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them, not to defend them. It is because the people want and have a right to know whether the War Department is making blunders similar to those of the Mexican, Civil, and Spanish Wars that the turmoil is going on in Washington. And it is in that spirit of constructive inquiry that The Outlook is glad to contribute its share to the questioning.

We commend to the special attention of our readers this week, as bearing upon this work of critical inquiry, Dr. Odell's article on the Lewis Machine Gun; the review of Secretary Baker's testimony before the Senate Committee; and the article advocating a War Cabinet by "An American Journalist." In another column we discuss the principles and authority which should govern congressional or parliamentary criticism and administrative reform in a democracy.

THE HIGH COST OF EDITING

Having endured coalless, meatless, sweetless, and wheatless days on account of the war, New York City has been threatened with another terrible privation, namely, a newspaperless day. We do not use these words altogether jocosely, for the daily newspaper has come to be almost as essential a factor in our economic and social life as transportation. Newspapers, indeed, constitute a transportation system of intelligence or ideas, and American business is now based on ideas and news almost as much as it is upon material commodities.

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What threatened to be a real catastrophe in the field of New York daily journalism happened in this wise. By concerted action all the New York dailies published in the English language agreed week before last to make a uniform price of two cents a copy. The "Times,' Sun,' Tribune," "Herald," World," and " American "have for a long time been selling a one-cent copy in the morning, while in the afternoon the Evening Sun,' Mail," "Globe,' Evening World," and "Evening Journal" have been selling at the same price. The New York "Evening Post" was the only New York newspaper in English to command a higher rate. Its price has been three cents a copy. It has, of course, been known to the journalistic trade for many years that one cent a copy did not pay even for the mechanical expenses of getting out a metropolitan newspaper; that is to say, the white paper and presswork alone cost more than one cent. The advertising income supplied the necessary fund for salaries, wages, articles, and the vast sums spent for telegraphic news. Profits, if any, came from whatever was left. Not very long ago Mr. Ochs, the brilliant proprietor and publisher of the New York "Times," stated in his own columns that the "Times" had to take in and expend over seventy-five thousand dollars a week, or nearly four million dollars a year, for the expenses of conducting the paper before one penny could go to the stockholders in the form of dividends.

The rapidly mounting price of white paper, of printing, of wages to compositors and pressmen, and of the expense of col

lecting news from all parts of the world under war conditions, have made it impossible for the daily newspapers to continue to sell their copies at one cent. The discrepancy between circulation receipts and editorial and publishing expenditures, which had to be made up by the advertising income, had become too great to be borne. This has led to the general agreement by which all the papers, including Mr. Villard's exclusive "Evening Post" and Mr. Hearst's heterogeneous and inclusive Evening Journal," are to be sold hereafter at two cents' each. About a year ago, under these same general conditions, The Outlook found it necessary to raise its price thirty-three and a third per cent. How severe the stress of war is on the general periodical and newspaper world is indicated by the fact that the New York dailies have increased their price one hundred per cent.

The most curious and most unlooked-for result of the increase in price is a strike on the part of the newsdealers who handle the daily papers. Formerly the newsboys and small dealers made forty cents on every hundred copies they sold of a one-cent paper. Under the new arrangement, if they sell the same number of papers they will earn sixty cents a hundred copies. Some of the advantage of the increased price is therefore passed along to them, and it was naturally to be supposed that they would welcome the increase. But they so disapproved of the change in price that they organized at once a strike and refused to sell any newspapers at all. And at this writing The Outlook office, which is supplied with files of every English daily in New York City-and dailies from many other cities of the country as well-has had great difficulty in getting its usual complement of New York morning papers. The reason given by the small newsdealers for their antagonisin to the increased price is, first, that it requires a greater capital investment on their part. They formerly bought a hundred copies of a one-cent daily for sixty cents. They now have to pay $1.40 for a hundred copies. This makes, of course, the amount they risk in the transaction much larger. Second, they assert that they will sell fewer copies, and therefore make really less money than they did under the old system.

