2: Exposition: American Military Planning Prior to January 1917

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Two traits characterized American strategic planning for land warfare prior to--its rarity and its narrowly domestic scope. The military did make plans before the rupture of US-German diplomatic relations in early February 1917, and some of these plans recognized that the conflict in Europe might at least indirectly affect the United States. Nonetheless, those plans that did exist before 1917 largely ignored events across the Atlantic and thus formed a weak foundation for the eventual wartime mobilization and extra-continental commitment. The roots of American military planning for World War I, although notably shallow, do extend back prior to August 1914. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson initiated the War Department General Staff's first comprehensive military policy. He collected a series of articles concerning military planning in the Independent in the spring of 1912, and published them as the pamphlet, What is the Matter With Our Army? Answering the title question, Stimson wrote in the final article, "The trouble with the Army comes down, therefore, to our lack of an intelligent military policy in dealing with it." A few months later he ordered Captain John M. Palmer of the General Staff to draw up a plan for organizing all of the land forces in the US. To preempt a recalcitrant Congress from dismissing the study as the General Staff's isolated expression of opinion, Stimson ensured that the sixty page report on the "Organization of the Land Forces of the United States" was not approved until all general officers in the continental US had the chance to state their views.⁽¹⁾

Although the report completely omitted the topic of economic mobilization and was to a large extent merely a restatement of the views held by various military Progressives that the army should be organized along more efficient, business-like models, it was significant in that it was a comprehensive collection of these sometimes fragmented ideas and that it was issued by the ostensible planning arm of the War Department. The topics covered in the report included: relations between the naval and land forces, relations between domestic forces and those abroad, land forces within the United States, the peacetime administration of the regular land forces, the importance of a reserve system, tactical organization of mobile troops, the relationship between promotion and organization, the organization and raising of national volunteer forces, considerations affecting the organization of the American land forces and a council of national defense.

The report highlighted the weakness of the traditional American reliance upon the citizen soldier--namely, the lack of adequate training, without which no soldier could be expected to face a modern foe. The report claimed that American history "is full of the success of the volunteer soldier after he has been trained for war, but it contains no record of the successful employment of raw levies for general military purposes." The General Staff's study thus focused in large part on the partial organization and training of militiamen in order to have a "means for preparing great armies of citizen soldiers to meet the emergency of modern war." The ultimate proposal included a provision for a six-year enlistment period for the regular army, consisting of three years on active duty followed by another three years in the reserve. Those soldiers in the reserves could quickly expand the regular army to a war footing without thinning its strength with raw recruits. The study also suggested the creation of a reserve officers' program consisting of those men who had received military training in college. To solve the problem of poor training for citizen soldiers and to bypass the highly politicized influence over the National Guard, the General Staff suggested a national militia based on Congressional districts instead of the traditional state control. Behind these layers of soldiers would stand the volunteers, ready for mobilization if the regular army and the National Guard together could not meet the situation. The combination of these three levels of the regular army plus its reserves, the national militia and the volunteers could yield the estimated requirements of 460,000 mobile troops and 42,000 static coastal defense troops in the event of war with a first-class power. The study concluded:

	The complete organization of the mobile land forces of the United States will, 
	therefore,  include three distinct forces.

1. A Regular Army organized in divisions and cavalry brigades and ready for immediate use as an expeditionary force or for other purposes for which the citizen soldier is not available, or for employment in the first stages of war while the citizen soldiery is mobilizing and concentrating.

2. An Army of national citizen soldiers organized in peace in complete divisions and prepared to reenforce the Regular Army in time of war.

3. An army of volunteers to be organized under prearranged plans when greater forces are required than can be furnished by the Regular Army and the organized citizen soldiery.

The peace establishment of the Regular Army with the organized division districts of the National Guard should include the machinery for the recruiting, organization, and mobilization of this great third line of the national defense.

With the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson in January 1913, Stimson and the military planners lost all opportunity of seeing their proposals implemented immediately. Although shelved for the time being, this seminal work by the General Staff was to serve as the foundation for American military policy in the coming years.

