The Seward gateway daily edition, and the Alaska weekly post., 1919-06-02

required degree of precision com parable only, the report states, to that necessary in building as delicate an instrument as a SeXtant. It was with difficulty that any American manu ,actuycr was persuaded to undertake ! it, yet on April p, 1919, 67 of these recupcratorS had been completed and 1 5& of these passed by French experts and accepted by the government. They were the first of these passed by tren- ch experts and accepted by the gov ernment. They were the first of these devices built out of France or by other than the skilled French workmen. Construction of the guns themselves and their carriages went forward swiftly. Under the agreements the French and British were to supply th2 first American armies with all of theil field artillery and intermediate bat tcrieS with the exception of the power ful American AZ rifle and howtz" which was taken over by the trOopS and which proved highly effective against German field guns. The Am erican Expeditionary Force received from the French before the armiStic2 was signed S2S 75mm guns and 772 l55mm howitzerS. They had also re- ceived from the French 2l6 l55mm rifles and from the British l23 S-inch howitzers with 40 9.2-inch howitzers completed and ready for delivery. Ad ditional contracts were made with the British for 3O2 howitzerS of 6-inch cal. ibre for delivery by April, 1919.
 re r'! thei, own factories with for. gings for guns, both French and Brit 'sh were drawing heavily on American industry when the United States en- tered the war. These orders were not intcrfered with, but on the contrary eye stimulated and expanded in or der that the United States might fur niSh forgingS in trade for completed guns and at the same time create wholly new source of supply for thc bulk Of its own artillery program. Tn,
 eport shows that between April, 1917 md the conclusion of hOstilitieS there
 ere supplied to the Allies forging for 1.1O2 guns of calibreS ranging rom 3-inch 10 9.5-inch; additional gu' .lbc forgings to the extent of l4,623 and shell forGingS totalling 5,OlS'45l
 There were only four gun makers in the United States when the country entered the contest but by October, .OlS. there were 19 factories engaged on this work. During that month, with three of the 19 factories still lacking their complete equipment, there were produced 2031 gun forgings of cali brcs up to 9.5-inch or at a rate oi 24, GOO guns a year as compared to the capacity for B finished weapons 4 year in the Spring of 1917.
 The actual production of completed guns up to December, 1918, was 4,O"' including 1913 of 74mm calibre; 23o of the 3-inch anti-aircraft type; 2lS of the AZ inch type; l,456 of the lo0 nm rifles; 19l S-inch howitzerS and / of the monster French 240mm howit gers which would have supplanted trc smaller British guns of this type in 1919. Over the same period the numb CT of gun forgings produced totalled S,44O.
 The report points out that the gun program in reality depended upon the ability to produce the recall mechan- iSmS. This picture of what such me chanisms are called upon to do is drawn:
 ''Not long ago touring car, weigh ing two tons, travelled at a rate of l2c miles an hour along Florida beach Conceive of such a car going 3321 miles an hour, which is much faste' than any man ever travelled; then con ceive of a mechanism which woulc stop this car, going nearly six mile ; minute, stop it in 45 inches of spac' , and half second of time, without th( slightest injury to the automobile.
 That is precisely the equivalent of thu } feat performed by a recuperator by