THE UNITED STATES INFANTRY ASSOCIATION "The object of the Association shall be to promote the efficiency of the Infantry arm of the military service of our country by maintaining its best standards and traditions, by fostering esprit de corps, by the dissemination of professional knowledge, and by exchange of ideas as to the utilization of such knowledge with particular reference to the rôle of Infantry in mɔdern war."-Article III of the Constitution. OFFICERS President: MAJOR GENERAL CHAS. S. FARNSWORTH, U. S. Army. Vice-President: Brigadier GenERAL HANSON E. ELY, U. S. Army. Secretary: LIEUTENANT COLONEL WILLIAM H. WALDRON, Infantry. Additional Members of Executive Council: BRIGADIER GENERAL PAUL B. MALONE. BRIGADIER GENERAL JOHN MCA. PALMER. BRIGADIER GENERAL BRIANT H. WELLS. BRIGADIER GENERAL HUGH A. DRUM. COLONEL MERCH B. STEWART, Infantry. LIEUTENANT COLONEL WM. H. WALDRON, Infantry. MAJOR EVAN E. LEWIS, Infantry. CONDITIONS OF MEMBERSHIP All commissioned officers in good standing, or former commissioned officers of honorable record of the regular or volunteer military or naval service, including Reserve Corps, and of the National Guard are eligible for regular or associate membership in the Association. Membership dates from the first of the month following the date of election. Dues are $1.00 annually, payable in advance. Members may obtain the INFANTRY JOURNAL for $2.00 per year. The Infantry Association is not responsible for opinions expressed in published contributions. All communications should be addressed to the Secretary, the United States Infantry Association, Room 508 Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C. Cable address: Infantry, Washington. Fine Stationery All Gone Except about one hun dred boxes of sizes most suitable for ladies' use. The first to come were the first served and the men's sizes of paper were the first to go. White paper only now remains, though there are various styles of envelope flaps, square, round and pointed. Standard 5-quire boxes with 100 envelopes. All paper is first quality in double boxes, but we cannot bother to move it to our new building. The balance of this fine stationery is to go at a flat price of $3.00 a box or, say, $5.00 for two boxes. A real bargain for personal use, and fine to put aside for a Christmas present. How many boxes? United States Infantry Association Washington, D. C. INFANTRY JOURNAL Vol. XXIII OCTOBER, 1923 No. 4 Get It to the Press! Capt. Elbridge Colby, Infantry VERY large proportion of the printed matter which relates to the Army appears in the service journals, where it is read by military men. The material carried in the columns of the newspapers and periodicals is of entirely too slight a volume to advertise the activities to the Army to the country, and entirely of too special a character. The typical lack of information as to what the Army is actually doing today, and how hard the Army is working, meets us every time we join hands and pass words of greeting with the friends we have retained among the civilians. It has at no time been so strikingly exemplified than in the recent pronouncement attributed to Mr. Ford when, suggesting the use of soldiers to enforce prohibition, he is supposed to have added that the Army is merely idling away its time at useless drills, and endeavoring to maintain social relations at isolated posts. You know, and I know that the Army is doing more than this. How, then, to tell the public about it? If we tell of training schedules and drill progress, we are not telling anything of sufficiently striking character to be "news" imperatively demanding the O. K. of the city editor or the managing editor. We must speak of the personal details that seem somehow or other always to avoid the blue pencil. We must set forth novel and striking data that attracts the attention of the ordinary human. Furthermore, we must do this ourselves. Let me illustrate. Ex-Lieutenant W. (we will say) enlisted as a private after his separation from the commissioned ranks. He now attains a corporal's warrant and grade. Where does he come from? It happens that he comes from a town in Texas. So, one live officer in charge of publicity sends an item to this effect to the newspapers of the new noncommissioned officer's home town. Does it get into print? Of course, and by so doing it shows something of the caliber of the present Army. It may not have been a new warrant. It may have been merely a change of station and a new and agreeable detail, sending a good soldier as a student to one of the service schools for enlisted. specialists, or perhaps to Fort Niagara or Camp Perry to participate in the National Matches. Every such order. as this is an opportunity to get the Army into the papers in the right way, an opportunity to explain something about the Army in order to explain the detail. Even if the item never gets into print, it still does some good. It informs an editor. And we must never forget that editors exercise a potent influence over the information and viewpoints of their subscribers. With the press behind the Army, our power is increased— in peace as well as in war. Let me illustrate again. The Panama Canal has been running along blithely for several years doing a good commercial business. The Army has been shooting with the old Springfield on target ranges and shattering innumerable bulls' eyes and silhouette figures. The Panama Canal of late breaks into print monthly, if not fortnightly, with some new record established for tolls collected, ships transmitted, or something of the sort. Companies and battalions and regiments have of late been smashing marksmanship records one after the other. The achievements of the Canal are sent far and wide by the Associated Press. The shooting attainments of the doughboy outfits have appeared almost solely in service journals. There is no reason why our record breaking should not get publicity too, and all the better publicity if only the man who gives the news out takes care to add the home address of each member of a winning team, the home address of the high score men in a record breaking company, or the home address of the officers who trained the unit to such a state of efficiency with the Army ordnance at hand. The third necessity is that this data must be disseminated by the Army itself. Not only by the War Department, and by Corps Areas, but by local officers on the spot. A centralized bureau could never hope to handle such a situation adequately. Its releases on such subjects would be suspected of being propaganda. To look up in a central bureau the name and address and pertinent personal histories and to have these up to date-would entail an overhead that would be absolutely prohibitive. It must be done locally. It must be done at every camp and post where troops are stationed. For the benefit of the Army as a whole, the additional work would be justified. It would also be justified for its benefit to the morale of the local unit, for pride in his professional attainments, pride that they are recognized by his comrades in arms, and pride that they are known to civilians as well, as proper characteristics of a true military man. One further method of bringing the Army achievements and labors before the people of the country must not be forgotten. There are new quirks in personnel administration which are known principally in "military channels." There are new methods in teaching physical training developed and used in the Army of which civilians know little or nothing. There are details of mess management, of post exchange merchandising, of maintaining morale, of which the citizens of the country are now ignorant. These things can be embodied in brief |