Evening star., 1940-08-04

Twice in % years have the American
people been summoned to devote their
national energies to military prepara-
ton. The design of this article is to
recount the principal assets and tri-
umphs, the handicaps and reverses, of
1917; and to consider what appear the
chances in 1910 of repeating the first
and avoiding the second.
Not long ago the War Department
released for publication in the Field
Artillery Journal sections of work it
had suppressed for years-the Memoirs
of Brig. Gen. William j. Snow, U. S. A,
retired. In the summer of 1917 Col.
Snow, as he then was, re-establiShed the
School of Fire at Fort Sill, Okla. Having
swiftly expanded its capacity 100-fold, he
attracted attention in Washington, and
on February l. 1918, was ordered to re-
port to the chief of staff.
Arriving on a Sunday afternoon the
author relates, he was unable to find a
single officer on duty at the War De-
partment, though the country for 10
months had been engaged in a battle
Of life and death" He sought out the
home of Gen. Tasker H. Bliss, and dis
covered that the chief of staff was SPEND
ing he day in the country. Gen. Bliss
returned at 10 pm. and informed Col.
Snow he had been chosen as the first
chief of field artillery in the history of
the American Army. Strange to say,
only the coast artillery then possessed
a responsible executive head Not until
the National Defense Act of 1920 were
the posts of chief of infantry and chief
of cavalry established.
On the following morning Col. Snow
was presented to Newton D. Baker,
Secretary of War, who inquired whether
his visitor had not recently returned
from France. "a shadow crossed his
face when Col. Snow replied that he
had never been in France. There was
only desk-room available at the War
Department. so an Office was borrowed
from Elihu Root When Col. Snow asked
for stationery, he was supplied with
rubber stamp bearing the legend: "Offsce
Of the Chief of Field Artillery" Then
he put two questions to Gen. Bliss:
First, who will define my duties, re-
sponsbilities, prerogatives, and so forth;
and second, who will put me in touch
with field artillery conditions?" Gen.
Bliss took his arm, Gen. Snow recalls
and replied that the answer to both
queries was: II don't know
No Ammunition Trains.
He learned that the adjutant gen.
erals office was unable to tel the num-
ber of field artillery officers in the Army,
much less the number in each grade.
There was not single ammunition train
In existence; six months wera required
to assemble one and get it to France
Neither was there a solitary trench
mortar battery. Only one-third of the
field artillery brigades were commanded
by field artillery officers. While nosing
among the records in April, 1918, Col
Snow found cablegram from Gen.
Pershing, dated the previous October, in
which there was an urgent demand for
field artillery. The communication had
simply been marked file" and slowed
away for seven months in pigeonhole.
These passages are cited to illustrate
the state of dsorganization, described as
chaotic and almost hopeless" which
reigned at the top of the Army when
the United States entered the war and
for months afterward. When one re-
fleets that on Armistice Day, November
II, 1918, the Nation had 4,057O00 men
under arms, of whom 100000 had been
sent overseas and 100000 saw combat
service-then belief becomes persuasive
that the United States is a country to
which nothing is impossible.
Paradoxically, it was in the recruit
ment of a great Army and the develop
ment of military aviation-the two fields
in which start was made perforce from
scratch-that the Wilson administration
scored its most brilliant success; while
defeat was encountered in province
with the advantage of two years of
preparation-that of the manufacture
and transport of munitions.
In 1917, the country possessed virtually
no aviation industry, but its private
manufacturers of munitions were -four
ishing because of orders from Great
Britain and France. Today it has
thriving $15O,OO0,OOO aviation industry,
with a capacity of 900 planes month,
but, largely because of the death stroke
administered by the Nye munitions in
vestigation of 1884, almost no private
manufacturers of munitions.
The United States enters its second
preparedness program under the neces-
sity of rebuilding its munitions industry
from the ground up-for the Govern
ment's six manufacturing arsenals can