St. Louis Post-Dispatch
January 16, 1916

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ST. LOUIS, SUNDAY. MORNING. "JANUARY 16, 1916. Real National Defense Possible came So = lowe f~ Build Up Adequate N ‘Form Definite Poli cy and Fol Incidentally This Article From ie American Review Was the Cause of § Daniels Forbidding Officers to reid “ee or Lecture on Naval, Topics. : Without Competent (ieneral Staff’. %Prederick Palmer's Fifth Article on Preparedness— he Ria Hardin Davis| F amous Noveltist Tells of Officials” Energetic Hunt for Coin in Tour. sts’ Luggage—Journey From Paris es Saloniki age of Interesting Me Penonnes: © ¢ aie “ye. ta i ad bed. _ Pe w . r fs 2 nen = a 3 ae. ee i : ye f : i tls ay : ‘ a ats, Se ae Bigs eee at " Peo Bb ae : * re Pe" re RP Me? te Henne APS Bs ; sie El Ae oo atc Sh ee xs. : io kor A VEGAN oS Bere aL Geka Saag "KS eh en er as fMRI hn ne Gola Shas cca Core ta be Py td pet pole Pe Tee Rep. 1 Sa OE f PE, eee es ee g Pasa ote ib : ORE SL OR SRR ari, Ss geen, | LST Apna EE OR Rar ae Ine Lah, CNN Mrz Bate OREN Me SNe es OR OR |S Sivx awe Tie 4 ‘oy aa ete BS oh & hag Fee! Pty Se 3 ong 7 i P Doe Dee ws i —S swt As) vies oo 5s ~ SHER hale w mS Our nits Army’s Staff Is Still in the Horseback and Smoke- Powder Age Chiefly Because Meddlesome Politicians Keep} It That Way and Partly Be- cause It Takes a Big Army to Develop Big Commanders. Modern Warfare, Says Noted Correspondent, Is Waged by a Special Organization That Co-ordinates All the Re- sources of a Belligerent So That Every Energy and Ma- teriab Is Moved to Achieve} Victory. By Richard Herdice Davis, known Italy was one of the allies. Bpeciat Correspondent of the Post- For one thing, you saw no wounded. Dispatch. ; Again, perhaps it was because we . SALONIKI, Greece. {Were too far south, and west, and T bome we talk, glibly of a} that the fighting in the Tyrol is con- world war. But beyond spec-/centrated. But Bordeaux is farther ulating in munitions and as from the. battle line of France than ‘to how many Americans will be killed is Naples from the Italian front, and by the next submarine, and .how({ the multitudes of wounded in Bor- many letters the President will abe, deaux, the multitudes of women in : a, £ 5 a : nse x Ry 18K a ane 1 SE MR FY ee the Fre RS Ae wen Ci PAE AR Te! pet de Bg f ONG ee pele. | " rt Rete ee : Bre EN HB Post-Dispatch herewith presente the sen Admiral Bradley Alien Fiske's magazine article on “Nor in the January number of the North American Review Following the publication of the article Se y De : Admiral Fiske to write any more on the evbject ond'the ma opiiges.. fe: cones «Sinem me hee en ee v tion of efficient business concerns. The Surcoien | another magazine. about it, we hard-— ly appreciate that - nee ebeaate is a war of the world, that not only in Europe, but thut all over the globe, every sh*p of giate, even though it may BO trying to -(cer @ straight coursé, ig being violently rocked by it. Even the | individual, as he moves date coun- ime taf off TEEi * er ' q : oe ee “ : - 4 Mn oiatiticent! the wee, aie a > ¢ on ants ® sefticeg a 3h Big 0 Pee + na : oe, ‘ u : yy ~*~ biack in Bor- deaux, make one , of the most ap: palling, most sig- nificant . pictures of this war. In two days in Na- ples I did not see “Ohne wounded than,.. But I saw many Germaas and German signs and no one hai scratched Mumm off the wine card. A country that is one of the allies, and yet 1s not ac war with Ger- many, cannot claim to take this war very serious- ly. She even leaves herself open to suspicion In Naples the foreigners accuse Italy of running with the hare and .the penne, the war. she: and divcony will to- $5 gether carve. slices off of Austria? Whatever her. ulterior object may be, her present war spirit does not im- tome the visitor. Tt is not the spirit said to nt “Why can’t you keep the .T “aid= not. found very grateful. Nor as though Italy was serious- ly at war. You do not find eal and England, or Germany, \ grudging the man who. returns to for his country hie'rations and Italy pays her soldiers gre a day. Many of the reserv- and volunteers from America answered the call to arms are disappointed.. They expected ‘a be led at once to the firing line. after six months, they are camp. The families some t with them are in great need. 8 day. An Italian told me the heaviest. ‘drain. upon the war relief ) funds came from the families of Italian-Amerteans, stranded in own country. He also told me Oe Ae an: oe rival they money when ~} they arrive from America?” I asked. aT at } take | arnate, it’. he said, naively. “I’m whart to keep their country- pregent in Europe you cannot gold out of any country that is aha As a result, gold is less val- Sngee pce 9 ees peas eed i.my double eagles for paper, ; ae bear ran Some. fee Be ie : rn 4 ‘ ¥ F- % 5 Wires og - 7 . ‘ z 7 ae 7 at ran res, ed : <* ? ‘ o a » OF ace Erne at Rigts " ae page «ee EOE 4 uv re hp ae z ae xa x¥ 1 nog nt perpetuate By Frederick Palmer, Correspondent Who.Has Seen More War Than Any Other American. O matter how good the infantry, artillery or cavalry, or how complete equipment or munitions, there can be no real defense without a competent staff. While France ‘and Germany have been con- tinually developing their staffs to meet modern needs, we have been re- ducing ours till it is a skeleton. The staff is the brains. the. nerve center of the army: Von Moltke once said that, even given superior enemy soldiers, Germany would always win because of its staff system. All