Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1918 — THE AMERICAN ARMY NOW 1,360,000 [ARTICLE]

THE AMERICAN ARMY NOW 1,360,000

Grows in Few Short Months From Force Numbering Only 110,000 Men. OVER 300,000 ARE REGULARS Officer Personnel Numbers More Than 80,000 —Equipment of Men Much ; More Diverse Than In Any Previous War. Washington.—The latest official figures put the number of enlisted men in the armies of the United States at 1,360,000. This is the force that has grown in eight months out of an army which on April 1 numbered only 110,000 men. Most of them are still in the training camps. Many of them are not yet disciplined troops, fully equipped and armed for battle. But there they are 1,360,000 of them, already one of the biggest factors Hindenburg is reckoning with for the campaign of 1918. To lead them there are over 80,000 officers. When the graduates of the second training camp get their first orders the number will be over 100,000 — as many officers as there were privates nine months ago. Over 300,000 Regulars. Of the new American force over 300,000 men are regulars. In all the world only two regular armies remain—the American and the Japanese. The others have all been swept away in the flood of war. When the first American

onslaught takes place German Landwehr and Landsturm troops will flnd themselves opposed to an army of professional soldiers. Behind the regulars are the 400,000 soldiers of the National Guard, regulars in experience, many of them, thanks to our helghbor of the South. After the Guard come the 600,000 men of the new National army. The whole military establishment, with the marines and the auxiliary forces thrown in, numbers a million and a half. The expansion that has taken place is as if Grand Rapids had grown in eight months to be virtually as big as Philadelphia.

Diversity of Equipment. The first thing to be done for the new army was to provide them with shelter and clothing, food and warmth. That large undertaking is all but accomplished. Equally great is the task of providing arms. To arm an Infantry division In the Civil war meant to provide as many muskets and as mhny bayonets as there were men in the command. In the present war the job is niore complicated. There are rifles and bayonets to be furnished now as formerly, but there are also grenades and gasmasks and helmets and trench mortars to be seen to. Each of the four infantry regiment's in a division must have 480 trench knives, 192 automatic rifles and three onepounder cannon. The 768 men of the machine gun battalion and the 5.068 men of the field artillery brigade must have guns and three-inch guns tn numbers that would stagger ah artillerJSt evenof so recent a period .as the war with Spain. Two hundred and thousand troops were made ready to fight Spain in 1898. though only 60,000 of them were actually engaged.