Undoubtedly the difficulties will be adjusted, and people will become accustomed to paying twice as much for their daily newspaper, just as they have become accustomed to paying twice as much for their daily quart of milk. At least this is probably true as regards the better class of newspapers. It will be an interesting sociological study to see whether Mr. Hearst's "Evening Journal," which publishes nobody knows exactly how many editions during the day, and which appears to be bought lavishly and is littered about the streets, trolley cars, and subways equally lavishly, will continue to appeal to the same thoughtless newspaper buyers as strongly at two cents as it did at one cent. Whatever changes it may produce in newspaper circulation, the increase of price is a sound economic change, and may have a good effect on the quality and character of the newspapers as well as upon their bank accounts.

A FARMER ON FOOD

E farmers look with dread on the lessened power of the farms and danger to the world from smaller yields this year. Every grower is studying and planning for possibilities, but it is hopeless to expect more than a large fraction of the amount last year.

W farms and to the world from smaller vields Ꮤ

Aged farmers never toiled so hard, but many have become incapacitated or have died, and there have been 200,000 farm boys taken for the army. "Class A " is full of them for future drawing, and before spring work begins very many will be called.

They were the flower among producers the sound, willing, progressive fellows, working toward successful manhood, waiting for a start before marrying (which puts them in Class A "), “* and they must go, leaving the objectionable fellows to "support" somebody.

These absentees, with strong muscles and willing minds, we depended on to start things in the morning, to marshal schoolboys and lead hands at work, and their leaving takes fully twenty per cent of the productive power from the farms.

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We must win this war, and want it over as soon as possible. The men on the farms will do all they can, and this of The Outlook goes to tens of thousands who own farms, many as investments. There should be producers on them, geared to the highest motion,

Other tens of thousands of readers who live in towns and cities know how to farm, and they should give production all the aid and comfort that is possible. There are college and school boys who should get out in the country and also help push this important matter of production.

Too many are ignorant of the danger, but the farmers know it. Crops will not grow and be gathered unless there are work ers, and when ours are taken away we need no alarm bell. We farmers have no fear for ourselves, but can see privation for consumers and danger for the world. The preservation of the country depends on munitions and food.

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THE WAR MACHINE: HOW MUCH POWER IS REACHING
THE REAR
REAR WHEELS?

A

REVIEW OF
OF SENATOR CHAMBERLAIN'S SPEECH, AND
SPEECH, AND OF THE
TESTIMONY OF SURGEON-GENERAL GORGAS AND SECRETARY BAKER

HE war machine of a nation can be compared very fairly
to an automobile.

TH

In an automobile the only power that counts is the power exerted on the road through the rear wheels. In a war machine the only power that counts is the power exerted on the enemy at the battle-front. Equip an automobile with a hundred horse-power engine, add a defective transmission, a slipping clutch, a badly aligned shaft, and a poorly lubricated differential, and your machine, while the engine is racing its head off, will only crawl along the ground with the speed of a decrepit hack. Give a country all the resources of wealth, population, food, ores, and industry, yet without the organization necessary to bring these resources to bear on the enemy as the power of the automobile engine is brought to bear on the surface of the road, and the result is humiliation and defeat. Perhaps the realization of this fact is the chief reason why we are to-day hearing less and less of a once familiar statement. When we first went to war, we were told that we could easily defeat Germany because of our vast resources in money and men. Now the public is becoming less and less interested in the size of those resources and more and more concerned with the intensive utilization of those resources against the common foe of the civilized nations.

