Wu Peifu sat on the main seat in the lobby of the Yellow Crane Tower in Hubei, and Sun Chuanfang sat on the upper left seat, both silent.

Tang Jiyao of Yunnan, Yuan Zuming of Guizhou, Liu Xiang of Sichuan, Chen Jiongming of Guangdong, Lu Rongting of Guangxi, and Chen Yaoling, the guard of Sichuan Town, sat aside and did not say a word.

They all thought that Wu Peifu was deliberately snubbing them, and they were treated by Wu Peifu in another form because of their contempt for Wu Peifu in the six provinces before, so although they didn't know the real purpose of being invited to the meeting by Wu Peifu today, no one wanted to be the first bird to be shot at this time.

It was the six parties that clamped each other down, so the lobby was very quiet.

However, they all miscalculated, this time Wu Peifu did not want to find trouble with them, but was carefully brewing, how to speak to these people, and distribute Zhao Yun's task indicators to everyone's heads.

Wu Peifu was born in a small merchant family, and his father Wu Kecheng relied on the "Anxiang" grocery store handed down by his ancestors to make a living.

Although Wu Peifu's identity as a showman is good, among this group of Qiuba, no one recognizes you as a showman. But Wu Peifu didn't know that he made do with the leader of this gang of warlords and pulled him to the Yellow Crane Tower in Hubei for a meeting, precisely because of his identity as a showman. Zhao Yun's subordinates are short of people, and Wu Peifu is the one who can be literate and martial, Zhu Xi's ability is biased towards governing the place, and Sun Chuanfang's prestige is not enough to suppress these Qiu Ba, so Wu Peifu can only be put on the main seat by Zhao Yun.

In the face of the errand ordered by Zhao Yun, Wu Peifu has nothing more to say than these points: internally, the army is reorganized, and agriculture is emphasized; Externally, it is to expand the army, purchase weapons, and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of China, and of course, these do not need to be raised at a meeting with these six warlords today.

Wu Peifu finished carefully brewing, cleared his throat, let them focus on themselves, and began the first annual meeting in the southwest region of China. It should be said that the success of this meeting has made the southwest region a united collective, and it has also enabled Zhao Yun not to worry about the development of the southwest region for a period of time to come.

"Today, the official summoned everyone to come here to inform you that from today onwards, whether you are touching power or soldiers, you will be touching in the future." As soon as the meeting came up, Wu Peifu said in an astonishing voice, "Originally, in view of your previous appearance, this official wanted to kill your prestige and suppress your arrogance, but it will be March soon, and you must already know about the affairs of the University!" Who is still fighting in the nest at this juncture, then the official will join the rest of you to make him "want to die" and "can't stop"? ”

"In the eyes of foreigners, our Beiyang Army is just a group of "rabble", but what about everyone here? Your team should be a fighting force. Compared with your own team, what is your team called? Elite? In the future, if foreigners come in again, what do you rely on to resist? Is it up to your current gang to fight? It's really a standard in-house insider, and an outsider. This makes this official feel heartbroken! Wu Peifu's words immediately attracted everyone's attention, they were all old foxes, and they were all very cooperative at the moment looking at Wu Peifu without blinking, watching his performance, waiting for his next step, to see what medicine he was selling in his gourd.

Seeing that everyone was very "cooperative", Wu Peifu continued, "First of all, this official has a decision here, it should be said that it is an order, starting in five days, the army of each province will begin to be reorganized, as for how to organize this reorganization, you will follow the team of me and Sun Overseer, a team of 10,000 people is a regimental establishment, and a team of 100,000 people can be called a division." In the future, the personnel will be divided into four groups, three groups will maintain daily garrison, and one group will be concentrated in the provincial capitals of each province, and I will send instructors to conduct intensive training. One batch per month, training in turns. ”

"Coax!" The people in the room were suddenly disturbed by Wu Peifu's decision, and everyone exchanged their heads and ears, and they all understood the word training, but this was to prevent them from eating empty salaries in private.

At this time, Lu Rongting from Guangxi stood up and asked Wu Peifu: "Lord Wu, there are only more than 4,000 people in the hands of the old man at the moment, and the strength of even a regiment is not enough, and the soldiers stationed in the normal garrison are not enough. Where can you send troops and horses to the provincial capital for training! ”

Lu Rongting is also relatively miserable, and he is even worse than Chen Jiongming, who lost half of Guangdong. Although he is the leader of Guangxi, his subordinates are divided, and the team taken away by his subordinate Shen Hongying alone exceeds 10,000, and the two Guangxi fight all year round, and his soldiers can fight, but the troops are not enough.

Hearing Lu Rongting, the oldest and most qualified overseer in the hall, stand up, everyone also looked at Wu Peifu, wanting to see if he wanted to annex their team, "It's only 4,000?" "Wu Peifu didn't suspect that Lu Rongting was lying, he didn't have this need at all." 4000 is too little, if it is insufficient, it will be recruited, first pull back the team that originally belonged to the Gui army, and the provinces should not hide it privately, this time it is a strong army, not a mountain, the past will end today, and then no one can say whose past, and then pull the old yellow calendar, we will have to fight until when! ”

Seeing Wu Peifu say this, everyone nodded. In fact, they really don't care about the regiment commander, division commander or something, even if they are given the title of army commander and commander, they have as many subordinates as Lu Rongting, so they don't want to.

