1014 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Some Government War Secrets 



1 



and the reason for the Victory Liberty Loan 



Wi 



r E HAD promised the Allied war-chiefs 

 that we would have in France by July of 

 last year, 600,000 men. On that date we 

 had a little over 1,900,000. We had behind them 

 nearly 2,000,000 in this country under training who 

 would have been on the front before July, I919, and 

 we had behind those 4,000,000 men as many more 

 men as were necessary to do the job. 



"Four million men in France meant at least 

 20,000,000 tons dead weight of shipping to take care 

 of them, and we had that program under way and 

 were making our maximum output just about the 

 time the armistice was signed. Twenty million 

 tons of shipping at present cost means just about 

 $4,000,000,000 or a little over. 



"Did you know that those 2,000,000 men in 

 France, who did so much to bring the war to an end, 

 had only one small battery of American-made artil- 

 lery behind them; just one battery of 4.7 and a few 

 big naval rifles! The rest of the artillery used by the 

 American soldiers was made by Frenchmen in 

 France. But, on the way was a great stream of guns 

 and shells that would have blown the German army 

 off the earth. But that stuff had just come into large 

 production in November, 1918. And it is for the 

 deliveries on that big peak production that we have 

 to pay in December and January and will have to 

 continue to pay for in February." 



"Our program for tanks, of which few got into 

 action, was, I have been told, to provide for a tank 

 in 1919 for every 75 feet of the front." 



"Those are some of the things that cost money, 

 and practically none of those great supplies of artil- 

 lery, of shells or tanks, even of ships, practically none 

 of that stuff was ever used. What an awful waste! 

 We are asked to pay for a dead horse that never 

 drew a load! It is discouraging, paying for some- 

 thing that is no good! 



"Well, let's see if it's any good. Do you realize 

 that the German army was never really routed; that 

 except for a little bit of a stretch down in Alsace- 



Lorraine it was never fighting on German soil? They 

 were brave soldiers, the German soldiers. They still 

 had millions of them on the Western front. And 

 yet they surrendered while they were on foreign soil. 

 They had a fleet which had required years and years 

 and years to build and it flew the white flag without 

 firing a shot." 



* * * 



"I cannot believe that these great stores of muni- 

 tions were wasted. In addition to the bravery of the 

 American doughboy that arrived in France and got 

 into action in numbers about the 15th of July and 

 turned the tide and drove the Germans back, in 

 addition to his bravery and his almost reckless spirit 

 of determination, for which the praise cannot be too 

 high, I say in addition to that, I believe there was 

 one other factor that brought this war to an end at 

 least one year before the most optimistic of us had 

 dared to hope for. One other factor, and that was 

 that Germany, her general staff, knew that back of 

 the few hundred thousand Americans that really got 

 into big action, and back of the 2,000,000 in France, 

 was another 2,000,000 ready; and despite the fact 

 that we had practically no artillery of American 

 make on the Western front, that there was a great 

 stream of American-made artillery on the way. And 

 it is my conviction that the German staff knew that 

 if they prolonged the war into 1919, they were invit- 

 ing, not certain defeat, but certain annihilation." 



"We are asked to pay for things that were never used; 

 we are asked to pay for shells that never were fired; 

 for cannon that never reached the battlefront, but 

 we are asked to pay for those things that helped in 

 a major way to bring this war to an end in 1918 

 instead of 1919. And the bringing of this war to an 

 end twelve months before we could logically look 

 for it means that we are asked to pay for saving the 

 lives of 100,000 or 200,000 American boys who would 

 have died on foreign soil had the war continued 

 another year." 



Extracts from a speech by Hon. Lewis B. Franklin, 



Director War Loan Organization, U. S. Treasury 'Department. 



ictory Liberty Loan 



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