preparation for war, eitheg of offense or de- fense, must begin with the staff. The larger the army, the greater must be its authority, the more complex and efficient its working. It takes:longer to make good staff officers than artillery, planes, aviators or infantry. Without good staff work, the French could ‘never have held their position on the Marne; the Ger- mans could never have made their drive into France or taken Warsaw and Brest-Litoysk, Every new feature of warfare, every additional regiment, ‘means greater responsibility for the staff. If we could go to war tomorrow with a mil- lion trained. men and 5000 guns, we should have confusion without an elaborate staff system devel- oped before the war to insure team play. In Napoteon’s time.a battle front might be a mile and a half or two miles long. Napoleon stood on a hill surrounded by a few officers watching the variation of the tide of battle, and sent gal- -| loping aides with orders to his reserves. Toward the end of the Civil War we had real team play and staff work for the limitation of those days, when the General still could have a view of the field. Then there were no aeroplanes and guns were fired at short ranges by direct aim: Han- cock was wounded in the thick of the fighting at Gettysburg, directing regiménts in action in per- son; and thus Stonewall Jackson was killed at Chancellorsville. A modern Genera] has about as much business near the firing line ‘as the president or general manager of a railroad has to act as a train dis- patcher. Lee and Meade at Gettysburg had a tkree-mile front; Joffre has one of 450 miles. If he travels, it is in a motor car, without regard to speed regulations. Realistic statues of Generals. in action in the future will show them seated on the cushions of a limousine or bending over a map. The tendenty is to keep our staff in the horseback, smoke-powder stage. What Modern War Requires of lts General Staff & it Joffre or Von Hindenburg, he sees not BR through field glasses, as did the commander of old, but through the eyes of the trained staff officers of armies, corps, divisions and bri- gades. Joffre can talk over the long-distance to Foch or to Douglas Haig or to Kitchener in Lon- don. He can now the result of any aerial recon- naissance or any trench attack by lifting a tele- phone recriver—only it raust be # very important reconnaisse nce or attack for him to hear of it. The big man is not bothered with details—and de- tails form the principal — of our Chief o: Staff. These famous- Generals of ‘up-to-date warfare, whether Joffre, Von Hindenburg, Mackensen or Haig, are the balance wheels, the men of judg- ment who must keep their minds clear to’the big igsues. The wheck work is done by many un- known experts; experts in “ntellige:ce, aviation, artillery, transport, engincering ordnance, med- ical corps and so forth, who keep all the different branches in harmonious action. They succeed only because of their infinite training before the war—a training in actual practice—~hile our meager staff works with theory and a paper army o} possible eotuntonen 7: Sndertake: any real “Best - proof ‘ot all of the. value of staff work he ee nt. infantry and GENERAL VON FALKENTIAYYN Head of the greatest and most successful of ali generat stajffe—Germany's. asked: “Have you ‘learned to think in - large nunibets?” The first requirement of a. modern staff officer is that he shall, he. must. have brains—and then still more brains. Our staff is learning to handle the big army we might need in case of war in much the same way that railroad- ifig would be learned through a correspohdence school. 7 | The staff efficiency is best compared to that of railroad efficiency. You go into a great railroad ‘station; a man gives you a tag, which means your trunk will be at your destination when you ar- rive. ' You go On board'a train whic® leaves at the moment stated, The ‘track is kept clear for it, though thousands of ‘other trains are running, Every engineer, conductor, brakeman, switchman and all the innumerable force—each knows his duty’ in the system, which is the result of years of building. Not until you go. on a very Dadly man- aged railroad where traiis are never on time, where accidents ‘are frequent and freight perishes, does it occur to you ‘how wonderful a railroad system is. . | : 3 In case of a big war, for want of a staff, we should ‘have: collisions and accidents, which would cost us not the lives of twenty or thirty passen- gers, but thousands of men. We could not expect our troops to be on tithe or any schedules kept. How the General Staff Does the Army’s | Thinking. mention a few details, is to have a sys tem of intelligence “planted” in the en- emy’s country which will keep it informed of the enemy's operation throughout the war; to know. how long it will take to send a certain number of troops. to any. given point. and exactly how to send .them;,,8o to. plan that the transport of food fcr millions of men will leave no man hungry at night and tie ammunition supply will, leave ny gun. hungry; that communications by .wire of unit with unit are always intact; _ that each day’s plans of the Generals shall never. interfere with any of t' ese requisites; that every. square “ard, every 1 tree, house, lane and street of the country where the army is operating should be carefully mepped: Besides this, the staff has to bandle that vast force of human beings. organized into a ma- chine in battle, to. make sure all regiments op- erate together. | A