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Show MILLION 'MS TO BE MINED Secretary Urges Immediate Enactment En-actment of Staff Bill Including In-cluding Conscription. DRAFTING ESSENTIAL Plenty of Small Arms Immediately Immedi-ately Available for One Million Men. WASHINGTON, April 9. Secretary Baker told the house military committee commit-tee in confidence today tho plans of his department for training a million men during the next year. He urged immediate enactment of tho general staff bill, including tho selectivo conscription con-scription provisions, recommending just ono change in tho bill as mado public yesterday. That was to provide pro-vide for the organization of technical units, Including automobile and aerial engineers, signal men, etc. This suggested sug-gested addition to the bill reads: "The president is authorized to raise and maintain, by volunteer enlistment or draft, as herein provided, special and technical troops as ho may deem necessary and embody them into organization or-ganization and to officor them as provided pro-vided in the third paragraph of section sec-tion one and section eight of this act." Chairman Dent of tho committee, with Representative Kahn of California, Califor-nia, ranking Republican member of the committee present, made this statement: "I cannot say yet what the attitude of the committee will be regarding the selective conscription question, as the committee is not yet familiar with the bill and I could only judge by the questions asked tho secretary. Draft System Essential. "Secretary Baker is convinced that the draft system is absolutely essential essen-tial and that tho voluntary system would not work adequately. The argument ar-gument that has been mado all along, is, of course, that under a draft system sys-tem everybody would bo treated alike and that it would not be the case under un-der the voluntary system. "Under tho present laws tho ages for eligibility to enlistment aro from 18 to 35 in the regular army and IS to 45 in the national guard, and the new bill changes this to make it 18 to 40 in both cases." Secretary Baker told the committee there are enough small arms to equip the first 1,000,000 men; that within fourteen or eighteen months most of the heavy ordnance necessary would be available and that within two years there would be sufficient equipment to put 2,000,000 men on a completo fighting basis. Seven Million Men. He said there were 7,000,000 men in the country between tho ages of 19 and 25, of which he estimated 4,000,-000 4,000,-000 were available for service after eliminating those in factories or in arts and sciences, where they perform work necessary for preparation of the country for the war andBthe men who have dependents or military defects. Secretary Baker opposed a suggestion sugges-tion that there be written into the bill a provision that the president might fill up the ranks of the national guard by draft only after the voluntary system sys-tem failed. nn |