When we entered the war we had practically no surplus clothing for our army, our reserve supply having been used up in the Mexican expedition. Our allies were using practically the full output of all of our mills capable of producing cloth of the character used for uniforms. To take over these factories would have discommoded our allies. We met the difficulty by a change of the machinery in carpet factories, ducking mills, and kindred industries, and have been able to, during the last year, make Summer and Winter clothing enough for 2,000,000 men, and have a reserve supply of every article of wear for our soldiers sufficient to take care of the authorized increase. TRAINING AND EQUIPMENT England trained her first million a whole year in citizens' clothes and top hats, with walking sticks for guns, because she could not do otherwise, and this in spite of the fact that she was the greatest textile manufacturing country in the world and had all America to help her. Notwithstanding this shortage, our first 1,500,000 men were trained in uniforms and taught the manual of arms with a rifle. When England went into the war she had shortly before adopted a new type of gun, but her factories were not equipped to supply it. She abandoned her new type of gun, and has fought the war thus far with an admittedly inferior type of rifle, a large portion of which were made on order in the United States. There went up a hue and cry that America adopt a foreign type of rifle, notwithstanding the facts that the rifle is the most necessary weapon of warfare, and we had the Springfield rifle in substantial quantity, admittedly the best rifle then being used in the world, shooting the most powerful and efficient ammunition ever prepared. In the face of this criticism, we adhered to our own weapon, adopting a modified and rechambered Enfield, which differs from a Springfield in such a small way that it is not worthy of discussion, now known as the United States rifle, model of 1917, resulting in some delay but now being produced in sufficient quantity. When General Joffre made the request for a small expeditionary force, the critics of the Administration demanded what they thought was the impossible--i.e., that we ship to France during the first year 50,000 to 100,000 men. During the first ten days of May we shipped 90,000. Within one year after the first shipment America will have an army of 1,000,000 men in France, with their necessary arms, equipment, and supplies. It will be the best-fed, the best-clothed, the best-paid army of its size that the world has ever known, speaking the same language, worshipping the same God, and following the same flag. Its personnel will have the quickest perceptions of any soldiers in the world, and will have been trained under modern conditions, surrounded by the best moral influences, with the lowest percentage of disease, and will be nerved by the highest motives that actuate men.