Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 246, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1918 — Page 2

How Millions of Men In War are Moved, Fed

Work of S. 0. S. in France Excels All History of Military Feats. QUICK SERVICE IS THE RULE Army Uses 1,500,000 Pounds of Refrlg-i erated and Fresh Beef Each Day —lmmense Supplies Needed to Feed Yanks—Works Like a Machine. By CHARLES N. WHEELER. (In the "'Chicago Tribune.) In the S. O. S. Sector, France.—The matter of feeding the army in France i Is an epic story. It is truly of heroic proportions. Just now it requires about 1,500,000 pounds of refrigerated and fresh beef to - feed the army in France each dayj besides the hundreds of thousands of pounds of, bacon, mutton, ham. corned beef, canned salmon, and dried and pickled meats and fish. More than 200,000 cans of tomatoes, corn and peas help to make up one day’s rations. Something like 230,000 cans of jam, 8,000 cans of peaches, 5,000 jars of pickles, 3,000 bottles of catsup, carloads of canned lobster and other sea foods, more than 2,000 boxes of chocolate, fresh white bread made of American flour and all the boys want, even the good old corn bread served hot, besides the Immense quantities of potatoes, beans, prunes, coffee, sugar, milk, pepper, salt, vinegar, cinnamon, sirup, and about everything found In a wellstocked farmer’s pantry in the United States are laid before the American army In France every day—and it is all there right on the dot. Works Like a Machine. It is there in every section of France, from Soissons and Toul to Marseilles and from the Sw’ss border to the Bay of Biscay. All France is a great industrial place and there is hardly a spot in the whole country, including the sections under heavy shell Are, where the S. O. S. is not standing at attention when the dinner bell rings. Meantime, men and munitions, and all manner of supplies are moving up » to the front continuously, and the fighters are coming back for a,little rest. The machinery works smoothly —and efficiently. There are side lines of great Interest. One of these is the traveling bathroom. An outfit that requires only three trucks is now sent up to the lines to greet the boys as they come out of the trenches and give them a fine scrubbing. Each outfit will wash 500 boys an hour. * Meantime the S. O. S. is filling orders from the front. It may be a few thousand Infantry, an artillery regiment or several such regiments, machine gun companies, and so on through the list. They are delivered Immediately. The wounded have to be brought back to the hospitals. The trains and ambulances are ready and they move like clockwork —except that getting back from the first-aid stations at times is not quite as slow as a clock. The wounded are sent to all corners of France and the big machine works on almost faultlessly. Whole armies of the mobile sections now are transported quickly from sect6r to sector. It is up to the S. O. S. to see that all this equipment Is provided.

Salvage Work Important. The S. O. S. besides doing an enormous business in the manufacturing line, conducts a large salvage plant, or plants, into which flows a steady stream of battlefield wreckage. In the clothing branch of the work alone they are saving the taxpayers back home $3,500,000 a month. More important than the money saving is the saving of tonnage. / At one station mammoth American locomotives are assembled “while you wait” Six of these leviathans are put together every day and are doing their Mt the next day. i It was found advisable to operate a special train for American military men between two widely separated points in France. As soon as the necessity presented itself the train was Installed. It is called the “American Special.” It is manned by Pullman car porters—negro boys who have had long training on the de luxe trains back home. They are rated as first class wagon men here. American railway conductors have been assigned to this train, or trains, one running each way every 24 hours. Of one thing the mothers back home may be thoroughly assured, and that Is that not one of their boys wants for a single thing in the way of subsistence and medical and surgical attention. No army ever took the field better provided. And while the appreciations are being passed around it is not out of place to observe that the subsistence division of the war department at Washington is entitled to a decoration for the efficiency it has achieved. Something over 300,000 enlisted men and about 25,000 women comprise the "help” in the S. O. S. organization. A large number of officers, bf course, are required for the supervising positions, but practically all of the workers are men in khaki who have been termed the "ammunition passers.” Employs Army of Women. Of the 25,000 women in the work most of them are French women. A two-fold alm is achieved in the utilization of these women. A large percentage of them would be charges

against the state unless afforded this means of sustaining themselves. Not The least serious of the problems confronting the war department was the question of distribution of supplies in France. A million men might be landed in French ports, together with the necessary equipment, but how under the heavens was this vast storehouse to bte transported to the Interior and on up to the lines, with the manifold exactions that would have to be met In doing it speedily and orderly and with the French transportation facilities already groaning under the home load? The German staff agreed it could not he done.

