FEEDING THE TROOPS.*
HOWEVER completely the superficial aspects of war have changed since our very remote ancestors tackled each other simply and beautifully with stone clubs, there is one fundamental truth which the heaven-born general must still take into account in planning his campaigns. This is the truth, uttered by many soldiers before Napoleon, that an army marches on its belly. If you do not feed your troops regularly, they can neither move nor fight. The retreat from Mons, indeed, showed that this rule could be interpreted with a certain elasticity. In that terrible struggle towards Beaumont-Hamel, again, in the autumn of 1916, a company of the present writer's battalion, who had gone too far in the ardour of assault and were hopelessly cut off behind the German lines, held out for eight days on a single emergency ration per man until the heroic remnant, having fired all their cartridges and thrown all their bombs, were driven to surrender. But it is unwise to reckon on miracles happening as part of the ordinary routine of battle, and the army which has • 8.0.5. By Isaac F. itarcosson. Illustrated. London : John Lane. Fs, ad, Let.] the best service of supply in the field is certainly placed at a
great advantage. Even the hardy Roman legionary, humping five days' rations and unburdened by S..A.A., was usually dis- comfited when he tried the unfamiliar conditions of the desert fighting which General Allenby has reduced to such a fine art. If the commissariat of Crassus had conceived the notion of a pipe-line, Parthian warfare would have lost most of its terrors.
Every one who has had much experience of the working of our Supply Services in France will readily agree that there was nothing in the war more wonderful or more creditable. Some foolish people at home occasionally talk about " soft jobs in the A.S.C.," but they will not find many of the infantry from the Line to agree with them. From the latter part of 1915 to the Armistice, the present writer only knew the rations once fail to arrive punctually, and that was because of the pig-headed- ness of one of the Brigade Staff. After the Armistice, indeed— but that is another story, which it would not be tactful to tell at present. The really amazing part of it is that our whole Supply Services, like the rest of our Army, had to be improvised as we went along. It makes us a trifle envious to contemplate the happier lot of our American Allies, as set forth in Mr. Isaac Marcosson's very interesting description of what he enthusiasti- cally calls the S.O.S." or "America's miracle in France."
The military administration of the United States had ample leisure to make preparations for the task of feeding and supply- ing their Expeditionary Force :-
"Before General Pershing and his Staff set out on their historic journey to France to plant the American flag on the soil of freedom, a Railway Commission . . . sailed from New York to investigate dock and traffic conditions and recommend a plan for the American system. . . . They represented a combined experience that was an immense asset in their ramified investigations, which began at, the War Office in London and practically covered every line of communication used by the Allied armies in France."
Nine Engineer regiments followed to build and work the American lines—some of them were the first American troops to march through the London streets, in August, 1917. The
admirable work which they did is well described in one of Mr. Marcosson's early chapters. , As an example, he specifies their task at St. Nazaire, where the discharging capacity of the port was increased in two months from 2,000 to 12,000 tons a day, and at Bordeaux, where in eight months the American engineers completed a set of wharves which the French estimated as requiring from three to five years to build, so that fourteen vessels can now be unloaded simultaneously.
Within twelve months of its origination the American military traffic department was operating a system of railways in France larger than any important group in the United States." Up at Passchendaele in the autumn of 1917 one used to hear amazing stories of the American enterprise, such as that the newcomers, not finding the French lines convenient, were building a four- track line straight across country from Bordeaux to the fighting- line—or, as another variant had it, to Paris—but that seems to have been a slight exaggeration : at least, Mr. Marcosson does not mention the fact, and, like Browning's friend, he must have done so, were it possible." America had the great advan- tage of knowing what she would want and " going bald-headed for it." " Our whole transportation scheme in France was started right, because that original Railway Commission . . . realized that our railway structure overseas must be dominated by seasoned railway men." One can only admire the patriotic way in which the leading railway experts in the
United States responded to the call, and gave up hundred- thousand-dollar jobs—one's mouth waters at the thought—
to toil in France on the mere pittance of a Major or a Captain.
The whole immensely complicated business of supply was put into shape on the same scientific and elaborate lines. Mr. Marcosson's glowing pages give a very clear account of the system employed, in which diagrams and card-indexes played a very large part. Probably no system of the kind was ever so completely thought out in advance, or so thoroughly developed
in detail. Even if we had had a year to prepare for the war ourselves, we doubt whether we could have done the thing EO ingeniously. Perhaps the results were not so very much better than our own, but they were certainly attained in a more scientific fashion. Mr. Marccsson's book—most of which has already been published in the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post—is extremely readable, and deserves to be widely known.
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