The three years of fighting in Europe before the United States was drawn in had demonstrated the highly important place which the machine gun held in modern tactics. Because of the danger of our position we had investigated many phases of armed preparedness, and in this investigation numerous questions had arisen regarding machine guns. The Secretary of War had appointed a board of five Army officers and two civilians to study the machine-gun subject, to recommend the types of guns to be adopted, the number of guns we should have per unit of troops, how these guns should be transported, and other matters pertaining to the subject. Six months before we declared war this board submitted a report strongly recommending the previously adopted Vickers machine gun and the immediate procurement of 4,600 of them. In December, 1916, the War Department acted on this report by contracting for 4,000 Vickers machine guns from the Colt Co. in addition to 125 previously ordered. The Vickers gun belongs to what is known as the heavy type of machine gun. The board found that the tests it had witnessed did not then warrant the adoption of a light-type machine gun, although the Lewis gun of the intermediate type was then being manufactured in this country. The board, however, recommended that we conduct further competitive tests of machine guns at the Springfield Armory, in Massachusetts, these tests to begin May 1, 1917, the interval being given to permit inventors and manufacturers to prepare equipment for the competition. The war came to us before these tests were made. On the 6th day of April, 1917, our equipment included 670 Benét-Mercié machine rifles, 282 Maxim machine guns of the 1904 model, 353 Lewis machine guns, and 148 Colt machine guns. The Lewis guns, however, were chambered for the .303 British ammunition and would not take our service cartridges.