Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 210, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1916 — THE NATION IS SHOCKINGLY UNPREPARED. [ARTICLE]

THE NATION IS SHOCKINGLY UNPREPARED.

It is apparent that we ar* shockingly unprepared. There is no room for controversy on this point since the object lesson on the Mexican border. All our available regular troops (less, I Relieve, than 40,000) are there or in Mexico, and as these have been deemed insufficient the entire national guard has been ordered out That is, we are summoning practically all our movable military forces in order to prevent bandit incursions. In view of the warnings of the past three years, it is inexcusable that We should find ourselves in this plight. For our faithful guardsmen, who with a fine patriotism responded to this call and are bearing this burden, I have nothing but praise. But I think it little short of absurd that we should be compelled to call men from their shops, their factories, their offices and their professions for such a purpose. This, however, is not all. The units of the national guard were at peace strength, which was only about one-half the required strength. , It was necessary to bring in recruits, for the most part raw and untrained. Only a small percentage of the regiments recruited up to war strength will have had even a year's training in the national guard, which at the maximum means a hundred hours of military drill, and, on the average, means much less. Men fresh from their peaceful employments and physically unprepared have been hurried to the border for actual service. They were without proper equipment, without necessary supplies; suitable conditions of transportation were not provided. Men with dependent families were sent, and conditions which should have been well known were discovered after the event And yet the exigency, comparatively speaking, was not a .very grave one. It Involved nothing that could not readily have been foreseen during the past three years of disturbance and required only a modest talent for organization. That this administration while pursuing its course in Mexico should have permitted such conditions to exist is almost incredible.—From Mr. Hughes* Speech of Acceptance.