This concern has been growing throughout the progress of the Congressional investigations into the War Department, investigations which have been watched with extraordinary interest from one end of the country to the other. One incident that is significant, perhaps, of the attention with which these investigations have been followed, occurred in one of the largest "movie" theaters in New York City on the very day on which Secretary Baker was making his extended defense before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. When the picture of Senator Chamberlain, chairman of this Committee and the most active critic of the War Department, was thrown on the screen, the theater was swept with a storm of applause. When Senator Chamberlain's picture was immediately followed by that of Senator Stone, who has denounced critics of the Administration as allies of the Kaiser, the house was filled with hisses. The story is told here for what it may be worth to those who believe that the American people do not want to know, or have no right to know, the facts.

SENATOR CHAMBERLAIN BEFORE THE SENATE

The most dramatic event in the campaign to enlighten the country as to the condition of its war machine was the speech by Senator Chamberlain, of Oregon, on January 24, before the Senate. For three hours Senator Chamberlain spoke, and for this period of time he held the closest attention of his hearers. Every seat in the Senate chamber was filled, the back and sides of the chamber were crowded by members of Congress from the lower house, and the galleries were packed to suffocation. Senator Chamberlain began by a telling presentation of the incidents which brought down upon him the wrath of the President, as described in last week's issue of The Outlook. The Senator showed clearly that the President did not give him the opportunity he desired to explain his criticisms of the conduct of the War Department, and that his motives did not spring from any opposition, as the President said, "to the Administration's whole policy." Then, having established in the minds of his hearers a vivid impression of the rock-like foundation of his sincerity and utter loyalty, he proceeded with a summary of the testimony given before the Senate Military Committee concerning the deficiencies of the War Department. He told the history of the Enfield rifle controversy, of the utter failure of our Ordnance Department to provide our army with artillery; summarized the history of the Lewis gun, a history which Dr. Odell recounts in even fuller detail in this week's issue of The Outlook. He told of the testimony which had been given before his Committee concerning the lack of blouses and over

be

coats at various cantonments throughout the country, giving statistics which no defender of the War Department could afford to pass over in silence. He concluded his address with a description of the hospital conditions in some of the camps which moved the Senate to the depths. Senator Tillman sat in his seat with the tears rolling down his cheeks; Senator Wadsworth covered his face with his hands. In the gallery many were audibly crying. The climax was reached when Senator Chamberlain read a letter from a father whose son had died in the camp from spinal meningitis. This boy was left in a fireless room in zero weather, without sufficient attendance to keep his body covered. After his death, his father, in attempting to enter the room where his son's body was being prepared for burial, felt the door to the room strike something which prevented its being opened. "I looked," he wrote, "and saw that it was my son's body lying on the floor of the hall, and it was his head that I struck with the door."

THE SURGEON-GENERAL'S TESTIMONY

Senator Chamberlain's speech was immediately answered by Senator Kirby, of Arkansas, but his reply on behalf of the Administration plainly did not carry the weight of Senator Chamberlain's address. In fact, many Senators left the chamber during his speech. The chief reply from the War Department was to come later. But on the same day on which Senator Chamberlain addressed the Senate the Committee over which he presides heard testimony from the Surgeon-General of the Army, Major-General Gorgas, which corroborated the view given by Senator Chamberlain of the conditions in some of the camps. General Gorgas stated that, while "the sanitary conditions were good," he deplored the crowding of soldiers into insufficient quarters and the failure of the War Department to provide adequate hospital facilities. He stated that heating and sewerage in none of the hospitals of the National Guard encampments are completed. Contrary to General Gorgas's recommendations, the hospitals for our military encampments were generally the last buildings to be constructed. When questioned more closely as to the reason why the War Department decided to leave the construction of the hospitals until the last, General Gorgas said: "I think the idea was that the general cantonments, the barracks, would be needed before the hospitals would be needed, the idea being that we should have troops first, and that the troops would be there a little while before they began to get sick. I think that was the general idea." Senator Weeks then asked: “Do you think that was good common sense?" and General Gorgas bluntly replied, “I do not think it was; no, sir.”

