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Show SECRETARY BAKER'S TESTIMONY. There could not be a more complete and overwhelming answer to Senator Chamberlain's charge that "the military establishment establish-ment of America has fallen down," that "it is a thing that does not exist," that "it has almost stopped functioning," than Secretary Baker's testimony yesterday before the Senate Committee on i Military Affairs. I A military establishment that has raised and equipped the greatest army the United States has ever had, that has sent great numbers of troops to France and has 1,000,000 more that are ready to go, has not fallen down; it has not ceased to exist; it has not stopped functioning.. On the contrary, it has done a work for which there is no parallel in American military annals. "Republics," as Gen. Winfield Scott observed in his autobiography, autobio-graphy, "are never prepared for war," and they never will be prepared pre-pared for war. The test of a military establishment in the circumstances cir-cumstances in which the United States entered this conflict is not whether an army was ready to the last button, as the Germans, boasted that they were when they crossed the Belgian frontier. It is not whether there have been shortcomings and delays. It is not whether there have been casual errors in judgment or incidental inci-dental confusion in execution. It is whether there were plans commensurate with the part that the country must play, whether there was energy in the execution of these plans, whether there was a disposition to correct errors and profit from mistakes, and whether the military establishment moved steadily forward to the accomplishment of its objects. - Measured by these tests, the War Department under Secretary Secre-tary Baker has written a new chapter in the military history of republics. - There never was the slightest basis for the sweeping indictment indict-ment that Senator Chamberlain brought against the War Department Depart-ment and that Secretary Baker has answered in detail. It is not conceivable that the Senator spoke merely in ignorance, for. he had the means of ascertaining the facts. Even though the War Department was reluctant to make public some of the information that Secretary Baker spread upon the record, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs could have had access to it. So could his associates on the committee who did not wait to finish their investigation before framing legislation to depose the President of the United States from his constitutional office as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy and reduce the Secretary Secre-tary of War to the status of a clerk. There is not a fact in the Baker testimony that would not have been confided to these Senators Sena-tors if they had sought it; yet they insisted upon going before the American people with a crooked record calculated to prove that War Department deficiencies, as Mr. Baker expressed it, "were characteristic rather than occasional." " Under the acid test of the Secretary's testimony the Cham-oerlain Cham-oerlain accusations shrivel for the most part to ashes and rubbish. rub-bish. They leave the Senate committee and its chairman in a very unpleasant light before the country, discredited in method and on the defensive as to motive. Nevertheless, there is one lesson that the War Department itself should learn from this unfortunate episode, which is the necessity for fuller war publicity and for taking the American people completely into the confidences of their Government in all matters that are not undebatable military secrets. Everything that Secretary Baker told ought to have been told long ago. There was no valid reason for concealing it. It gave no aid and comfort to the enemy, but on the contrary was proof that the United States was going to war in earnest. Had the War Department kept the American people fully informed, there would have been no occasion for Secretary taker's taking the stand, and such mischievous accusations as Senator Chamberlain Cham-berlain made would have found no believers. The campaign that has been waged by American imperialists and jingoes to overthrow the war administration, discredit the President and take possession of the military machinery of the country had its roots in the Government's own policy of suppression suppres-sion and secrecy in regard to the magnificent and inspiring work that it was carrying on. Had the truth been known to the country, coun-try, this partnership of Politics and Hysteria would have been bankrupt the day it was formed. Only under the cover of censorship censor-ship could such a political conspiracy have been organized. N. Y. World. |