UPON THE prompt and efficient supply of the sinews of war depends the success of any major effort of the fighting forces of our country. It is not enough to have the required quantities of material, food, and equipment at certain designated points at the proper time, but the articles must necessarily conform to or surpass governmental specifications. To perform this huge task successfully, the proper groundwork must be laid in peace time, as the pressure of work of all kinds multiplies amazingly after the day of mobilization. Never in our history have we been less equal to the required expansion of our military and naval departments, in terms of office space in Washington. The great number of new governmental agencies established by the present administration has eaten up all the available million square feet of governmental owned space and has resulted in the renting (or acquisition by other means) of every available office building, hotel, and even private residence to the tune of over one million square feet of space. The ghastly disorganization incident to rapid expansion of bureaus and branches of the military and naval establishment at the beginning of our participation in the World War is still fresh in the minds of those who waded through the mazes of that labyrinth. The writer, who was ordered to Washington in May, 1917, to the Army Ordnance Department, had his office changed seven times in three months, and some of the changes involved the distance of a mile or more. The lost time and effort, both on the part of the personnel involved and the contractors and civilians trying to locate these elusive offices, was incalculable. No directory could be published for months and even then it was quite obsolete. To obviate a repetition of this wastefulness, prompt measures should be taken and the following remedies are suggested:
(1) Expedite the building of the new Navy and Army Buildings as designed, with some additional space planned to take care of war-time expansion (to be built as temporary buildings, in an emergency).
(2) Renovate and improve the present buildings on Constitution Avenue (now used by the Navy and Army) and expand the facilities of the Army Industrial College (which is primarily a war planning institution) making it as large and important as the two War Colleges. Locate all war planning branches of the military services in these buildings and allocate sufficient space to take care of war expansion for those branches which will require it, basing the amount on previous war experience, with a generous allowance for new needs.
(3) Institute in the other departments of the government, especially Commerce, Interior, Labor, and Treasury, a system of dual efficiency modeled on the old world regimes—every civil servant having two functions, his own peace-time work and an allocation for mobilization (in which he is trained), so that his desk becomes automatically a part of a great War Industries Board at a given signal, and around him as a nucleus, the various ramifications of this huge organization can be built, as his peace-time functions are either relinquished or transferred to other departments.
The writer has made a survey of the available space in the magnificent Commerce Building and has prepared an allocation based on the previous war-time experience of the War Industries Board and General Purchasing Agent’s Department. By transferring those peace-time functions of the Commerce Department to other bureaus and by consolidating the war-time functions into carefully planned space (with a third more space than was used in 1917-18) this great building would house this important centralized brain center of our industrial war activities. The plea for greater decentralization than ever before is heard insistently and the next major effort (if it materializes) will surely see great strides in that direction, but a co-ordinating agency for priorities, transportation, and labor allotments and the vast amount of planning that must be done in advance of actual manufacture and supply is, and always will be, of prime importance to smooth-running efficiency. Time is a prime element in war preparations and perhaps we shall not be able to arm and supply our fighting forces in utter safety as we were lucky enough to be able to do during the World War, for aviation has made such strides since then. Bis dat qui cito dal is as true a maxim in war as it is in charitable giving and if you can deliver well-directed blows quickly, they are doubly effective. It may seem that undue importance is being laid on proper office space and equipment, but no one who went through the agonies of inefficiency during the summer of 1917 in Washington will minimize the danger of unpreparedness in this quarter.
The high standard of efficiency of the Navy’s branches of supply and the necessary time allowance for building new ships (as against the more rapid expansion of the Army) seem to make it less important for this branch of the service to immediately require large extra allocations. There are, however, certain divisions of the Navy Department which would require instant enlargement on Mobilization
Day if they are to efficiently conduct war operations on a large scale. The great scarcity of proper housing conditions for such an emergency might be taken care of by the probable immediate cessation of activities in many of the new “alphabetical” appendages of the government, thus releasing much needed office space properly equipped for instant use with telephones, typewriters, etc., but the writer doubts whether this could be done without much confusion in less than a month’s time after the necessary orders had been issued. That that month is of prime importance is not to be debated, and every precious day lost would be a national calamity. The best laid plans and the most careful tuning up of our great industrial machine would be nullified, if the coordinating system were incapable of functioning through lack of proper facilities. Our country has always been noted for its inventiveness and for the great ease with which it has adapted itself to varying conditions, both in peace and war, but no magician can pull this rabbit out of the hat, as buildings take long to build (even hastily constructed temporary ones) and overcrowding, moving, and a constantly changing personnel do not make for efficiency, even in great emergencies where ordinary means and methods have, of necessity, to be radically altered and every expedient utilized.
The Archduke Charles writes: “A man can become a great Captain only with a passion for study and long experience. There is not enough in what one has seen oneself, for what life of a man is fruitful enough in events to give a universal experience, and who is the man that can have the opportunity of first practising the difficult art of the General before having filled that important office? It is, then, by increasing one’s own knowledge with the information of others, by weighing the conclusions of one’s predecessors, and by taking as a term of comparison the military exploits, and the events with great results, which the history of war gives us, that one can become skilful therein.”