The claim that military planning during the early part of Woodrow Wilson's administration did not exist or that it concentrated solely on the defense of the North American continent is only technically untrue. While marking significant advances in military policy, two of the great war plans, "Orange" in the event of a war with Japan and"Black" in case of hostilities with Germany, focused mainly on coastal defense and only tangentially on the defense of American territories abroad. In both of these plans the navy would serve as the first line of defense, with the army relegated to a supporting role. In spite of their seemingly global outlook, these plans emphasized almost exclusively the defense of the homeland.⁽²⁾

Formed to counter a possible attack by the German High Seas Fleet on either the West Indies or the American mainland, Black clearly illustrated America's introverted approach to defense. The US fleet, based in Guantánamo, Cuba, and Culebra, Puerto Rice, would confront the German ships approximately 500 miles out at sea and prevent the landing of any troops. No thought was given to the possibility of meeting the High Seas Fleet any farther away from the American continent, and little realistic evaluation was made of the strategic and logistical difficulties and slim likelihood of such a German invasion.⁽³⁾

On the surface, Orange seemed much more global in its approach. Completed in 1914 and focused on the defense of Manila in the event of a Japanese attack, this plan called for a naval battle within 1,200 miles of the Philippines. This strategy, however, was unrealistic. By way of the Panama Canal, Pearl Harbor, Midway and Guam, the first section of the US fleet would reach Manila in sixty-eight days. In comparison, the Japanese fleet and troop transports could arrive there in eight. The army detachment on the island would thus have to hold out for at least two months before the first American ships arrived. To compound the absurdity, this plan failed to consider the actual capability of the US Navy in 1914. While Congress had approved appropriations for a battleship fleet superior to that of the Japanese, the unbalanced US fleet lacked necessary auxiliary ships, including colliers and oil supply tankers. The battleships could hardly reach San Francisco without assistance, much less make a voyage of 10,000 miles from their Atlantic base to Manila.⁽⁴⁾American military planning thus continued to focus on the defense of American soil and continued to do so with little reference either to the nation's increasingly expansionist foreign policy or to its realistic capabilities.

One might have expected the events following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 to awaken America to its military weakness. The outbreak of war certainly exposed the nation's lack of preparation to some in the military, as evidenced by the request in August 1914 of the Chief of Staff of the Eastern Department at Governor's Island in New York: "we are without European maps and without funds to buy them at this headquarters. . . . You will probably have some maps at the War College from which you might send us a few. If so, please do so at once." Some in the military also took notice of the unprecedented, rapid manpower mobilization implemented by the European powers (except, of course, Britain, which rejected conscription until 1916), but the disintegration of the tenuous balance of power on the Continent did little to spark the development of a cogent military policy. The American public in late 1914 and early 1915 would simply not accept a change in America's detached posture towards both diplomacy and the military, especially if such a change might entangle the US in the problems of Europe. Even naval expansion, which might have been justified to protect America from the heat of the European fire, was repressed, since many believed that it was exactly this type of naval competition which had sparked the blaze in the first place. The dangers of a European war, even one of this magnitude, would have to seem far more immediate than the battlefields of France and Belgium before America would accept a greater emphasis on military planning.⁽⁵⁾

In the summer of 1915 America's isolationism and military complacency seemed to experience a shock as rude as the one felt on board the Lusitania at 2:10 pm on 7 May. The intervening years have perhaps blurred the view of just how startling the sinking of this sip was. People years after the war could remember exactly where they had been when they learned of the fate of the Lusitania. The acute, public outrage at the loss of American lives echoed within the halls of the White House. With his twin notes on 21 July to Secretary of War Lindley M. Garrison and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, Wilson called for a defense program that he could submit to Congress in his next annual message.⁽⁶⁾

Wilson's call for preparedness clearly illustrates the gulf between the military's concerns and those of the President. Many reasons underlay Wilson's support for preparedness; viewed by some historians as chief among them was his desire to mediate a settlement among the belligerent powers.⁽⁷⁾