Right here seems a good place to Introduce Brig. Gen. Johnson Hagood. He Is chief of staff of the S. O. S. He has served in the war department with every chief of staff of the army since the general staff was created by congress. He is a native of South Carolina, a nephew of the late Brig. Gen. Johnson Hagood of the Confederate army and one time governor of South Carolina. The present chief of staff attended the university of his home state from 1888 to 1891 and graduated from West Point in 1896. He has served as personal aide to Generals Bell and Wood. General Hagood Is one of the younger generals of the army. He Is small of stature, quick of action, and a human dynamo. His mind works like chain lightning. “How did you do It?” I asked him. A flicker of a smile flitted across the. face es the West Pointer. “Well, we had to do it—and we did it. That’s all. It was a mere statement of fact. There was no philosophy to It. Just had to be done, and—was done! “It would be Impossible for me to tell you how this plan has been worked out,” he added. “Moreover, I am not permitted to give out interviews to newspaper men. But in this case I understand you have been authorized by General Pershing’s headquarters to get an interview from me, so I will try to tell you something about it. Undeceiving Themselves. “In the first place, it is the biggest military undertaking In the history of the world. No military authority ever laid so bold a plan on this earth; nothing that Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar or Napoleon ever planned compares with It in scope or daring. The Germans laughed at us when we proposed |t, and even those of us of the old army who sat around the war college wondering what we would do in a great war, never dreamed the United States, the most unmilitary nation on earth, could put 4,000,000 men in France. To supply such a body of men from a base 4,000 miles away, to organize them,’ to fight ’em, and to fight ’em as well as the best soldiers in Europe today—is the greatest military accomplishment of all times.

~ “So far as my end of it is concerned it is all a matter of team work. TJie work is that of the bureau chiefs. You might compare me to the quarterback of the team. I give the signals and pass the ball, but they really do the work, and they have done it exceedingly well. We are way ahead on our program. We supply twice as many men in France as the most optimistic of us had expected. And at the present rate it will not be long before we will be supplying in France an army four times as large as that we had originally contemplated. “As to the character of the work, we have had to build and repair railroads. We have built permanent docks and wharves at the ports, and some of these ports are more prosperous now than they ever have been in their history. We have constructed aviation fields, repair shops, salvage plants, supply depots, hospitals, cold storage plants, water supply, etc. Rushing a New City. “It is rather difficult for one to visualize the proposition of going into an open field and constructing a 10,000 bed hospital. If means In reality a

YANKEE AUTO TRUCKS ARRIVE IN ITALY

In this, one of the first pictures to arrive in this country of the actaat landing of Americap troops in Italy, 18 seen a long trainload <Jf automoblli trucks belonging to the American forces.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN. RENSSELAER. IN X

ASTRIDE PLANE UPSIDE DOWN; RIDES TO EARTH

London.—A British airman, while flying at a height of 1,600 feet, had the tail of his machine shot off by a direct hit from a shell. The machine turned upside down and the pilot was thrown from his seat, but he managed to clamber onto the. bottom of the fusllnge, on which he remained astride. Although the machine was out of control, he managed, by moving forward and backward, to balance it and glide steadily downward. Under a strong anti-aircraft fire he crossed the German lines successfully a few hundred feet from the ground. * His machine came down with a crash and he received some injuries, but will recover.

city of 15,000 inhabitants, with all the necessary appliances in the way of water, sewerage, stores, fire protection, lighting system, etc. Imagine ail the retail stores In Chicago consolidated into one, and you get an idea of what ft means when we say a depot containing ninety days’ supply for 1,000,000. Think Of a cold storage plant where 20,000 head of cattle, or 80,000 quarters of beef, can be provided for under one roof. “Of course, we only handle this end of It. Our job. over here is to get the stuff off the ships, get it on the trains, and pass it on up to the front. It comes in a never-ending stream. The problem of the staff departments is divided into four grand groups —transportation, construction, supply, and hospitalization. “Under transportation,” continued General Hagood, “we group ocean transport and inland waterways, all railways, including standard gauge and narrow gauge; all horse and mule transportation, including wagons and pack animals, and all forms of motor transportation. *No possible form of transportation has been overlooked. “Under construction we have to consider the building of railroads, the erection and assembling of cars and locomotives, the building of wharves, docks and storehouses; the construction and repair of barges and other, vessels for use on the canals and navigable streams, bridges, and, in fact, everything from the cutting of the timber In the forests to Its final assent blage for practical use.

