Excerpt from Report of the District Council of Defense, Washington, D. C: June 9, 1917, to June 30, 1919 Following out this idea, Secretary Baker, chairman of the Council of National Defense, on April 9, 1917 sent a letter to the governor of each State, asking that similar bodies, which might be called State councils of defense, be formed in each State to cooperate with the Council of National Defense in enlisting the energies of all the people in the work undertaken. Perhaps because it is not, strictly speaking, a State, and perhaps because it is so closely connected with the Federal Government, no such letter was sent to the District of Columbia, and it was not until Secretary Baker, as chairman of the Council of National Defense, on. April 20, 1917 issued a call for a National Defense Conference, to be made up of the representatives of each State, or of each of the State councils of defense, that the Commissioners of the District of Colum bia were made aware of the movement which was taking place and of the request to join in it. This National Defense Conference was summoned to meet in Washington on May 2 and 3, 1917 and the commissioners, finding that it was expected that the District of Columbia would participate in the conference, appointed Mr. Wil liam H. Baldwin to represent the District in it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.