Arthur Link and John W. Chambers, II, contend that Wilson perceived the need for substantial military force in order for the US to command the respect of major military powers necessary to mediate among them. In support of this argument they cite Wilson's discussion with American pacifist leaders in May 1916, in which the President stated, "The peace of society is obtained by force. . . . And if you say we shall not have any war, you have got to have the force to make that 'shall' bite."⁽⁸⁾

One must carefully note, however, that this statement by Wilson came almost a full ten months after his memoranda to Daniels and Garrison, almost eight months after the sinking of the Arabic and two months after the sinking of the Sussex . Much time had passed between the President's call for preparedness and his May 1916 address during which his views toward the belligerents, and especially Germany, could have hardened. In addition, neither the policy initially suggested by the War Department nor the one eventually backed by the President would have done much to increase Allied and Entente respect for Wilson's attempts at mediation. European countries would have paid little attention to an army tethered to American shores, no matter what its size. If Wilson's reason to support preparedness came predominately from his desire to mediate a settlement--or even as Robert E. Osgood suggests, from a genuine fear that the US might find itself at war with Germany in the near future--then he surely misunderstood the capability of his military.⁽⁹⁾ While his goals of mediation surely influenced his view toward preparedness and most definitely did not preclude such a policy, they probably did not provide the initial, or even the strongest roots for it. While the Presidential endorsement did give the General Staff planners a long awaited opportunity to consider a revision of American military policy, Wilson's decision was motivated in great part by domestic political interests and largely unrelated to a genuine concern for military preparation.

Public agitation for preparedness, which grew as Germany rebuffed Wilson's diplomatic protest notes over the Lusitania incident, threatened to undermine the President's support in the next election. Based on Hudson Maxim's best-selling book, Defenseless America , the motion picture Battle Cry of Peace (1915) served to sensationalize the issue as it portrayed a vulnerable United States cowering before an unnamed but easily identifiable foe's attack on New York City. Press polls showed overwhelming majorities in favor of increasing the army and navy. Joseph P. Tumulty, the President's personal secretary, suggested in August 1915 that the Republicans would have two potential campaign issues: "the tariff and the question of national defense." A strong plan for the latter would preempt half of the Republicans' strategy for the 1916 campaign. Tumulty further pointed out the elements of a sound defense policy:

In this matter we must have a sane, reasonable and workable programme. That programme must have in it, the ingredients that will call forth the hearty support of, first, the whole Cabinet (and particularly the Secretary of War); second, the leaders of the party in the Senate and the House; third, the rank and file of Democrats in both Houses; fourth, the Army and the Navy; and last but not least, the great body of the American people.⁽¹⁰⁾

While Tumulty realized that a workable plan for national defense clearly must have the support of the military, political and popular support seemed to him to be of greater concern. Tumulty's advice came after Wilson's requests in July for drafts of military policies and therefore was not the direct spark for preparedness, but Wilson had almost certainly realized that much political capital could be gained or lost through such an issue.

The evolution of this campaign for preparedness further illustrates that, as historian John Patrick Finnegan has noted, "the compartment between American foreign policy and American defense policy was watertight."⁽¹¹⁾ Wilson sometimes sacrificed rational military planning to political concerns. Such was the fate of the Continental Army Reserve Plan, which both came out of and formed a foundation for Wilson's decision for preparedness.

Secretary of War Garrison had taken a head start on Wilson's request for a revision of military policy. At the behest of the newly appointed Assistant Chief of Staff, Tasker H. Bliss, and with Wilson's consent, Garrison had on 11 March asked Brigadier General Montgomery M. Macomb, Chief of the War College Division, to submit by 15 June an update of the Stimson Plan of 1912, paying special attention to the recommended strength of the regular army and organized militia, the question of reserves, the problem of organizing and supplementing volunteer forces and the amount of reserve material and supplies that the army should keep in store.⁽¹²⁾