staff ought to have men who know railroad- ing as railroad men know it.. The German and French’ railroade hav. worked like clockwork in this war, They have done the army's service and yet kept the maximum: of civil traffic going. That requires the most careful adjustment between the military and civil heads. You cafnot have it with army officers who know nothing of railroading trying to work with raitroad officials who know nothing of military methoda and requirements. Yet our staff has taken no real step toward co- operation with the railroads on be big scale in time of war. T : Solanees of the staff before the war, to ok i aottsind ot C polinind apnea taceallt a stnall part of a staff's duties, including evary- staffs make the running of a great army seem so simple. Sir John Jellicoe makes the command of 300 ships seem 80 easy that you feel you could do it yourself. Wherever we have maneuvers of regulars and national guardsmen together on a small scale, you will see officers hurrying up and down warn- ing this or that regiment that it is out of position, o: this lot of transport or that lone battery of guns that they are on the wrong road: There is the same kind of confusion that you will find at the first rehearsal of a play. The actors may know their lines, but they do not know their parts in relation to those of the others. Our officers are not to blame. They have had no practice. Noth- ing but practice can bring good “staff work” in the field. We had it at the close of the Civil War apd we could not have fit at the notice of any dig war now. General Staff Must Foresee Every Need War Develops HALL I ever forget the first time I saw the French army in action, which was at the close of thé battle of the Marne? For three weeks that army had been fighting, a part of tre time retreating. Yet there seemed no confusion. The observer cameup with the motor transport in its proper place along the road; the infantry re- serves in theirs; then a section of cavalry ready | in answer to any call; the gun ammunition train, all knowing how to scréen themselves from ere plane observation—all certain of their parts, while ahead one. heard the thrumming of machine guns, the crackling of rifle fire under the canopy of shell smoke from the hidden artillery. Every of-{ ficer knew the roads, every clump of woods, every giream, every hedge, the lay of all the ¢eround. by reading his map, a thing that cannot be learned in a day—knew it all as thoroughly as if he were on the farm where he was brought up in child- hood. So it must be on roads for a front of hundreds of miles. Otherwise, the Commander in Chief does not Know what to depend upon. There is danger enough of having his maghine. broken fn battle without {ts being tied into knots from lack of systematic co-ordination in “staff work” in the sheer business of moving into action. ' ‘To show how these things are done, I saw. the French put 60,000 men .through Calais in a single ey on a single track railroad. There were 60 trains with a thousand men each—or a full bat- talion—ready to take the field. No battalion commander knew where he was going; that was not his business. He had only to go aboard the train and keep on till a railroad staff officer him to disembark and some other: staff offi dispatched him to a certain point on the map. By REAR ADMIRAL BRADLEY AR FISKE (Copyrighted, 1918, by the North American Review « by | Res Herewith by the Special he mpg Hace North American Review.) = _* HE construction of: the material| Manded by Capt. oe of the navy has progressed; Which proved. that by stra since then, 1880, but spas-{ ‘ralning and the « doption o1 ¥ modically. At every session of Con-) metits of | Dn, it was: gress tremendous Sora havo bon stan © alt ro Bl T by people desiring an ade- quate navy, and . tremendous resis- tance has been made by people § who believed thet we required no. navy, or at least only a little one, The country at large has taken a bystander’s inter- est in the con- test, not know- ing much § about the pros” po4 ons, Dut feel- odes indolent ou that wa needed some. navy, though not. mitch. The fe sult has been, 1 5t, a reasonable pol-— dey, buta succes- it EEE ng This does not mean that she has. lowed a rigid naval policy; gh naval policy, to be efficient, must able to accommodate iteelf the beginning of this century the British navy was at the height of its splender and selfconfidetice. Bri- tannia ryled the waves, and Bri- tannia's shipa and equadrens: The planta of industrial enterprises are. sta-|- tionary. Those of the army are moving. The staff must adapt itself to continual changes. It faces sudden and unexpected destruction of men | and material and must know how to renew them. | Quietly, unnoticed, the great Buropean staffs worked before this war preparing thelr systems. Late at night, when peace seemed secure to the world, the lights burned in the General Staff building in Berlin—less pretentious than is that occupied by the French staff—than many of cur state armories. What counts is what is done ‘n.- side the building, not its architectural impressive- ness. The staffe did not seem in any way excited the day the war began. No good staff ever does. Its coolness proves that its work of preparation is well done. “Fire, when you are ready,” said numbers?” Not until you have experience with them. Our officers have had none. . i i | Hl i batts 3 & al : é r » ¥ Fz Hitt fh Fi i : 8 a i 3 - 4 : » ; | 3 ie: e a ss - E ¥ ha x : ” ‘ Lad . 7 me J 7 4 he af e SP ie Ht