The sun., 1919-03-22
BE Just to the American Profess
sional Soldiers.

L
we're criticism of the professional SOL
dlers Of tho United States, delivered
in an address before the Circumnavi-
gators Club in this city on Thursday
statement of structures that have
been freely circulated in private since
our troops began arriving home, and
/ ms such 1t Is entitled to serious con.
sideration. Boiled down to its essen
! tials, the Colonel's complaint is that
our Regular Army commanders knew
nothing Of modern warfare, and that
privates so little trained they did not
know how to load their rifles were
put on the firing line.
| Everybody in the United States and
everybody abroad who Is interested
in the subject knows that when we
went to war We had nothing that
could be called an army in the mod
ern meaning of that word. We had
made demonstration ON the Mexican
border with regulars and National
Guardsmen. but beyond that we had
done nothing to prepare our defence
| except to establish the Plattsburg
schools. Our regulars numbered about
100000 men, being short of their au-
thorized complement, and the units
were short of officers. The National
Guard had enjoyed scant opportunity
to train, and the Government had
done nothing to acqualnt regulars or
guardsmen with the new devices in
use in Europe.
For this condition Of affairs our
professional soldiers were in no way
to blame. and to suggest they were
ignorant of our shortcomings is to as
sert an untruth. Nobody knew as well
as they did how lamentably our mil
!tary establishment had been neg
lected nobody had labored as hard ms
they had to awaken the Administration
to the dangers of the situation.
Plattsburg was the crea ton Of a regu-
lar officer, Major-GeNeral LEONARD
ceasngIy there we're regular officers
whose enthusiasm and devotedness no
man who was privileged to attend
the training camps will ever forget.
The unpreparedness OF the United
States in 1917 Is TO be laid Mt the
door of one man, and that man is
WOODROW WILSON. Despite the fire.
quent warnings lie must have re-
ceived, despite the danger that was
apparent to every intelligent man in
the United States, WOODROW WILSON
and train to defend themselves. He
ran for President in 1916 on the plat
form HE kept us out of war;; he
broke with a farsighted, intelligent
Secretary Of War because he would
not acknowledge the necessities of the
occasion; he appointed as that mans
successor a pacifist, or near pacifist.
To say the Government, or the Ad-
ministration, was responsible for our
weakness is to perpetrate a CHASTITY
jest. WOODROW WILSON and WooD-
ROW WILSON alone must bear the
discredit for It.
When We went to war there was
no misunderstanding of our situat ton
in the army, or in the War Depart
! ment, or in the White House. Presi-
dent, professional soldiers, converted
pacifists all were agreed OH one
thing. That was that we could not
and should not send combat troops to
France for a year. We could send
money, fcp., munitions we eek.
send specialists; but we could not
send what we did not have and could
! not improvisc, and that was combat
divisions. Our plan, Endorsed by pro-
fesslonal soldiers and by informed
civilians, was to create nm army here,
train the men here. and then send
them across. That Job was even more
difficult than II sounds, for we did not
have In the Regular Army, in the Ma
tional Guard and among the training
camp graduates sufficient number
of men to provide officers and non
commissioned officers to drill the re-
cruits we knew we had to raise. The
future drill masters must he taught
hay foot straw foot before they could
take command OF squads for instruc-
| ton. Nobody in the world realized
this as acutely as did the professional
army officers of America.
So we started out to raise, equip
and train an army, II not at leisure,
certainly without serious thought of
putting 1t In the field before the spring
or summer of 1918. And this pro-
gramme France blew TO smitherecns
in tie spring of 1917.
The Viviani commission arrived
here on April "a, and its members had
scarcely set foot on shore before Mar
shnl JorrRE amazed President VII
, son and astounded the public by de-