the sum necessary; that is to say, they include both the estimates which are before you and the appropriations that have already been made, so to get the sum to be appropriated now we would have to subtract the appropriations already made. I have subtracted $25,000,000, leaving $206,573,280. It looks as though another million dollars ought to be subtracted, so that would leave $205,600,000, because there was $26,000,000 and not $25,000,000 appropriated for this purpose this spring. I can sum that up a little more generally in this wayThe CHAIRMAN (interposing). Will you also state whether you expect to spend all of that money in this fiscal year?

Gen. CROZIER. That all ought to be made available for this fisca year, yes; because it would then be doing work which must be done in this fiscal year; it would be getting material which must be gotten in this fiscal year for use in the next fiscal year.

Mr. SHERLEY. You do not expect to pay out that much money, do you?

Gen. CROZIER. Let me give a general summary here, because it will come right after what I have just said. Summarizing the appropriation which is needed for this purpose, with the exception of that for the guns themselves, it is $205,823,280, and for the guns themselves $25,750,000. Now, from the sum of these two, subtracting $26,000,000, which is the amount already appropriated, would leave $205,600,000. With reference to the last question as to whether all of that money could be expended in the next fiscal year or whether any of it could be a contract authorization, I will say that $50,000,000 could safely be made contract authorization. You will understand that there is a very continual wastage of cannon in campaigns due to the firing, which calls for not the replacement of the complete cannon but either the relining of it or the replacement of the interior tube. For the smaller cannon the repair is usually effected by just taking out the interior tube and putting in another one, because it is too thin to be relined. This is estimated at a certain rate for each class of gun. As you have heard stated before to-day, it is estimated that each 3-inch gun, or a gun of about that size, will fire on an average 50 rounds per day, and we estimate that each 3-inch gun will be good for at least 10.000 rounds; at the rate of 50 rounds a day each 3-inch gun may have to have its inner tube replaced every 100 days, and so on for the different guns.

SUBMARINE MINES AND NETS.

The CHAIRMAN. The next item is "For purchase of submarine mines and nets and necessary appliances to operate them for closing the channels leading to our principal seaports, and for continuing torpedo experiments, $700,000." You have had about $3,000,000. Is that your item?

Gen. CROZIER. No; I will let the Chief of Artillery defend that item.

ADDITIONAL PROVING GROUNDS, INCLUDING NECESSARY BUILDINGS, EQUIPMENT, AND LAND-KENT ISLAND, MD. (See p. 847.)

Mr. SHERLEY. At the bottom of page 37 there is this item: "Proving ground: For increasing facilities for the proof and test of ordnance material, $3,000,000." There was an appropriation of $1,500,

000 made in the sundry civil appropriation bill for additional proving-ground facilities. Will you please explain the need of this particular money?

Gen. CROZIER. I should like to say first, Mr. Sherley, that I think the item should include the wording "including the necessary buildings, equipment, and land."

As you say, we had an appropriation some time ago of $1,500,000 for a proving ground, which was intended for the purchase and equipment of a new proving ground in the West, and we are in process of purchasig the land it was intended for, which is in the neighborhood of the Rock Island Arsenal. It was designed to use that ground for such ammunition as should be maufactured at that arsenal and in the vicinity and for the proof and test of such artillery as should be manufactured at the Rock Island Arsenal. It is highly necessary for its purpose, just as necessary as it ever was, and will be acquired and used for that purpose.

Mr. SHERLEY. Have you secured it yet?

Gen. CROZIER. We are in process of getting it.
Mr. SHERLEY. Have you secured the land?

Gen. CROZIER. No, sir. There was a law which we were placing hopes upon which was under consideration by Congress something over a month ago, authorizing us under such circumstances to proceed with the occupation of such land for this kind of a purpose without waiting for an opinion from the Attorney General on the title, without waiting for the condemnation of such portion as could not be purchased without condemnation, and without waiting the cession of jurisdiction by the legislature of the State. When that act, however, emerged from conference the words "or other military purposes" which would have included this kind of purpose and which were in the act, were found to have been omitted. Therefore, that act is not useful to us for the purpose of accelerating the acquisition of this land, for which I am very sorry. We will get it; it is optioned, most of it, so much of it that I think the price of that which will have to be condemned will be easily determined, but we will have to go through the slow processes of securing an opinion from the Attorney General on the title and going through certain other formalities before we can make use of the land. All of the arrangements, however, in regard to optioning, fixing the prices, and securing the full extent of land that we need, which I indicated to you as having been made, are still as promising as they were at that time. We hope to get all the land we want and to get it without any great delay, except the delays I have been speaking of, and at the reasonable price that I anticipated.

