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THE BILL AUTHORIZING THE PRESIDENT TO INCREASE
TEMPORARILY THE MILITARY ESTABLISH-
MENT OF THE UNITED STATES

APRIL 7, 1917

WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

1917

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INCREASE OF THE MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON MILITARY AFFAIRS,

Washington, D. C., April 7, 1917.

The committee met in executive and confidential session at 10.30 o'clock, a. m., Hon. S. Hubert Dent, jr. (chairman), presiding.

STATEMENT OF HON. NEWTON D. BAKER, SECRETARY OF WAR, ACCOMPANIED BY MAJ. GEN. HUGH L. SCOTT, CHIEF GENERAL STAFF CORPS; BRIG. GEN. ENOCH H. CROWDER, JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL; AND MAJ. DENNIS E. NOLAN, GENERAL STAFF CORPS.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary, the committee is ready to hear any suggestions you have to make.

Secretary BAKER. Mr. Chairman, I have drawn or rather caused to be drawn a bill which has been presented to you in typewritten form and which attempts to do what its title states, to authorize the President to increase temporarily the military establishment of the United States. The President in his message to Congress described the policy which he was going to recommend for an increase of the military forces as contemplating the following projects: The increase of the Regular Army and the National Guard to full strength, the immediate drafting into Federal service of the National Guard, and equalization of the term of enlistment under the Regular Army, National Guard, and whatever additional forces might be provided so as to give no preferential character to any part of the National Army.

In addition to that the President was of the belief that the volunteer spirit and principle ought to be preserved to the extent of authorizing the filling of the Regular Army and the National Guard to full strength by that process, if the process proved sufficient to accomplish that end; but that as to the additional forces to be raised a policy ought to be adopted which, without becoming the beginning of the practice of universal training or service and without committing the Government to a present decision of that problem, was yet so far assimilated to it as to call into the service of the United States for the additional forces a class of young men who would be relatively free from the business and domestic entanglements which have hitherto embarrassed the country in the sudden calling of large forces from the body of the people, and who would be selected by a process which was sufficiently democratic to spread the strain over the entire country, and at the same time have men of varying ages within the maximum limit of those who could be spared from the industrial uses of the country. This bill, therefore, does those

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