General Gorgas described the difficulties of caring for the men in the camps with the untrained orderlies who are generally charged with looking out for the less serious cases of illness. He pointed out that he had recommended the enlargement of two training camps for the officers and enlisted men of the medical corps some two or three months ago. When Senator Chamberlain asked General Gorgas, "Why is it that your recommendation has not been acted upon, especially in view of the fact of these epidemic diseases in the camps?" General Gorgas replied, “I know of no reason for it except getting a decision from the General Staff." Senator Chamberlain again asked, "Can you see any reason why there should be delay in reaching a conclusion about a simple proposition like that?" General Gorgas answered, “No, I do not see any reason."

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SECRETARY BAKER'S DEFENSE Senator Chamberlain's attack on the administration of the War

Department, an attack based on just such authoritative testimony as that which we have just quoted from General Gorgas, moved Secretary Baker to request an opportunity to defend his Department by a formal statement before the Senate Military Committee. Secretary Baker's defense was presented to the

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Committee in a very different manner from that in which he laid before the public his original summary of the work of his Department. His first defense was largely undocumented and dealt in glittering generalities which somehow failed to carry conviction when weighed against the careful research of the Senate Military Committee. Secretary Baker has apparently begun to take the criticism of his Department more seriously, for no man would enter upon so extended a defense as that which Mr. Baker has now put forward who did not regard the criticisms of his opponents as something more than an annoying interruption in his daily work. A tangible evidence of this change of heart in the Secretary of War has been shown the country by the recent invitation to Mr. Edward R. Stettinius to enter the service of the War Department with the title of Surveyor-General of Supplies for the Army. Mr. Stettinius's duties have not yet been fully defined, but he is a man whose co-operation with the War Department should prove of tremendous value. He has been the purchasing agent for the Allied Governments in America for a number of months. We hope it will prove that he has been asked to enter the service of the Government in something more than an advisory capacity.

Secretary Baker's defense covers nearly twenty-three columns in the New York "Times," which has in the present instance again rendered valuable service by the publication in full of an important document, a fact which will make the files of the "Times" for the current years a very important source for future historians of the war.

Secretary Baker began his defense by a statement of his gratitude to the Military Committee of the Senate for the permission granted him to make a comprehensive review of the activities of the War Department. He told of the earnestness within the War Department, and the seriousness with which it had approached its tremendous task. He said that individuals did not count in the prosecution of this task, and the appearance of any name "in the casualty list any morning is a negligible matter as contrasted with the success of this enterprise." He admitted that the investigations of the Ordnance and Quartermaster's Departments bad brought out shortcomings, but he insisted that these shortcomings were not characteristic of the work of the Department as a whole. He deplored the fact that the Committee had felt that on his previous appearance he was trying to fence or to defend his subordinates.

Changing from a general discussion of his attitude and aims, Secretary Baker first took up the statements which Senator Chamberlain had made in regard to the neglect of the sick in the army hospitals. He pointed out instances where officers accused of neglecting their patients had been severely punished, and quoted a letter which he himself had written, in which he had returned for reconsideration the findings of a court martial because he did not think that the sentence of the offender to mere dismissal was severe enough. He quoted a long and interesting letter from Mrs. Mary Roberts Rinehart, the writer who has visited many of the camps for the "Saturday Evening Post," and who herself has a son in the service. Mrs. Rinehart said:

There are conditions to be remedied. . . . The failure of supplies has been a serious matter. There are not enough women nurses. The quarters of both nurses and doctors must be enlarged in many cases.

Of cruelty and indifference I have found nothing. On the contrary, I have found the medical staffs of the hospitals both efficient and humane. . . . The best specialists of the country have placed themselves at the disposal of the army medical department, and ninety-nine out of one hundred men are receiving better care than they could afford under the best circumstances

to receive at home.

Secretary Baker declares that the Surgeon-General had the unqualified support of every officer in the War Department from the Secretary down.