Mr. CANNON. It seems to me in order to get title to the whole proving ground, if there are a lot of minor heirs, as you thought there were, that it will probably take you a year to do it, especially if you are going to get a grant from the State. It seems to me you ought to have the words " and for cther military purposes" put in the act, or in effect that.

Gen. CROZIER. I think if the terms of the act which I was just speaking of, which is short, would be written into this appropriation. it would be a very good thing.

Mr. CANNON. It seems to me that if you need to have any proving ground within the next 12 months that it is an absolute necessity?

Gen. CROZIER. Which we certainly shall need.

To proceed with my general statement: When this appropriation for the proving ground in the vicinity of the Rock Island Arsenal was estimated for and urged and made it was intended and explained that it was to be needed in addition to the proving ground which we have at Sandy Hook, which explanation is still just as good as it ever was. However, a new fact, which has been in the background of our knowledge for a great many years and which has become so prominent since we entered into this war as to press very hard on us, is the fact that Sandy Hook does not afford a satisfactory proving ground for anything like the amount of work which has, by the war, been thrown upon an eastern proving ground. The East being the portion of the country from which the greater portion, by far, of our artillery and our artillery ammunition must come we will have to prove a great many guns on the proving ground, and particularly we will have to test billions of pounds of ammunition. That is to say, we will have to test samples of ammunition representing billions of pounds.

The firing and other testing at the proving ground involve, particularly for material for the coast defenses, firing over water, and we should have one proving ground where we can fire freely over the water. That we have been doing heretofore and contemplate continuing to do at the Sandy Hook proving grounds. There are great difficulties about firing over the water at Sandy Hook. There have always been these difficulties, but they have not been so disturbing in the past, both because we have not had to do so much as we have to do now and because the shipping in the vicinity of Sandy Hook has not been as great as it is now, and increasing all the while. Sandy Hook, like most places on the northern Atlantic coast, is rather subject to fog and the ocean is rather subject to low-lying haze, even when it does not amount to what is ordinarily called fog, so that the distance at which one can see is limited. If there is fog, it is apt to be very limited indeed. If there is this haze, it may be limited only at certain rather long distances, which heretofore we have not considered much, but one of the most striking new developments has been the increase of range at which we fire over the sea from naval vessels or from seacoast artillery. Of course, it is entirely unsafe to fire a projectile over the water which is used by people in boats or ships, unless you can see that projectile into the water to stay. If you can not see that projectile into the water, either on the first fall or its last ricochet, it is dangerous to fire because you do not know what you may hit. Those facts, the increased amount of firing over the sea, the increased amount of shipping, and the greater distance at which we have to fire, making a haze troublesome, which was not troublesome before, all accentuate the difficulties when we fire at Sandy Hook.

Now, we come to firing that does not have to be done over the water and which, generally speaking, had better not be done over the water. That is the firing, first, for experients and then continuously for testing of the field artillery ammunition which is not designed primarily for firing over the water, but for firing over the land. The range at which the field artillery is used have been increased since the commencement of this war. At Sandy Hook we have a limited range. The useful range at which we can fire over the land

at Sandy Hook is about 6,500 yards and the width of it is about 500 yards. The width of it as well as the length is important, because many kinds of ammunition there are tested in this way. The most important kind of which the rounds are very numerous is that involving the use of the high explosive shell. That is the shell charged with a bursting charge of one of the explosives which is more powerful than ordinary powder. The fragments from this high explosive shell are apt to fly a long distance, moreover, in firing over land in testing ammunition oftentimes you have to fire at a low angle so as to test the bursting of the fuse with the grade of the land, and when you fire at a low angle the projectile is apt to ricochet and when it does ricochet it is apt to deviate to one side or the other. Therefore, if you have a narrow strip of land or particularly if you have people on the side, you do not know whether your shell may ricochet among them. Those two elements, only a 6,500 yard range and only a 500 yard width at Sandy Hook makes that an inadequate and dangerous proving ground for this kind of work. Only 300 yards would be safe, but what limits it to that and interferes with the safety is the fact, which has become prominent in increasing degree, is that Sandy Hook is becoming an inhabited region.

