World's War Events, Vol. II

by Unknown

The problem presented involved not merely the selection of forces to be trained into armies but officers to do the training. By the provisions of the national defense act of June 3, 1916, Officers' Reserve Corps had been authorized. Rules and regulations for their organization were promulgated in July, 1916, and amended in March, 1917. Immediately upon the passage of the act, the building up of lists of reserve officers in the various sections of the Military Establishment was undertaken, with the result that at the end of the fiscal year some of the branches of the service had substantial lists of men available for duty in the event of call. The largest number of commissions were issued in the technical services, for which professional nonmilitary training was the principal requisite. The largest reserve corps was that in the Medical Department, in which more than 12,000 physicians were commissioned. The expansion of these technical services proceeded easily upon the basis of the reserve corps beginning, but the number of applicants for commissions in the strictly military or combatant branches of the service was relatively small. They consisted of men who had had military experience either in the Regular Army or the National Guard, and men who were graduates of schools and colleges affording military training, and of the training camps which for several years had been maintained at Plattsburg and throughout the country. Their number, however, was wholly inadequate, and their experience, while it had afforded the elements of military discipline, had not been such as was plainly required to train men for participation in the European war with its changed methods and conditions. The virtue of the law authorizing the Officers' Reserve Corps, however, became instantly apparent upon the declaration of war, as it enabled the department to establish officers' training camps for the rapid production of officers.

A series of officers training camps.

Officers commissioned.

Accepting the Plattsburg experiment as the basis and using funds appropriated by Congress for an enlargement of the Plattsburg system of training, the department established a series of training camps, sixteen in number, which were opened on the 15th of May, 1917. The camps were scattered throughout the United States so as to afford the opportunity of entrance and training with the least inconvenience and expense of travel to prepare throughout the entire country. Officers previously commissioned in the reserve corps were required to attend the camps, and, in addition, approximately 30,000 selected candidates were accepted from among the much greater number who applied for admission. These camps were organized and conducted under the supervision of department commanders; applicants were required to state their qualifications and a rough apportionment was attempted among the candidates to the several States. At the conclusion of the camp, 27,341 officers were commissioned and directed to report at the places selected for the training of the new army. By this process, we supplied not only the officers needed for the National Army but filled the roster of the Regular Army, to which substantial additions were necessary by reason of the addition of the full number of increments provided by the National Defense Act of 1916.

The second series of officers' training camps.

Officers needed also for staff duties.

Constant experimentation necessary.

Victory rests on science as much as on soldiers.

The results of the first series of camps were most satisfactory and, anticipating the calling of further increments of the National Army, a second series of camps was authorized, to begin August 27, 1917, under rules for the selection of candidates and their apportionment throughout the country which were much more searching and embodied those improvements which are always possible in the light of experience. Approximately 20,000 candidates are now attending this second series of camps, and those found qualified will shortly be commissioned and absorbed into the Army for the performance of the expanding volume of duties which the progress of preparation daily brings about. It is to be remembered that the need for officers exists not only in connection with the actual training of troops in camp and the leadership of troops in the field, but a vast number of officers must constantly be employed in staff duties, and great numbers must as constantly be engaged in military research and in specialized forms of training associated with the use of newly developed arms and appliances. In other words, we must maintain not merely the special-service schools which are required to perfect the training of officers in the special arms of the service, but we must constantly experiment with new devices and reduce to practical use the discoveries of science and the new applications of mechanical and scientific arts, both for offensive and defensive purposes. It would be out of place here to enumerate or describe in any detail the service of science in this war, but when the history of the struggle comes to be written it will be found that the masters of the chemical and physical sciences have thrown their talents and their ingenuity into the service, that their researches have been at the very basis of military progress, and that the victory rests as much upon a nation's supremacy in the researches and adaptations of science as it does upon the number and valor of its soldiers. Indeed, this is but one of the many evidences of the fact that modern war engages all of the resources of nations and that that nation will emerge victorious which has most completely used and coordinated all the intellectual, moral, and physical forces of its people.

Fundamentals of military discipline do not change.