Following his discussion of the situation in the hospitals, Secretary Baker took up the question of the small arms deficiency. He pointed out that General Pershing himself had been present at the conference which decided on the adoption of the modified Enfield. This decision and the further decision to make the new rifles interchangeable as to most of their parts caused the delay in the equipment of our soldiers. He stated that General Wood urged the advisability of calling out a larger army than the Government was at that time prepared

to equip. He did not state that the men in General Wood's camp were fitted out with warm overcoats, even though General Wood had to purchase these overcoats practically on his own responsibility.

Secretary Baker, in discussing the machine gun question, retold the now familiar story of the War Department's decision to use only a light and a heavy machine gun; the Lewis gun, being a medium-weight gun, was not considered for the standard equipment of our troops. He said that a test made by the navy in April proved that the Lewis gun had been perfected for the use of American ammunition, and that large orders for Lewis guns had now been given. As the Lewis gun was originally designed for American ammunition, and had to be modified for the use of English ammunition, this statement does not carry much weight. The present situation of the Lewis gun controversy is fully and authoritatively described by Dr. Odell elsewhere in this issue. Secretary Baker's statements as to the number of machine guns in our several camps drew forth many questions from the listening Senators.

Secretary Baker quoted French authorities to prove that our dependence on France for our heavy artillery had not handicapped the French military machine. He stated that it was the conclusion of the conference in France which Mr. House attended that Great Britain and France now had a surplus of ordnance material.

On the clothing situation Secretary Baker said: "The reports I have now are, and the reports for some time have been, that the quantity of woolen underwear in the camps is adequate.... For some weeks now we have had an adequate supply of overcoats." Secretary Baker seemed to be of the opinion that there is no such shortage of any garments now as would interfere with the health of the men.

A discussion of these questions occupied all of the morning session of the Committee before which Secretary Baker was appearing, and in the afternoon Secretary Baker continued his defense with a discussion of the camp sites, the epidemic diseases, the hospitals, and the general military policy of the country. Secretary Baker's description of the situation with regard to hospitals differed widely from that given by General Gorgas. It is hard to reconcile Secretary Baker's understanding of the situation with General Gorgas's blunt testimony before the same Committee.

Secretary Baker finished his testimony on January 27 with a description of the difficulties confronting this country in its endeavor to send an expeditionary force to France, and stated that early in 1918 we shall have half a million men in France, and that we now have many more than one hundred thousand. Before the end of 1918 it is hoped that we shall have in France 1,500,000 men. Secretary Baker concluded his remarks with the following statement:

There will be no division of counsel. There will be all the criticism there ought to be on shortcomings and failure; there will be, so far as the War Department is concerned, a continuing effort at self-improvement and hospitality towards every sugges tion for improvement that can come from the outside.

All of which sounds very hopeful, but somehow one finishes the reading of Mr. Baker's testimony with the feeling that he has avoided the one essential question which the country desires to have answered: Is the War Department organized on a sound basis? In an able article in the "New Republic" Mr. William Hard sums up the demand of the Nation in the following words:

Ever since the beginning of the war we have been trying to get things done by putting people over other people whom they have no power to compel. We did it in the committees of the Advisory Commission. We did it in the General Munitions Board. We did it in the War Industries Board. And we reached a failure every time. And now Mr. Baker is doing it all over again in the Directorship of Purchases and is calling it reform. It is not reform. It is a repetition of a failure already several times repeated.

The gentlemen of the Senate might well say to Mr. Baker: "If we ask you to resign or reorganize, we mean really reorganize. We do not mean give us a phantom of civilian-headed control in the War Industries Board. We do not mean give us a phantom of single-headed control in the directorship of purchases. Those controls are not controls, and we know that they

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has worked. Your successive systems have not worked. Stop pretending to change. Change!"

And this is the demand which Mr. Baker has as yet failed

to meet.

STAKING AMERICAN LIVES ON A MACHINE GUN!

