Two Months Needed To Return Militia

1916

LACK OF CARS WILL BE PROBLEM FOR WAR DEPARTMENT.

"How Long Are We Here For?" Is Still the Question at Border Camps —All Troops to See Service.

WASHINGTON, D. C. — If an order should come now for the withdrawal of all the National Guard regiments from the Mexican border it would take two months to return them to their home stations, and perhaps longer, according to military authorities here and at the border camps.

The War Department will face a genuine problem in the lack of available rolling stock to transport the troops to their destinations. Even in sending 15,000 of the Guardsmen home during the last two weeks there was much difficulty and delay.

Border Service for All.

There is no definite answer yet to the off-repeated question in the camps on the border, "How long are we here for?" Secretary Baker favors giving all the State troops a chance for the training to be acquired on the border line and it is said that the Guardsmen who are still in State camps will be sent to the border to relieve men now serving there.

In response to requests from Illinois, Secretary Baker is reported to have given assurance that the Illinois militiamen will be back home by Nov. 1, their places, if necessary, to be filled by Guardsmen from other States who have not yet seen border service. Senator Lewis of Illinois made an urgent appeal for relief of the Illinois Guardsmen from service so that the men could resume their business and the youths be sent back to schools and colleges. The Illinois regiments have been on the border four months.

15,000 Mustered Out.

The 15,000 Guardsmen returned from the border by the recent order of the War Department have been ordered mustered out of the Federal service. The order affects three New York regiments, two from New Jersey, two from Illinois, two from Missouri and one each from California, Oregon, Washington and Louisiana, and twenty-eight companies of coast artillery troops, most of them being from the Atlantic coast.

—The Saturday Blade, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 3.