Repository: UIHistories Project: War Publications - WWI Compilation 1923 - Article 7 [PAGE 7]

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In spite of all this, we have adopted a system for recruiting our armies far superior to anything we ever had before. It has been inaugurated without difficulty and with little trouble, and with the full consent as well as the enthusiastic support of the American people. It is the most democratic plan we have ever employed and with a few changes will rank with the best schemes ever adopted for this purpose, viz: recruiting the armies of a free State and providing for their maintenance in man power and equipment. We have called a large number of men to the standards and are training them for the various branches of military and naval service under, on the whole, very satisfactory conditions, though there have been some egregious mistakes , calculated to make us blush for American inefficiency. Instances of gross inability, however, to handle difficult situations are becoming less numerous as our organization is improved. Again, we have raised a different kind of army from any army hitherto produced in the history of mankind,—an army of which we shall be increasingly proud as the months go on and from the training of which our country will derive an advantage long after the war is over. We have begun to build and launch ships and from all present indications we shall soon be turning out an increasing tonnage. We were not a nation of shipbuilders and it takes time to train men and get material. We are manufacturing munitions and guns faster than we can get them to the front, and there is no reason to suppose that we shall break down at any time in this work. Our aircraft program has from various causes failed to meet our reasonable expectations. The full causes have not yet been made public but it looks now as if the whole movement were going into a new era and we shall speed up in this department also. We have been successful in our war finance. All our enterprises have turned out well. Our taxes have yielded all that was expected of them. Our loans have been over-subscribed, and the Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., and Knights of Columbus campaigns, fruit* ful beyond our expectations. We have been able to meet all our bills and lend in addition large sums to our Allies to help them in their straits. Above all and finally and most important of all, we have begun to send troops to the firing line.

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