The response to the call for recruits has been in every way
gratifying. But I am aware, not only from a discussion that took place
in the House yesterday, but from communications which reached us from
various parts of the country, that there are complaints of grievances,
causing legitimate or otherwise deeply felt dissatisfaction at the
manner in which some parts--I say advisedly only some parts--of this
operation of recruiting have been conducted. I should like the
committee to realize what were the conditions of the case. ["Hear,
hear!"]
A Year's Recruits in a Day.
We have been recruiting during the last ten days every day substantially
the same number of recruits that in past years we have recruited in
every year. [Cheers.] I suppose our annual recruiting amounts to about
35,000 men for the regular army. As I pointed out a moment ago, on Sept.
3 we recruited 33,200 men. No machinery in the world which man has ever
contrived or conceived could suddenly meet in an emergency and under
great pressure the difficulty of bringing in to the colors and making
adequate provision in a day for that in which past experience we only
had to provide for in the course of a year, and that, be it observed, by
a department which during the whole of this time has been engaged in
superintending and executing an operation I believe unexampled in the
history of war--the dispatch to a foreign country of an expeditionary
force--I will not give the exact number, but roughly 150,000 men, which
has had to be, as the committee I am sure is well aware, in consequence
of the necessary and regrettable losses caused by the operations of war,
constantly repaired by reinforcements of men, guns, supplies, transport,
and every other form of warlike material.
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