222 .75 guns per month have been constructed since the month
of May, 1915. 227 were constructed in the month of July, 407
in the month of January, 1916. For this construction, as for
all the others, once a start was made, there was no stopping
it.
All orders for heavy guns had been countermanded at the
beginning of August, 1914. They were resumed in the month
of September, 1914. Seventy-five per cent of the orders for
heavy guns, on which we got along until April, 1917, had
been given out between September, 1914, and the thirty-first
of October, 1915. In the first seven months of the war, from
September, 1914, to April, 1915, there were constructed
three hundred and sixty pieces of heavy artillery. On August
first, 1914, we had only sixty-eight batteries. A year
later, to the day, on the first of August, 1915, we had two
hundred and seventy-two batteries of heavy artillery.
Now consider these figures, given out by M. Andre Tardieu, High
Commissioner of the French Republic at Washington, in a letter to the
Hon. Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War:
In the matter of heavy artillery, in August, 1914, we had
only three hundred guns distributed among the various
regiments.
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