Seeing that Wu Peifu did not stop them from recruiting troops, everyone's selfishness was put down a lot. Wu Peifu continued, "In view of the fact that the military salaries of the provinces were all issued by the provinces in the past, and it was difficult for soldiers to use them, since they have been reorganized this time, all the military salaries will be paid by the southern government. From January to March this year, more than 10 provinces did not even have a rain, and it seems that the grain will be quite tight, so the military salary has changed from the previous ocean to the corresponding food stamps, cloth stamps, and meat. Tickets to convert. ”

The six of them pondered for a moment, instead of the ocean, they used food stamps, cloth stamps, and meat. Ticket, this is tantamount to controlling their army, but what Wu Peifu said is also a practical problem, the seedlings in this year's fields will not grow at all, and now it is the time when there is no green and yellow, and it is too late to store grain, and it is expected that the grain will rise wildly at that time. If the provinces had less money to spend on military rations, they would be able to tighten their belts. After thinking about it for a while, all six of them nodded in agreement.

"Now there's the weapons and ammunition! You can figure out your own way before you have any arms! Now that it has been reorganized, it is naturally up to the southern government to come out, but it is a pity that the previous weapons were thrown away, so someone came up with an idea of exchanging them, which is to use the old rifles you have on hand, no matter what model, as long as it is a rifle, not a firecracker, and add twenty rounds of ammunition to each one in exchange for a brand-new Hanyang-made one, plus twenty rounds of ammunition. Moreover, in order to increase the firepower of each team, it was decided to exchange every 6 rifles for an American "M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle" for use as a light machine gun. Of course, this kind of gun has already begun to be reloaded in the team of this official and Sun Overseer, and if you don't know their power, you can go to the barracks to test the gun by yourself after the meeting. In addition, there are also sharp weapons to resist the great powers, which can be exchanged for 40 rifles each. ”

When everyone heard this, they all "chuckled" in their hearts, this Lord Wu is not good, unifying weapons, it seems to be a loss, but it invisibly controls the ammunition supply of all warlords. It is equivalent to that in the future, if anyone wants to make a "temper", they can paralyze the ranks in the hands of various warlords as soon as they pinch the supply of ammunition. But no one retorted uninterestingly, this kind of sharp weapon has always been hard to find, and now each one can be exchanged for only 40 rifles, so why not exchange it? If you don't change the Dian army and the Sichuan army changes, will you still be able to win the war in the future?

"Is there a problem with everyone?"

"No problem." Seeing that this matter is also mutually restrained, the six people present will not oppose it at this time, even if they have any ideas.

"Okay, now that we're done with the reorganization, let's talk about the second thing. That is to work for relief, to give you a bottom, the drought is not only your territory, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei, Henan are all drought, that is, Hunan and Hubei are slightly better, but if it does not rain again, it is estimated that it is also the face of reduced production. Therefore, the cash-for-work is organized by the two governments of the north and the south to give up their prejudices and join forces, with 400,000 people from Sichuan to build roads along the way to the north, and 1 million people from Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Hebei to dredge the Grand Canal from the north and south.

Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Henan Minfu 400,000 people went out of the fortress to build a road from Zhangjiakou to Kulen, Mongolia, and introduced foreign capital to start building a railway to the grassland, attracting investment in sections.

Therefore, each province has to submit two reports to its own officials. One is the number of households and the number of men in each provincial jurisdiction. Especially for men who have been soldiers, their information should be detailed, and the address of each man and the family situation of each household should be clearly written. The official will also send someone to your jurisdiction to inspect in the near future. "There is a commotion on the scene, these are old foxes who are mixed with officialdom, no one has ever asked to find out how many men are in each province, generally when the big war is about to pull the strong Ding, this kind of thing will be done, but now there is no war, what is Wu Peifu going to do when he wants to touch the men, is the north and the south going to war?

Wu Peifu looked around at the six people, and was a little satisfied, worthy of being an old fox, and his alertness was good! He also understood their thoughts, and continued: "Don't worry, this official is not trying to start a war with the north. The official has already said just now that the official hates the infighting in Huaxia the most, so you don't have to worry about this matter. Since it's a confession, let's make everything clear. When the drought eases somewhat, that is, when the three armed forces are expanded, you don't have to worry about the reduction of your military ranks, and then 200,000 will be transferred from Sichuan, which has a relatively large population, 200,000 will be transferred from Henan, Hebei, 1 million from Guangdong, Jiangxi, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Shandong, 150,000 from Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu, and 150,000 from the southwest, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guizhou provinces, totaling 1.7 million from the new army, and those young people among the people are the main force of the new army. After the expansion of the army, join the old army for mixed formation, a total of 2.91 million, military pay is mainly food stamps, cloth stamps, meat stamps, supplemented by money, so from now on, the military pay to the army began to be based on these votes, which is also for a smooth transition in the future. At the beginning of 1916, the army directly under the jurisdiction of the Beiyang government and attached to the army had a total of 33 army divisions, 97 mixed brigades (including some infantry and cavalry brigades), and 33 mixed regiments (including some independent infantry and cavalry regiments), with a total strength of 1.2 million people, of which more than half were Beiyang descendants. It is also feasible to reach 2.91 million after the expansion of the army, so they will accept Wu Peifu's statement with suspicion. As for who these 2.9 million troops are against, what does it matter to me? I just need to get a half-official position in these 2.9 million troops.