England trained her first million a whole year in citizens' clothes
and top hats, with walking sticks for guns, because she could not do
otherwise, and this in spite of the fact that she was the greatest
textile manufacturing country in the world and had all America to
help her. Notwithstanding this shortage, our first 1,500,000 men were
trained in uniforms and taught the manual of arms with a rifle. When
England went into the war she had shortly before adopted a new type of
gun, but her factories were not equipped to supply it. She abandoned
her new type of gun, and has fought the war thus far with an admittedly
inferior type of rifle, a large portion of which were made on order in
the United States.
There went up a hue and cry that America adopt a foreign type of rifle,
notwithstanding the facts that the rifle is the most necessary weapon
of warfare, and we had the Springfield rifle in substantial
quantity, admittedly the best rifle then being used in the world,
shooting the most powerful and efficient ammunition ever prepared. In
the face of this criticism, we adhered to our own weapon, adopting a
modified and rechambered Enfield, which differs from a Springfield in
such a small way that it is not worthy of discussion, now known as the
United States rifle, model of 1917, resulting in some delay but now
being produced in sufficient quantity.
When General Joffre made the request for a small expeditionary force,
the critics of the Administration demanded what they thought was the
impossible--i.e., that we ship to France during the first year 50,000
to 100,000 men. During the first ten days of May we shipped 90,000.
Within one year after the first shipment America will have an army of
1,000,000 men in France, with their necessary arms, equipment, and
supplies. It will be the best-fed, the best-clothed, the best-paid army
of its size that the world has ever known, speaking the same language,
worshipping the same God, and following the same flag. Its personnel
will have the quickest perceptions of any soldiers in the world, and
will have been trained under modern conditions, surrounded by the best
moral influences, with the lowest percentage of disease, and will be
nerved by the highest motives that actuate men.
Victory for our cause is therefore certain.