The problem has been to achieve a design that, while wholly meeting military requirements has yet an economic commercial value. The solution has now been found and the time has there fore come when the operations of armies can be carried out at a far greater speed than heretofore. For, like that of a fleet, the speed of an army is that of its slowest component unit, which up to now has been the legs of the infantry soldier. If action is quicker, then thinking must be quicker also. This involves a still closer co-operation and unity between those directing operations and those on whom the services of maintenance fall.
These conditions have in their turn produced their own special problems. The provision of the necessary skilled personnel to carry out these duties is likely to be a matter of grave difficulty in the future because the advent of "mass production" methods do not demand more than a comparatively low proportion of skilled mechanics and artificers among the employees of the great auto mobile engineering firms. The main processes of construction and assembly have been so simplified that they can be carried out by workmen not possessing any specialized training. Such a type of labour will be very far from satisfying war requirements, and for a "major" war any technical personnel possessed by the army will require to be supplemented from civilian sources.
There remains to recall the question of petrol supply. The storage and transport of this commodity, which is in fact the life-blood of the modern army, present special circumstances and difficulties to be overcome. With animal transport, possibilities normally exist for obtaining some measure of foodstuffs within the theatre of operations, while over limited periods animals can perform their duties on short rations or even at need occasionally on their own reserves of strength. No such conditions obtain with motor vehicles. Without petrol they cannot move at all. Should the supply fail for one day there can be no movement that day. The revolution of road transport by mechanization has in fact made "fuel supply" one of the most important questions.
The development of supply and transport in the U.S. army has followed that of war itself and the progress in rapid com munication. We shall here consider only the evolution of this technique since 1917.
At the start of the World War the War Department found itself insufficiently organized for handling the great problems of supply and transport brought about by the enormous expansion of a small regular army into a national army of unexpected pro portions. As a consequence, there came into being the super agencies for war-time procurement, allocation, distribution and transport. The War Department itself supplemented the assist ance of these superagencies by forming the purchase, storage and traffic division of the general staff, and by making its head the representative of the secretary of war in most matters before the various supercontrol agencies of the Government. This arrangement permitted an efficiency that would probably have been impossible otherwise. As the war went on it became neces sary to form an air service, a motor transport corps, a construc tion corps, an embarkation service and other agencies, and to greatly increase the port and transport facilities of the quarter master corps army transport service.
On the staff of Gen. Pershing was the assistant chief of staff, G-4, who co-ordinated the work of the supply departments at the general headquarters. These supply departments were : the quartermaster corps, the engineer corps, the signal corps, the motor transport corps, the transportation corps, the ordnance department, the air service, the medical corps, the chemical war fare service. In Feb. 1918, the line of communications was reor ganized under the name of the services of supply with its single co-ordinating head, the commanding general, services of supply, with a general staff paralleling, in so far as necessary, the staff of Gen. Pershing. The principal functions of the services of supply were the procurement, storage and transportation of sup plies, as well as the great construction projects necessary for the large force overseas. Even the control and transportation of replacements of men, as well as animals, were placed under the jurisdiction of the services of supply, which had control of the nine base ports. Similarly, an intermediate section, and an ad vance section close to the army zone, were organized. Within the advance section were organized advance depots and railway regulating stations.