ol, charged with the duty of consolidating requisitions
and purchases. Our efforts to extend the principle have been signally
successful, and all purchases for the Allied armies are now on an
equitable and co-operative basis. Indeed, it may be said that the work
of this bureau has been thoroughly efficient and business-like.

ARTILLERY, AIRPLANES AND TANKS.

Our entry into the war found us with few of the auxiliaries necessary
for its conduct in the modern sense. Among our most important
deficiencies in material were artillery, aviation, and tanks. In order
to meet our requirements as rapidly as possible, we accepted the offer
of the French Government to provide us with the necessary artillery
equipment of seventy-fives, one fifty-five millimeter howitzers, and
one-fifty-five GPF guns from their own factories for thirty divisions.
The wisdom of this course is fully demonstrated by the fact that,
although we soon began the manufacture of these classes of guns at home,
there were no guns of the calibers mentioned manufactured in America on
our front at the date the armistice was signed. The only guns of these
types produced at home thus far received in France are 109 seventy-five
millimeter guns.

In aviation we were in the same situation, and here again the French
Government came to our aid until our own aviation program should be
under way. We obtained from the French the necessary planes for
training our personnel, and they have provided us with a total of 2,676
pursuit, observation, and bombing planes. The first airplanes received
from home arrived in May, and altogether we have received 1,379. The
first American squadron completely equipped by American production,
including airplanes, crossed the German lines on August 7, 1918. As to
tanks, we were also compelled to rely upon the French. Here, however, we
were less fortunate, for the reason that the French production could
barely meet the requirements of their own armies.

OUR OBLIGATIONS TO FRANCE.

It should be fully realized that the French Government has always taken
a most liberal attitude and has been most anxious to give us every
possible assistance in meeting our deficiencies in these as well as in
other respects. Our dependence upon France for artillery, aviation, and
tanks was, of course, due to the fact that our industries had not been
exclusively devoted to military production. All credit is due our own
manufacturers for their efforts to meet our