ther increments of the National Army, a
second series of camps was authorized, to begin August 27, 1917, under
rules for the selection of candidates and their apportionment throughout
the country which were much more searching and embodied those
improvements which are always possible in the light of experience.
Approximately 20,000 candidates are now attending this second series of
camps, and those found qualified will shortly be commissioned and
absorbed into the Army for the performance of the expanding volume of
duties which the progress of preparation daily brings about. It is to be
remembered that the need for officers exists not only in connection with
the actual training of troops in camp and the leadership of troops in
the field, but a vast number of officers must constantly be employed in
staff duties, and great numbers must as constantly be engaged in
military research and in specialized forms of training associated with
the use of newly developed arms and appliances. In other words, we must
maintain not merely the special-service schools which are required to
perfect the training of officers in the special arms of the service, but
we must constantly experiment with new devices and reduce to practical
use the discoveries of science and the new applications of mechanical
and scientific arts, both for offensive and defensive purposes. It
would be out of place here to enumerate or describe in any detail the
service of science in this war, but when the history of the struggle
comes to be written it will be found that the masters of the chemical
and physical sciences have thrown their talents and their ingenuity into
the service, that their researches have been at the very basis of
military progress, and that the victory rests as much upon a nation's
supremacy in the researches and adaptations of science as it does upon
the number and valor of its soldiers. Indeed, this is but one of the
many evidences of the fact that modern war engages all of the resources
of nations and that that nation will emerge victorious which has most
completely used and coordinated all the intellectual, moral, and
physical forces of its people.

[Sidenote: Fundamentals of military discipline do not change.]

[Sidenote: Professional soldiers still needed.]

It would be a national loss for me to fail to record in this place a
just estimate of the value to the Nation of these training camps for
officers. They disclosed an unsuspected sourc