AMERICA’S HOME DEFENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1926, Page 7

AMERICA’S HOME DEFENCE.

VIEWS OF CHIEF OF STAFF

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received Sept. 2, 5.5 p.m. Washington, Sept. 1

Major General Hines, Chief of Staff, in an address at the opening exercises of the Army War College, declared that an adequate standing army of 150,000 could be organised into modern defence establishment for America, but the economic conditions would keep it considerably below that figure. . He stated that the present authorised men without weapons would only make 500. The current appropriations would be sufficient to maintain a larger- numerical force, if the allied questions of supply and training were neglected, but strength of the regular army was 117,a useless sacrifice and weapons without men were of no immediate military value.

“We must never fail,” said the speaker, “to recognise the fact that our first line of defence is the army as it now -lands,” and that in the case of an emergency the nation must depend on the personnel of the organisations already constituted to hold the, line of resistance until great national armies could be mobilised, trained and equipped for baffle.