BY JOSEPH H. ODELL

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE OUTLOOK

THE American people are desperately interested in machine guns--those almost devilish devices which spray death like dew upon armies. Statistics are dull! But not when those statistics are the dreaded figures of the casualty lists. In this war ninety per cent of all casualties in battle are caused by machine-gun and artillery fire, and at least sixty per cent of this ninety per cent are the result of machine-gun fire.

In April, 1917, our army had approximately 900 machine guns firing American ammunition. The great majority of these guns were of the Benét-Mercier type, which had been found ineffective in the hands of the troops and had been officially withdrawn from service some months previously. Among them also were a number of the heavier Maxim and Vickers water-cooled type, some of which had been in service many years. In addition, the army had 353 Lewis guns of the British model firing British ammunition, which had been purchased during the Mexican trouble the previous summer when the Benét-Mercier guns had failed to function.

In April, 1917, the Lewis gun, invented by an American army officer, was in daily use on practically every battlefield in Europe to the number of 60,000 guns or more. Whatsoever victories came to British, French, or Italian arms came largely because this American gun spat death along more than a thousand miles of trenches. No one, to my knowledge, has yet produced a British, French, or Italian commissioned or non-commissioned officer or enlisted man who has faced the onslaught of the Teutonic armies who has anything but praise for the Lewis gun. If there is any valid testimony against the terrific effectiveness of this weapon upon the actual fighting field, it has not yet found its way into the court of public opinion. All the evidence I have seen is enthusiastically positive.

In April, 1917, the Savage Arms Company, of Utica, New York, was manufacturing and delivering to the British Government 80 Lewis guns per day, or 2,000 per month. If the Savage Arms Company had been producing machine guns for our own Army at that rate, on the British model, we should now have 18,000 in the hands of our men at the front. This would be fighting equipment for 400,000 men.

It has been objected officially that the Lewis gun in April, 1917, was adapted to British ammunition. This is true; but the Germans killed by British ammunition fired from an American gun are still dead, and the British soldiers saved from defeat and death by British ammunition fired from an American gun are still alive-very much alive. And, unless logic has utterly failed me, we can win the war only by killing Germans. Americans want to win the war, they expect to win the war, and it would be quite as satisfactory to them to win the war by shooting British ammunition from an American gun as to win the war by shooting French ammunition from a borrowed French gunthe gun we shall have to use if the scrap envelops us within the

next six months or so.

If the War Department had insisted, in April, 1917, upon the Savage Arms Company making the Lewis gun adapted to American ammunition-which the Lewis gun was originally designed to shoot the Savage Arms Company could have made the necessary changes in model in about three months, and then could have turned out the Lewis gun at the rate of 100 per day, which would have equipped our Army by now with at least 17,500 guns. And, under speeding-up pressure and with the same encouragement and aid given to the Savage Arms Company as the Government has given to other concerns making machine guns, the capacity could have been increased by now to at least 200 per day, or 5,000 per month.

Instead of following this obvious line, instead of accepting the most deadly machine gun now in the hands of our allies, what did the War Department do in April, 1917? It decided to wait for the report of a machine gun board on tests of machine guns to be made the following month. One clear month lost! A month! The German army had raped and ravished and ruined Belgium in a month! And then, after the precious month had gone, notwithstanding the favorable report made upon the Lewis gun-which had fired American ammunition in the tests-it was decided to equip our National Army exclusively with a new and untried type of machine gun-the Browningonly one single complete sample of that new gun being then in existence. The result? In January, 1918, nine months after America became officially involved in the war, there are now just nine Browning hand-made guns in existence for the equipment of the thirty-two divisions which Mr. Baker has testified are ready to go to France. Nine months! Nine guns! One gun per month, and a million and a half men under the Stars and Stripes, with hearts aflame to save democracy from the fangs of autocracy! Nine Browning guns when there might have been 17,500 Lewis guns-the guns which beat back the Huns at Loos, Ypres, Neuve Chapelle, Cambrai, and along the Somme, the guns which cleared the desert from Kut to Bagdad, and the guns which broke the hold of the Turk upon the environs of Jerusalem! Nine Browning guns which have never seen actual fire service, when there might have been 17,500 of the Lewis guns which have saved civilization upon a score of bloody battlefields in three continents! Nine Browning guns, which have already cost the Government, according to the testimony of General Crozier, $1,250,000 as a lump royalty to the inventor, Browning, when there might have been 17,500 Lewis guns upon which the inventor, Colonel Lewis, has patriotically offered to turn over all his royalties to the United States Government!