Their Own Manufacturers. “Under supplies we include water, food, clothing, fuel, animals, forage, guns and ammunition, airplanes, etc. We have taken over a great many manufactures. We make our own chocolate, and manufacture hard bread, and a number of such commodities. There Is one bakery in the center of France from which we send out every day fresh bread for 500,000 men. “Under hospitalization we include receiving and caring for the sick and wounded evacuated from the front. “In decentralize this industrial institution the zone of operations Is' divided into nine sections —the advance section in which the armies are actually engaged, the intermediate section, containing the great central portion of France and seven base sections which include the ports. “The whole thing Is like a great network. General Pershing has placed the responsibility for its operation upon General Harbord, the commanding general of the S. O. S. I am his chief of staff. Associated with me are about fifty general staff officers, through whom all the activities of the S. O. S. are co-ordinated. The balance of the staff here consists of about 1,000 officers and 2,000 enlisted men and clerks. “Onb of the most Important agencies we have is the general purchasing board, presided over by Co}. Charles Gates Dawes, formerly of Chicago. This board is charged with the purchase of all supplies that are obtained in Europe, and also represents us in co-ordinating the supplies of the allies in such a way that there is no duplication among the great nations concerned.

MAKINS GUNS FOR UNCLE SAM’S MEN

Day and Night Forces at Work on Weapons for Fighters. PRODUCTION IN YEAR’S TIME Plants for Manufacture of Ordnance Have Increased More Than 90 Per , Cent Since Beginning of the War.. (From the Cemtnittee on Public Information, Washington, D. C.) The foundries of 16 steel plants In the United States are today doing capacity business. Throughout the night the work will go on with slight interruption. The whistles that blow to announce closing time to one army of workers will be a summons to another shift to take its turn. The blast of chimneys will continue to roar, and the glittering white-hot streams of molten metal will flow into the molds. A year ago only two of .these sixteen foundries where cannon forgings are now being made were in existence. The foundries at Bethlehem and Midvale represented almost our entire resources for the making of cannon forgings. Today those two plants constitute less than 10 per cent of our total facilities for making such products.

In one year a new industry has been created in this country. It is new not only in the sense that the 14 foundries have been built, but that the processes of manufacture are new. Making gun forgings is different from making steel forgings for any other purpose. The heated steel must be pressed and not hammered. The methods of heat treating the steel, of cooling it, and of annealing the molten metal are all different. Yet, within one year, this new industry has been built up in this country, and today it provides the wherewithal for the carrying out of an artillery program the like of which has not been projected in any other country. Nor is that all.'ln more than a score of other factories gun carriages, recoil mechanisms and other parts of artillery are being made. For the making of those parts, new Industries have likewise been created. As an instance a new industry was established to manufacture glass of a quality available for use in telescopic sights on cannon. Such glass had never been made in the United Statesi before.

Handicapped at Start.

When we entered the war we were handicapped by a lack of technical knowledge. We had been a peaceful people; we had not trained our scientists and engineers in the art of munitions making. Therefore, we had but one ordnance expert for every 200 in Germany. We went into this war with an ordnance bureau consisting of 97 officers and -820 enlisted men. Not all of those 97 officers were ordnance experts. Some of them were only on detail to the ordnance department In fact, not more than eight of them were charged with the designing work in the manufacture of artillery. Before a year had elapsed, the ordnance department had grown into an organization of 5,000 men and 20,000 civilian employees. It has undergone a thorough reshaping to adapt itself to the extraordinary new conditions. The ordnance bureau in the first part of the war did a total business of $4,700,000,000. In peace times its average annual expenditures were $14,000,000. Large as these figures seem, astounding as this rate of expansion must appear, they give only a scant idea of the difficulties faced by the ordnance department in its year of preparatory work. Ordnance is a highly technical subject. The few who knew it thoroughly have had the- double task of furnishing ideas and perfecting designs and of imparting their knowledge to others. They had to be workers and teachers in the same day. The old ordnance, department of less than 100 officers was split up into a gun-carriage division, a cannon division, a small-arips division, and so on, each division being charged with the design and production of some part of ordnance material. Manufacture of ordnance material was carried on almost entirely in government arsenals. The problem of production was not difficult. A few officers could follow a gun through from the day that it was first sketched put on paper until it was turned over to a field' artillery regiment. But when the ordnance department was called upon to put through a program involving expenditures and contracts totaling more than $4,500,000,000 in a single year, the old way of doing business had to end and the old form of organization had to be abandoned.

