This chart (here reproduced) shows the latest readjustment of General Staff functions and activities. A very significant change from what used to be is indicated in that line of rectangles under the Chief of Staff, each one representing an Assistant Chief of Staff in charge of a major division of the war work. These divisions, indicated on the chart by the words "storage and traffic," "purchases and supplies," &c., used to be committees, in which every vital question had to be settled by a vote, with lesser officers having as much power in the matter as their chiefs. Now the Assistant Chief of Staff in charge of one of those divisions, which is no longer a committee, has power to act on his own initiative. His subordinates in the division are his expert advisers on the various problems which he must decide, thus eliminating criticisms in the earlier period of the war that too much time was lost in getting decisions.
One of the modifications that may be made in this chart of the General Staff in the near future will have to do with that division now in charge of General Pierce, the Assistant Chief of Staff, who is director of purchases and supplies and has authority over manufacturing priorities, purchases, and production based on estimates and requirements. That division, which now leads direct into the office of the Chief of Staff, may later on be short-circuited around the Chief of Staff direct to the office of a new Assistant Secretary of War in so far as its problems have to do with purchases or industrial facilities.
A bill creating two additional Secretaries of War has been passed by Congress. One of these assistants will have to do with social and welfare activities for the benefit of the troops. The other will deal exclusively with purchases and supplies, and the division of the General Staff now under General Pierce will be made a part of it.
The direct lines of connection on this chart are as interesting and as promising as anything else about it. They indicate smooth-working co-ordination and perfected team work. For example, the line of liaison from the division of purchases and supplies is to all supply bureaus and purchasing agencies of the army, to the War Industries Board, and all related Government agencies.
Further co-operation of the War Department, reorganized on a business basis, with those organizations vital to the movement of all equipment to troops here and abroad, is shown by the liaison line from the Director of Storage and Traffic. That line connects the storage and traffic business of the War Department directly with the Shipping Board, the Director General of Railways, and the Quartermaster General.
Major Gen. Goethals is the Assistant Chief of Staff in charge of storage and traffic, and, as such, has full control over all priority of both storage and traffic at and to inland, embarkation, and overseas points. General Goethals is also still acting as Quartermaster General, a place now not so vital under the reorganization as his office of Assistant Chief of Staff in charge of storage and traffic.
The War Council was created because it was necessary to have a group of experts in the War Department who would have time to study. Up to the time of its organization there had been little time to think about big problems and do nothing else. Everybody was rushed with some form of executive or administrative work.
This council is in session every day and is one of the most effective war agencies that the Government has. There is no man on it who does not bring to its deliberations and conclusions some vital contribution to the welfare of the country and the army. It consists of the Secretary of War, the Assistant Secretary of War, General March, Acting Chief of the General Staff; General Crowder, Judge Advocate General and Provost Marshal General of the Army, one of the nation's great lawyers, who is devoting his life to the military welfare of his country; Generals Crozier, Sharpe, Weaver, and Pierce, and Charles Day, an able engineer drafted from the Shipping Board to render expert counsel to the War Department as a member of its War Council.