Is there not something radically and profoundly wrong in the situation? The Government was reluctant concerning the Lewis gun but was manifestly hasty in making contracts and payments for the Browning gun-the gun of the one sample, the gun that managed to multiply itself by nine in nine of the most fearful and fateful months of human history. Not only did the Government pay Browning $1,250,000 for his royalty rights, but the Government also paid the Colt Patent Firearms Company, of Hartford, Connecticut, $1,000,000 for its share of the Browning royalty rights. According to General Crozier's testimony before the Senate Military Committee, these payments were approved by the Secretary of War and the Chief of Ordnance even before patents had been issued on the Browning gun.

Notwithstanding the official, rejection of the Hotchkiss gun (the Benét-Mercier) after thorough trial by our troops in the field, these same troops are now being armed with these same Hotchkiss guns in France. For the American Benét-Mercier gun is practically the same weapon as the French Hotchkiss, which we are now borrowing from the French Government to arm our Regular and National Guard troops already in France.

There is a very pertinent and perhaps prophetic parallel. between the adoption of the Benét-Mercier gun and the adop tion of the Browning gun. The Benét-Mercier machine gun was adopted, after tests, in 1908. Those tests, however, were armory tests, but in no sense service-fired tests. That is, aecording to General Crozier's report as Chief of Ordnance for the year ending June 30, 1909 (page 39), the Benét-Mercier gun was formally adopted after tests at Springfield Armory and the School of Musketry. But how did the Benét-Mercier machine gun act in its first test of war? This real test-the

only test which is worth consideration-did not occur until our Mexican border trouble in 1916, eight years after its adoption as our service weapon. The Benét-Mercier gun at that time failed utterly, and, thank God, our American boys were up against Villa and not Hindenburg! And then, in spite of the armory tests and in spite of the fact that the gun bore the name of and probably carried royalties to Mr. A. V. Benét, the son of a former Chief of Ordnance of the United States, it had to be withdrawn from service. Curiously, it is reported that Mr. Benét, whose gun was rejected after the Villa raid, is the managing director of the Hotchkiss Company in France. It is the duty of Secretary Baker to give the country fully, frankly, and without reserve all the facts concerning the machine gun situation. This he has not done at this writing.

The Browning machine gun has had armory tests, too. As a weapon of war it has met the same standard as that met by the Benét-Mercier gun, which so disastrously failed us on the Mexican border. But after we have been fooled and punished for adopting one gun on armory tests alone, by what canon of

reason or rule of logic should we commit ourselves to another machine gun which has had nothing but armory tests? Must experience teach every one in the world except our Ordnance Department? Here is the solemn, awful, final fact: The Browning gun has not sprayed lead on an advancing foe. It is as innocent of experience as a new-born babe, and our Government has petted that innocency to the tune of $2,250,000 already. The Browning gun is an adventure in sublime theory and sweet credulity. When it has come to years, come to maturity through experience, it may be all right and a giant in might; but we are going to stake a million or more American lives on the possibility. What do the parents, wives, brothers, sisters, and sweethearts think of the speculation?

This is the first time in the history of the world that a great Power, called to exert its utmost of resources for its own material and spiritual preservation, has decided, in the midst of the struggle, to arm its men with a weapon which has not had actual field tests in the hands of soldiers. New York City, January 29, 1918.