Organized the Forces. To meet the new problem, most of the ordnance experts—the regular army officers —were n««sembled in wha* is known as the engineering bureau of the ordnance department, and to this bureau was given the task of designing ordnance material. How much designing work there is to be done in the ordnance department is suggested by t£e fact that 10,000 blue prints a day are turned out in Washington for the Information of manufacturers of ordnance material. The next big task of the ordnance department, after designing the material, was to place contracts and purchase orders. It was extremely difficult to find plants where ordnance maV r-’'--5 . ‘■

terlal be made, and in a great many cases it was necessary to have factories built, or to have them equipped throughout with new machinery and tools. Sometimes the ordnance department could not find anything more to begin with than a group of men who knew manufacturing methods. It would perspade them to undertake the making of some part, would finance them in building a plant and in buying machinery, and then would set them at work manufacturing the thing needed in the war program. It is clear that the work of placing contracts and orders on so large a scale, is an Industrial rather than a military function. Consequently an almost entirely civilian personnel was selected fol the procurement division, men who were experienced in the lines of industry affected, as, for instance, experts in shell Industry, in explosives, machine tools, textiles, etc. The orders placed, it was next necessary to follow them up in each of the more than 1,000 munitions factories engaged upon ordnance work. To do this, and to force quick production, a production division Was organized which has representatives in every plant and which is responsible for all production of material. This division, too, is made up almost entirely of civilians commissioned for the period of the war. An inspection division has the duty of making sure that guns and shells are up to specifications. After the material has been manufactured, inspected and accepted by the United States government, it is next necessary to supply it to troops in the training camps in this country and to the American expeditionary forces in France.

Numerous Articles Required. The extremely difficult problem of the supply division of the ordnance department is readily- understood when it is known that there are more than 10Q,000 different articles which must be furnished to our fighting forces and which must be distributed under the most difficult circumstances without a hitch. These 100,000 articles range from the small striker or firing pin of a rifle or a little nut or bolt to a mammoth railway mount for a 16-inch howitzer. Some of the artillery carriages have as many as 7,000 parts and It is the duty of the ordnance department to repair and maintain such material. ' The rifle ip the ready weapon of the infantryman. Owing to the changed conditions of modern warfare, it does not retain the extraordinary place of importance it once held. It is still, however, the principal stand-by of the American soldier, and the maintenance of an adequate reserve of rifles is, therefore, a matter of much concern. Have we enough rifles for our riflecarrying soldiers? We have. What is more, we are able to outfit them with the very best type of rifle known in the munitions world. For a number of years before the war the superiority of the United States model of 1903 (popularly called the Springfield) was well recognized. In five international meets, extending over a period of five years, our riflemen, using the Springefield, won first place every time, defeating the marksmen of 15 nations. Most of our opponents were armed with types of the Mauser rifle, which is used by the Germans. The new United States model of 1917 (popularly called the modified Enfield) is substantially the equivalent of the Springfield. It was decided to manufacture the modified Enfield our American factories, which had ac-’ cepted large contracts from Great Britain, could turn this weapon out in larger quantities than the Springfield, which had been made only at government arsenals.

Our rate of rifle production is today 50,000 per week. Every three months we are now making as many rifles as we had altogether at the beginning of the war. Yet that original supply (600,000 Springfields and 100,< 000 rifles of other sorts) was, from the start, sufficient to equip the rifle-carry-ing men of an army of a million. We can congratulate ourselves about rifles. Knottiest Problem of All. But artillery manufacture was the knottiest problem Of all. it is almost impossible to make the Jayman understand how difficult it is to manufacture a piece of modern artillery. Perhaps that was the reason, or one of the reasons, why public opinion in this country failed to listen to the warnings of ordnance experts and provide adequate appropriations for artillery manufacture years ago. For the last 12 years the war department has been telling congress that artillery ■ could not be made quickly after the outbreak of war. A year would be required to be gin deliveries on any guns in quantity, these experts told congress. To pro vide for artillery manufacture on a vast scale would take even longer, because in that event literally scores of new plants would have to be built, millions of dollars’ worth of machine tools and equipment would have to be provided and thousands upon thousands of men would have to be taught a line of work unknown to them at the outset. That Is precisely what the ordnance department has been doing since the declaration of war. It has been creating manufacturing facilities'to make, artillery. Arrangements were made to provide our troops with artillery of British and French manufacture while our own manufacturing resources were being developed. Although, thus far, this reliance upon the resources of our allies has proved satisfactory, naturally the war department is anxious 4o gain independence in Its artillery supply at the earliest possible moment, and that Is t)je task upon which the energies of the ordnance department are now concentrated. Every possible effort is being made to expedite production v artillery. . -

