UNITED STATES ARMY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18539, 27 April 1922, Page 5

UNITED STATES ARMY

DRASTIC REDUCTION OPPOSED. DANGER OF FOREIGN AGGRESSION. Frees Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. NEW YORK, April 26. Mr J. W. Weeks, Secretary of War, testifying before the Senate’s Appropriations Committee, declared that the chaotic state of the world’s affairs and the creation of new balances of power, such as the new German-Russian Treaty, would make a reduction in the United States arrhy bejow 150,000 an act of folly. The decrease proposed by the House’s Bill would invite aggression.—A. and N'.Z. Cable. Mr Weeks continued : “While the Wa-sh-inton Treaty banned the use of poison gas in future wars, the uses of chemical establishments and the ease with which they can be transformed for the production of destructive gases #e so well known that I think'it would be fatal to abandon the experiments and investigations of the American army along this line.”—A. and N.Z. Cable. LESSONS OF THE WAR. GENERAL PERSHING’S VIEWS. WASHINGTON, April 25. (Received April 26, at 5.5 p.m.) General Pershing, in supporting Mr Week’s statement, declared that if the United States had had an adequate army it might have prevented the world war or at least would have saved America the humiliation of depending on the Allies to hold back the enemy for more than a year before the United States was even partially prepared.—A. and N.Z. Cable.