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YEAR ago Germany began open warfare upon the United States. Her announcement of practically unrestricted, ruthless submarine piracy was equivalent to a declaration of war. Our own declaration of war on April 6 was simply and explicitly only the official recognition of the state of war that Germany had already instituted. So far as open hostilities constitute war, then, Germany has been since February 1 at war with the United States for a full year.

In that time what has Germany done to us?

She has sunk our ships.

She has continued to kill our citizens.

Because, it is said, we entered the war unprepared. True. But so did England. Practically as unprepared as we. In some respects much more unprepared.

Because, it is said, there are incompetents in official position. True. They ought to go. Unfortunately some are kept in their place virtually by law, and others by the unwillingness of the President or other high officers of the Government to make certain needed removals. But the United States has no monopoly on incompetents. There have been incompetents in England, in France, in Germany. There is no reason to believe that there has been any larger proportion in the United

She has, through spies, blown up munition works and destroyed States.

vast stores.

And what have we done to Germany?

Beyond what our destroyers have done to help the British navy in hunting down German submarines, practically nothing. When we went into the war, great things were expected of us by those who had been fighting the Huns. Our strength was needed.

It is true that we were unready and had to take time to prepare. Fortunately, we have been meanwhile safeguarded by the armies and navies of our allies (or "associates," as President Wilson calls them; our "guardians" or "protectors" they perhaps had better be called). We have been allowed by circumstances twelve months in which to prepare.

In that time we have raised, partly by volunteering, partly by draft, an army of approximately a million and a half men. In the same period Great Britain enlisted (wholly by volunteering) two millions.

We have now in France an unknown number of men, some of whom are trained, but none of whom are fighting; but not a single division of them is fully equipped except as we have drawn upon the none too adequate supplies of our "guardians" and "protectors." In the same period England had not only put into France and equipped enough men to start an offensive in September, 1915, at Loos, with a then unprecedented artil lery fire, but had sent supplies to her other armies.

We have in twelve months' time no heavy artillery and certainly no great quantities of high explosives, and virtually no machine guns-even for training purposes. In the same period England not only had produced enough artillery and ammunition to protect miles of trenches, but also supplied her troops with rifles and machine guns.

Those who wish to follow the parallel further can do so by reading what the military expert of the New York "Times" had to say on Sunday, January 27.

Slow old England-is that what we have called her? What, then, shall we say of our own country? Why are we thus behindhand?

Neither our unpreparedness nor our incompetents in office can furnish sufficient explanation for our delay, for the breaking down of our military establishment; for in neither respect are we peculiar.

There is, however, one respect in which we are peculiar. Every other country even rigid, autocratic Germany has found that its governmental machinery has had to be altered, refitted, in some respects redesigned, while we have been trying to do our war work with the same machinery we had in time of peace.

And it simply won't work.

In peace there are a great many unrelated things to be done, but no one thing to which the whole power of the Government must be directed. So the Agricultural Department and the Shipping Board and the War Department can each do its work under a separate head without confusion. But when food has to be raised and shipped abroad, for the use of our allies and our soldiers, these three limbs of the Government have got to act from one common impulse, or else there is delay.

Our Government now has just one big supreme task-war. It ought to have one piece (not a dozen pieces) of machinery to devote to that one task.

That is what the War Cabinet of the Chamberlain Bill is designed to provide.

It would be the common nerve center for the whole body. It would select from among all the things that each department of the Government has to do the things that have to be done together and see that they were done together.

It would take the ideas of the brain (which is the President), translate them into directions for action (as a central nerve center does), and then convey them to the various nerve centers (that is to say, to the heads of departments) for common and

related action.

We should not then have one nerve center sending anchors in haste for ships for which another nerve center has not even ordered the keels laid.

We should not have the railways congested because half a

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