There is at Sandy Hook not only the proving ground of the Ordnance Department, which has been there a great many years, but also one of the fortifications of the seacoast defenses and the corresponding Artillery garrison for manning those fortifications. These fortifications have been increased in number of guns recently and the Artillery for manning them has been increased. Accompanying that increase of Artillery garrison and the increased importance of these fortifications there are being put along the strip at Sandy Hook, parallel to our range and in some cases occupying parts of our range, observing stations to be used in target practice, searchlight stations to be used in illuminating the water, and wireless-telegraph stations to be used in connection with the coast work generally; and the garrison not only of the Sandy Hook Artillery post, but also the neighboring posts finding Sandy Hook the most convenient place for their small-arms practice, practice along the range and troops come from other places and practice along the range. So the use of the high-explosive missile has become so dangerous that everybody's heart is in his mouth all the time, and if kept up to the very greatly increased extent which may be carried on in providing for this war, it is only a matter of time, and. perhaps, of a short time, when somebody is going to be hurt or killed, and possibly more than one. We have more than once dropped fragments of projectiles right in the garrison post at Sandy Hook. It is practically a necessity, if one wants to escape from the possibility of wantonly endangering life, to get away from Sandy Hook. The CHAIRMAN. At the last session when you were asking for money for improvements there and in connection with the acquisition of a new proving ground the statement was made that it was entirely satisfactory and adequate and the only reason for asking for the new proving ground in the west was the convenience to the new manufacturing establishment that was to be established at Rock Island?

Gen. CROZIER. I do not think, Mr. Chairman, that anybody on behalf of the Ordnance Department or the War Department has

made the statement that the Sandy Hook Proving Ground was entirely satisfactory and adequate. I do not think you can find that statement. I will say this, that the location of the new proving ground at Rock Island Arsenal was given as the controlling reason why we wanted that proving ground, and that statement is true still. If we were to get the proving ground which we now wish to get, as far as its capacity and adequacy are concerned and the amount of work that could be done there, it is necessary without the Rock Island Proving Ground; but the Rock Island Proving Ground will be just as necessary as it was before, because it is so far away.

The CHAIRMAN. My recollection is the statement was made that the request would not have been made for the proving ground if it were not for the fact of the distance of transportation from the new manufacturing plant out there. There was no suggestion that the proving ground was unsatisfactory or inadequate?

Gen. CROZIER. That was the controlling reason, Mr. Chairman; but if you will read the testimony which I gave, I think you will find that I stated at that time that the Sandy Hook proving ground was inadequate. So far from saying that it was satisfactory and adequate. I said it was inadequate, in addition to the distance, although the distance was the great reason.

Mr. BYRNS. How much land do you expect to acquire at Rock Island?

Gen. CROZIER. About 13,000 acres; a long strip about 11 miles long, alongside of the Mississippi River. The land, I do not think, will average more than $60 an acre, while good farming land in Illinois will average, I think, closer to $200 an acre.

The CHAIRMAN. General, I find that you made about the same statement that you are making now. I had the impression that I asked you about Sandy Hook, but there is no reference to it.

Gen. CROZIER. I do not know whether I have made it plain enough that not only can we not make the ordinary tests of Field Artillery ammunition at Sandy Hook without endangering life, but with the limit of range which we have there part of the tests which must be made can not be made because we have not length enough. We have only 6,500 yards. People every day over in European war are firing more than 6,500 yards, and if we can not test the ammunition under the conditions of its use over there, we have got to send our troops over there with ammunition and with guns that have not been tested under service conditions and submit them to that handicap.

Under the circumstances, the only question, it seems to me, that is left to be asked and answered is the question where can you get a proper proving ground which will enable these things to be done that must be done which Sandy Hook does not provide. That is a very difficult question to answer. We have been looking over the eastern part of the Unoted States, as I said a moment ago, for years for a proving ground, and the best place we have been able to find and the only satisfactory place has been Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay. That does afford a very good place.

The CHAIRMAN. Whereabouts in Chesapeake Bay?

Gen. CROZIER. It is almost opposite Annapolis, about 6 or 7 miles from Annapolis. Here [indicating] is a map which shows the situation.