COAST. I ARTILLERY JOURNAL, - Air Defense Artillery

484 THE COAST ARTILLERY JOURNAL
General Girot, the chairman of the military commission in the chamber of
deputies gives expression to some of these difficulties when he says that it has
been impossible for him to bring the most important proposed military laws up
for fair discussion and disposition when there came up a new war minister in
every fortnight; that to reach a conclusion regarding laws for the government of
the army and contentment to the officers and noncommissioned officers demands
repose and stability; that the army, which was apparently a very simple organization
was, in reality, made up of thousands of details not one of which could be
neglected or overlooked. How could progress be expected when there came into
office every month a new minister with his own plans who knew nothing of the
projects of his predecessor? Girot says he has received the project of General
Nolet and then the first project of Painleve, then the project of Daladier, again
the second project of Painleve. All of them contain something that is good, but
where there came tomorrow the project "X" and on the day after tomorrow the
project "Y" and so on, it was impossible to know what to do with all the
stuff. Should the army commission go ahead on its own hook without consulting
the general staff or the war minister for the time being? But the army is entitled
to have its condition clearly set forth and its demands seriously considered.
Continual change of ministry, the writer contends, is not a manifestation of
modern conditions but a development of the parliamentary system. There were
forty-one changes of ministry from the time when Gambetta was relieved in 1871
up to 1913. There were frequently three or four changes in a single year.
General Girot's predecessor as chairman of the army commission, Lieut.
Colonel Fabry, mentions a number of the special worries that are oppressing the
French Army. First comes the energetic assertion that the army is going to perdition
because the statement that France's security was founded on its armed
forces was not sufficient, since one must not forget that those forces must also
have arms. That the army needs above all and at once a law regulating cadres
and their effective strength, if the use of an instrument available to unscrupulous
hands for disaffection and violence is to be avoided.
Officers in the United States Army who are on active duty with skeleton
organizations and units of troops will readily sympathize with Colonel Fabry in
his survey of existing conditions of the French Army when he brings out facts
due in part to attempts to keep up an establishment of thirty-two active divisions
notwithstanding the demands made upon the home forces for colonial service
(Morocco, Syria) and occupational troops in Germany. In every French regiment,
he says, "the bare bones protrude through the skin" rendering proficient training
impossible. Infantry regiments of ostensibly 1776 men have 564; artillery
regiments of 705 men have 246; a cavalry regiment of 764 men has actually 205;
and in the tank regiment of 750 men there are 254." Additional mournful dirges
are heard not only from thll utterances of Colonel Fabry but from many other
sources, in regard to the disagreeable living conditions of officers and noncommissioned
officers and their families, where compensations are inadequate to
provide for decent quarters and subsistence. The families of many married noncommissioned
officers are quartered in barracks with only a thin door partition
between them and the men's barrack rooms.
Excerpts from the French press, taken at large, indicate much interest in
proposed measures for reorganization of the French Army throughout the country.
It is, however, remarkable that nothing is being said by the press, as far as is
known, about reduction of armaments in connection with any proposed changes
of organizations.