Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 80, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1917 — WANT U. S. TROOPS TO PLAY ROLE [ARTICLE]

WANT U. S. TROOPS TO PLAY ROLE

Distinguished Visitors too Urge Expeditionary Force By America— Great Need For Flyers. Fortress Monroe, Va., April 24. — France’s war commissioners to the United States reached Hampton Roads today and tonight they are bound up Chesapeake Bay for Washington on board the presidential yacht Mayflower. .♦ The mission, of which Rene Viviani, vice premier and minister of justice is the official head, and Marshal Joffre a member, brings no written instructions from the French government, the ministry having decided to give its members unlimited powers to negotiate with the United States on all subjects military, naval and financial. It is prepared to discuss the sending of an American expeditionary force to France. ... Marshal Joffre and other military membqp. will indicate to the American officials with whom they are to confer several important military reasons which they consider renders the sending of such a force advisable. The most important of these reasons is fcund in the moral effect to be had from the presence of American troops and the American flag on the battlefields of France. The French idea of an American expedition calls for a fighting force supported by auxiliary services, such as railroay staffs, railray material, base repair shops, telegraph and telephone lines, automobile transport and a strong aviation section. The French government is ready to offer whatever may be considered necessary to assist in sea operations, including the use for naval purposes of any or all ports in France. The ministry of marine has worked out for submission to the American government a comprehensive plan for overseas transports, for both army and navy purposes and for the provisioning of the civil population. Financially France needs loans of $100,600,000 monthly to be spent in the United States. Details of the informaticn on this subject will be suitmitted to the American government at the conferences to be held in Washington. . M. Viviani, as official head of the commission, during his stay here gave the following stateinent to a staff correspondent of the Associated Press who accompanied the mission from France; " ' “Every American will understand that in deference to the illustrious president of the United States whom I api going to. aee very soon, I reserve first word for him. I will have occasion to see you again and tell the American nation through you ip a more complete manner tilt ©mations with which the representatives of France greet in the name of their country, the first democracy of the warld/with which. France shares the saqie ideals,”