ACTUAL TROOP SAILINGS COMPARED WITH PROGRAMS.
The effect of this stepping up of the man-power program upon the shipment of supplies was described by Lieut. Col. Repington, the British military critic, writing in the Morning Post (London) on December 9, 1918, in part as follows:
* * * they (the British war cabinet) also prayed America in aid, implored her to send in haste all available infantry and machine guns, and placed at her disposal, to her great surprise, a large amount of transports to hasten arrivals. * * *
The American Government acceded to this request in the most loyal and generous manner. Assured by their Allies in France that the latter could fit out the American infantry divisions on their arrival with guns, horses, and transport, the Americans packed their infantry tightly in the ships and left to a later occasion the dispatch to France of guns, horses, transport, labor units, flying service, rolling stock, and a score of other things originally destined for transport with the divisions. If subsequently—and indeed up to the day that the armistice was signed—Gen. Pershing found himself short of many indispensable things, and if his operations were thereby conducted under real difficulties of which he must have been only too sensible, the defects were not due to him and his staff, nor to the Washington administration, nor to the resolute Gen. March and his able fellow workers, but solely to the self-sacrificing manner in which America had responded to the call of her friends.
BRITISH AND AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES ON WESTERN FRONT.
The really amazing thing which America did was to place in France in 19 months an army of the size and the ability of the American Expeditionary Force. The war taught us that America can organize, train, and transport troops of a superior sort at a rate which leaves far behind any program for the manufacture of munitions. It upset the previous opinion that adequate military preparedness is largely a question of trained man power.
When the war touched us our strategical equipment included plans ready drawn for the mobilization of men. There were on file at the Army War College in Washington detailed plans for defending our harbors, our coasts, and our borders. There were also certain plans for the training of new troops.