New-York tribune., 1919-04-25
Soldiers Lives Sacrificed hv
"Bloody Priests of In.
efficiency" He Charges
in a Magazine Article
Even Regulars Untaughi
Crenades, Gas Masks and
Other Modern Weapons
Entirely New to Them

the late The eodore Roosevelt, has taken
up the fight for American preparedness
that his greater father relinqushed
only when death came.
Lest the bitter lessons of the late
war be lost, he has written for every
body's Magazine" the story of the un-
prepared state in which even the regu-
lar army entered the conflict The first
instalment of the story, which is titled
Lest We Forget" appears in the cur
rent Issue
Captain Roosevelt writes, as he ex-
plains, to put on record into how de-
moralized a state from military point
OF view the nation had been brought
by paciists, and how many lives were
uselessly sacrificed in this war by
Those bloody priests of incNciency."
Even Regulars Lacked Science
tie charged that even the regulars
went to France at the outbreak Of war
utterly ignorant. officers and men alike,
OF the rud)ments OF modern battle sci.
enee, Not only this, hu, also without
even the most necessary otfenaive and
defensive equipment to meet the troona
OF Germany, Practically all Of this
equipment, he says. had to be borrowed
from France or Britain.
mere were no airplanes at Platts
burg Captain Roosevelt writes, "and
I am told that even after Villas Cohm
Dus rad. we had only an insjpnitica,t
number of planes and these we're vt
terry useless for war service. Yet the
paramount necessity for air supremacy
mad been common knowledge to the
warning nations even before hostilitics
In Europe"
The lesson taught at Ptttsburg i'm
pressed Captain Roosevelt SO decplv
that on his return to Harvard he hc
came one of the founders of the Har-
YARD regiment, which later became a
training corps for officers.
Full Companies Bothered Officers
Attendance was heavier at the 1916
camp, and the presence of companies
composed of the full quota of l5O men
was embarrassing for even regular
army officers. | remember hearing one
regular army captain state that com
pany OF 100 men was too much for him
to handle. Although over ten years in
the regular army Of the United States
ne mad never seen a company of over
seventy,
Lack of horses in the Plattsburg
camps made cavalry training possible
TOR only few, and there was an even
greater deficiency in artillery training.
caused by the fact that of the three
batteries of field artillery in the East
ern Department only one could be
spared Tor training purposes at Platts-
burg. Now, three batteries of artillery
means twelve guns. That means that
IN our mobile army we had twelve guns
TO protect our Atlantic seaboard from
FLORIDA to Maine against sudden hostile
INVASION. Moreover, our batteries were
made up of American thrcc-inch field
pieces. gun abandoned by our army
immediately on our entrance into the
war.
Thougn poorly trained. the person
mel were good. But modern material
was entirely lacking. The automatic
rlfe (where the recoi is taken up by
the body Of the man) and the machine
gun (where the recoil is taken up by
fixed tripod were unknown, not onlT
TO the student officers, but to nearly all
the officers OF the regular army. The
Lewis automatic rifle, three years sue
cessfully used by the British and Bel
glan armies in actual warfare, had
been, after several highly successful
TRIALS, condemned by our War Depart
ment; hence its advantages were
known only by few who had seen the
trials. | was with General Wood when
these trials were given in 1916. The
benet-M Mercier, too heavy to be carried
by doughboy, yet not placed on
hXed rests, had the disadvantage of
oelng neither an automatic rife nor
machine gun.
New Weapons Unfamiliar
1t was here that the inefficiency
OF the regular army when dealing with
present war conditions became glar-
lngly evident, Captain Roosevelt saws.
me men trained there to become
ol1icers OF the new national army
nad no training with grenades, hand
or rifle. The Stokes mortar and
the steel helmet were utterly unknown
to them. There were no airplanes, no
gas masks nor poison gas drill, and
an entirely inadequate equipment for
artillery or cavalry training,
10 add to our confusion, the armv
mad discovered, at that late period.
tha' the European armies apportioned
one machine gun company to each in
iahtty battalion, After recovering
from the effects of this staggering
h't OF information, so we'll known to
every well-instrueted army officer in
the European and Asiatic world, our
army at last hit upon aoluton, One
company ef each battalion was dls
armed of It's Mfes, given pistols, called
a machine gum company. and. armed
thus, tho military representatives Of
nation renowned for tia intelligence
"A nation whose inventive genius had
supplied two of the best lighting arm
les (the Belgian and British) with the
invention of the Lewis automatic rife
marched through the streets of
Paris"
Gas Masks Borrowed
Just before going into training Cap
tain Roosevelt was transferred to the
26th Infantry. The men lacked gas
masks and had to borrow them from
the French, after a disastrous expert
ment with masks sent out by the War
Department. These latter leaked like
selves. The "splenddiy equipped regu-
lars" we're also without automatic riies,
machine guns, grcnadcs, rife grenades.
steel helmets, signal rockets, carrier
pigeons or equipment for binker sig
Mailing. All of these were supplied to
the regulars by the French or the
British
"Evcntually most OF our borrowed
rcgalia did come. and in October We
were all cheered by the news that wc
were to 90 to the trenches. The en-
thusiasm was somewhat dampencd,
however. when about two weeks be