Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 195, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1916 — What Is Significance of Latest Guardmen Order? [ARTICLE]

What Is Significance of Latest Guardmen Order?

Much mastery attachs to the ordering by President Wilson of an adto the Mexican border. The impression prevails that the administration knows conditions in Mexco to be even more menacing than is generally realized, and suggestions that the Carranza regime is tottering and about to fall are again rife. The secretary of war has arrested that the ordering of more miliatiamen to the border at this time is wholly without significance, explaning that the order is due to the falling off of enlistments and “because the guard was not fully equipped.” He further adds that the training the men will receive on the border will be highly beneficial. This explanation s, however, received with scepticism, for the reason that all who are well informed realibze that the guardsmen could be far better trained in their respective home camps, where they would not be subjected to an unaccustomed and almost tropical climate; that it is a serious menace to their health to send them to the border until they have had adequate training, both for the purpose of hardening them physically and of educating them in the proper methods of caring for themselves and protecting their health in the field. There is eevry reason to fear that a terrible record of impaired constitutions, serious illness and even deaths will result from sending to the border practically 125,000 guardsmen, jnost of whom have had no adequate prior physical training, and it is regarded as inconceivable that the administration would have ordered an additional 25,000 men to the border unless compelled to do so by some undisclosed grave development.