Here, then, was at hand a huge capacity which, added to our Government arsenals, could turn out every rifle the American Army would require, regardless of how many troops we were to put in the field. But what of the gun that these plants were making--the British Enfield rifle? As soon as war became a certainty for us the Ordnance Department sent its best rifle experts to these private plants to study the British Enfield in detail. They returned to headquarters without enthusiasm for it; in fact, regarding it as a weapon not good enough for an American soldier. A glance at the history of the British Enfield will make clear some of our objections to it. Until the advent of the 1903 Springfield, the German Mauser had occupied the summit of military-rifle supremacy. From 1903 until the advent of the great war these two rifles, the Mauser and the Springfield, were easily the two leaders. The British Army had been equipped with the Lee-Enfield for some years prior to the outbreak of the great war, but the British ordnance authorities had been making vigorous efforts to improve this weapon. The Enfield was at a disadvantage principally in its ammunition. It fired a .303-caliber cartridge with a rimmed head. From a ballistic standpoint this cartridge was virtually obsolete. In 1914 a new, improved Enfield, known as the Pattern '14, was brought out in England, and the British Government was on the point of adopting it when the great war broke out. This was to be a gun of .276 caliber and was to shoot rimless, or cannelured, cartridges similar to the standard United States ammunition. The war threw the whole British improved Enfield project on the scrap heap. England was no more equipped to build the improved Enfields than we were to produce Springfields in our private plants. The British arsenals and industrial plants and her ammunition factories were equipped to turn out in the quantities demanded by the war only the old "short Enfield" and its antiquated .303 rimmed cartridges. Now England was obliged to turn to outside sources for an additional rifle supply, and in the United States she found the three firms named above willing to undertake large rifle contracts. Having to build up factory equipment anew in the United States for this work, England found that she might as well have the American plants manufacture the improved Enfield as the older type. To produce the 1914 Enfield without change in America and the older-type Enfield in England would complicate the British rifle-ammunition manufacture, since these rifles used cartridges of different sizes and types. Accordingly, the British selected the improved Enfield for the American manufacture, but modified it to receive the .303 rimmed cartridges.