Salt Lake Tribune | 1913-02-04 | Page 6 | Reorganizing the Army

REORGANIZING THE ARMY. We are glad to sec that President Taffc is taking stops, iu accordance with tho recommendations of General Wood, to make the army of the United States in fact an army. The plan outlined out-lined in tho dispatches of yosterday morning contemplates not only tho assembling as-sembling togother of the scattered fragments of the regiments, but of got-ting got-ting tho regiments into actual brigades, bri-gades, and tho brigades into divisions; all this being in accord with the best ideas of military science. Indoed, so far as tho army of the United States is concerned, it has been right along a mere jumble of scattered fragments, incoherent, in-coherent, impossible to utilize in any real military movement, and useful only for tho commercial advantage of having army posts at one placo or another an-other in the country. Under this organization of tho army ns in ttru1 plan rofcrrod to, there will be four divisional departments: Eastern, Central, Western, and Southern. South-ern. Tho headquarters will be at Governor's Gov-ernor's Island, "Chicago, San Francisco, and San Antonio; and the troops will be assembled for the most part in tho geographical divisions as indicated. This does not. necessarily mean the abandonment of any of tho military posts, particularly such a post as Fort Douglas, which will unquestionably be needed because of its sanitary advantages advan-tages and the convenience of access and of distributing forces from there to any point in the cast, west, north or south. As we have said heretofore in considering con-sidering this plan of concentrating tho army, and making a real military force of it, tho chief defect in it is in not providing specifically for reserve posts such ns Fort Douglas. Tt ia not well to have the army all on the exterior lines; there should be reserves, and the reserve posts should be situated as Fort Douglas is. with a viow to the cas.y concentration aud use of troops at any point where they may bo ncedod. Tho great merit of tho order, however, how-ever, is that, for the first tinio since the Civil War, it undertakes to introduce intro-duce into the army a real military spirit and. a real military effectiveness.