marvelousotory or womans Change from Weakness to Strength by Taking Pruggirt’B Advice. Pera, Ind.—” I suffered from a displacement with backache and dragging down pains so badly that at times * could not be on f my feet and it did I not seem as though K. xf?l could stand it. I ■ W! tried different \ medicines without any benefit and Wr Av several doctors -told me nothing \ but an operation Awould do me any good. My drugW gist told me of ✓VU™ M Lydia E. Pink- / ™ //W ham’s Vegetable t aS Compound. I took \ /I Vlrv' lt mt h the result V that lam now well \ '\ and strong. I get np in the morning atfouro’clock, do my housework, then go to a factory and work all day, come home and get supper and feel good. I don’t know how many of my friends I have told what Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound has done for me. ’’—Mrs. ANNA METBBIANO, 86 West 10th St, Peru, Ind. . . Women who suffer from any such ailments should not fail to try this famous root and herb remedy, Lydia E. Pinkbarn’s Vegetable Compound. CuticuraSoap IS IDEAL For the Hands Soap 25c., Ointment 25 A 500., Talcum 25c. Bamp/e each mailed free by “Cuticura, Dept. E, Boaton." niYFMTO WataonE.Coleman.WMh PATENTS RAKE BELGIAN HAKES FOR OS

Couldn’t Be Worse.

A young man came -in to one of ths boards for examination. He was per feet, physically, but his face was home ly enough to stop a clock. “I want to go right after thos« Huns,” he said. ... “You’re a plucky fellow,” said th* doctor. “Well, it ain’t pluck exactly,” salt the boy. “There ain’t nothing the Ger mans can do to me that won’t improv* my appearance.”

Catarrhal Deafness Cannot Be Cured

by local applications as they cannot reach ths diseased portion of the ear. There it only one way to cure Catarrhal Deafness, and that is by a constitutional remedy. HALL’S CATARRH MEDICINE acts through the Blood on the Mucous Surface! of the System. Catarrhal Deafness 1» caused by an Inflamed condition of th< mucous lining of the Eustachian Tuba When this tube is inflamed you have s rumbling sound or imperfect hearing, and when it is entirely closed, Deafness is th« result Unless the Inflammation can be reduced and this tube restored to its normal Condition, hearing may be destroyed forever. Many cases of Deafness ar< caused by Catarrh, which is an Inflamed condition of the Mucous Surfaces. ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS for anj case of Catarrhal Deafness that• canng be cured by HALL S CATARRH MEDICINE. . - AU Druggists 75c. Circulars free. F. J. Cheney & Co., Toledo, Ohio.

The Right View.

Mrs. Snobson —My dear, you don’t really mean to say you darn your husband’s hose. Mrs. Wright—Of course I do. If a man foots his wife’s bills, she should at least be willing to foot his stockings—Boston Evening Transcript.

Important to Mothers

Examine carefully every bottle ol CASTORIA, that famous old remedy for infants and children, and see that it Bears the Signature In use for Over 30 Years. Children Cry for Fletcher’s Castoria

Uncle Eben.

“Every once in a while,” said Uncle Eben, “I keeps runnin’ across de same man’s picture till I begin to wonder what he does to be famous, besides gettin’ hisself photographed.” Keep hammering away and success will come your way. Busy men are usually so happy that they have no time to realize it.

Don’t fit From Bad to Worse! Are you always weak, miserable and half-sick? Then it’s time you found out what is wrong. Kidney weakness causes much suffering from backache, lameness, stiffness and rheumatic pains, and if neglected, brings danger of serious troubles-dropsy, gravel and Bright’s disease. Don’t delay. Usd Doon’s Kidney Pttle. They have helped thousands and should help you. Anlow&Case Mrs. J. Severins, practical nurse, 1619 Seventh Ave., Council Bluffs, la., says: JT AAJj/'WI have used Doan’s Kid-X-Cf " ney Pills for a lame and weak back and / IM4hlo Juner symptoms of disfl • Uflfly ordered kidneys and J, 1 they have given me Ml | most excellent relief ffllll 1W and tlj ® benefit has U lasted. I advise ahy- ■/ I V one suffering from □1 g JJ’ kidney disorders to use Doan's Kidney GetDoaaWt Aw Stars, Meaßsa DOAN * S ——— I \ W. N. U, CHICAGO, NO. 41-1911