a few paragraphs he
was going to read us. We all reaI-
lied at once that he had snoken
the truth about the quotation which
sounded strangely familiar. He
smiled and told us he had read ms
Iour pages from the Field Service
Regulations of the United States
Army, printed in March 1914, four
months before the war started and
still correct in the summer of 1918
The basic principals of combat
winch we used so successfully on
the Marine, in the st. MihieI and
in the Meuse- -Argonne, to defeat tbe
Boche We're enunciated, historicaIIv
by a Chinese General who died in
1850 b. c. Strange isn't it. that a
Chinaman who died about 1900 wears
ago gave us the principals Of tac-
tics that have governed every war
fought by trained troops right down
to and including the World War
just ended. And so the Regular
Army just smiles when people rave
and rant about how different this war
has been from every other"