BROOMSTICK APOLOGISTS
October 14, 1917
The chief of the Ordnance Bureau of the army, in commenting on the shortage of rifles, has said that it is of no consequence, because "every soldier will be supplied a rifle when he starts for France."
Of course he will, otherwise he cannot start. One of the leading papers of New York backs up the statement by saying that the "drilling in the camps without rifles is ended now" and that "General Crozier delayed the work so as to get rifles with the same ammunition our allies are using."
Neither statement is correct. The last is the reverse of truth. On October 2 in one camp there were still only one hundred rifles for twenty thousand men and other camps were scarcely better off, and the delay in getting rifles during the last eight months has been due primarily to the refusal of the Ordnance Department to get rifles using the ammunition of our allies.
If during the two years preceding our entry into the war the Government factories had been run full speed, we would have had over two million of Springfield rifles instead of under one million. Our shortage was due solely to our policy of dawdle. Our factories produced a mere dribble of rifles and no big field guns until the inevitable happened.
War came. Having no rifles of our own for the new army, the War Department decided to adopt
