AMERICA PREPARES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 24009, 5 July 1941, Page 10

AMERICA PREPARES

j The urgent need for military prei pa redness is the keynote of the report presented to the L nited States |Secretary for ttar. Mr. Stimson, by the Chief of Staff of the Army. General Marshall. The specific points advocated are extended training i under the scheme of selective service, or conscription ; the rempval of restrictions which confine the operations of American armed forces to the United States: and the reorganisation of the higher command to provide more aggressive leadership. When the United States entered the last war she was lamentably unprepared. Her military strength in I April, 1917, comprised 60.000 men in "the regular army and about 150,000 in the National Guard. The organisation of manpower, however, was so speedily developed that in the last 19 months of hostilities. S.(mXmw men were called into army service and 2.056.000 sent overseas. If -the United States had been involved in the present struggle 1 last -year, it would have been almost a case of history repeating itself. Drafting under the selective service scheme has since proceeded apace, and to-day the United States Army has grown to 1,400,000 men, with training facilities under way for an ultimate land strength of 4.000,000. In the last war, Ludendorf? believed that American intervention could not be effective J because of the time it would take to j train armies and transport them across the Atlantic. Events proved ' him wrong. The extent to which advance preparations have already been made in the L nited states suggests that in this war American intervention might be even more speedily decisive.