General Macomb or another member of the War College Division met with the Secretary of War every two or three days to keep him up-to-date on the planning. Nonetheless, progress was slow The War College Division planners had produced little of substance by the mid-June deadline. Garrison had received a vague, one-page memo which included a statement regarding the regular army and outlined the steps involved in both calling up the National Guard and in enlarging munitions productions. Garrison's concern, however, lay in the organization and nature of the reserves, since he accurately perceived that such formed the bulk of a modern army, or at least one that Americans might be willing to adopt at that time.⁽¹³⁾

Nearly a month after the deadline, the War College Division issued its product, the "Epitome of Military Policy." Although based on the Stimson Plan, the Epitome went beyond the recommendations of its 1912 predecessor. In that earlier proposal the General Staff had suggested a gradual increase of the army by annual increments to a goal of three complete infantry divisions in the continental US during peacetime. After these three were complete, the army would beseech Congress for a fourth. The Epitome, on the other hand, requested the four divisions and their auxiliary units immediately. All units would be kept at war strength, thus providing 281,000 soldiers. The mobile forces in the US alone would total 121,000 men, a number greater than the entire existing army. In addition, these mobile forces would be backed by a tremendous reserve. The Epitome also recommended that the term of enlistment be two years of active duty followed by a six-year stint in the reserves. Within eight years, according to the War College Division's calculations, 500,000 fully trained troops would be available for service.⁽¹⁴⁾

The War College Division's recommendations did not stop at raising a force of half-a-million. Conjuring up the threat of a possible German invasion of 435,000 soldiers, it suggested an additional line of defense numbering another half million to back up the regular army and its reserves. Astutely criticizing the tradition of a trained militia and civilian soldiers as inadequate for modern warfare, the War College Division extended a suggestion mad by the Secretary of War for a federally trained and controlled peacetime force. Under this plan volunteers would train three months out of the year for three years. If war erupted they would require only three more months of training to be ready for use. The General Staff labeled this plan the Continental Army, a name which was "appropriate, distinctive, and possessing grand historical associations." If fully adopted and implemented, the War College Division's plan would eventually be able to yield a force of one million soldiers within ninety days.⁽¹⁵⁾

There is no evidence that the General Staff had any hidden agendas in these recommendations. It was not surreptitiously trying to prepare for a war overseas, as many contemporary opponents of preparedness feared. There is no indication in the record of the military planners that they saw this proposal as the prelude to US action in the war. Also, to claim that the US leaders were preparing for such American participation is to claim that they had a firm idea of what exactly such involvement would entail, an assumption which crumbles in the light of the course of American planning once war appeared certain.⁽¹⁶⁾

In addition, this policy's strong similarities to Stimson's study of 1912--a proposal made prior to the outbreak of the war in Europe--suggest that this more recent plan also sought foremost to secure adequate protection of the United States. First, although the 1915 Epitome provided for a marked increase in the size of the nation's military, it still shared that earlier plan's goal of domestic defense. It lacked the provisions for naval cooperation which would have been necessary to send this force abroad. Second, both documents sought long range goals. The Continental Army would require three years to grow to its envisioned strength, hardly the type of plan that would have been made if involvement in Europe had been the goal. The large size of the force was admittedly alarming, especially in comparison to traditional American peacetime armies, but it was not to be a standing army and was to a great extent a recognition of some of the dangers of modern warfare. While the German invasion mentioned by the General Staff was clearly fanciful, and although the Atlantic Ocean did not provide the "easy avenues of approach" which the military planners feared, the US would not have the time for a sluggish approach to manpower mobilization if attacked by a modern ad powerful foe. Earlier plans for domestic defense had focused almost exclusively on coastal fortifications, but the Epitome recognized the need for orderly and rapid manpower expansion. The large army suggested by the War College Division was the honest, if misguided and inflated, assessment of the nation's needs for domestic protection; US participation on the battlefields of Europe was not the purpose of the General Staff's proposal.⁽¹⁷⁾

Regardless of how forthright the military planners might have been about their motivations, of course, the War College Division had seemingly confirmed anti-preparedness fears of militarism. Although incorrect in their accusations that the General Staff was forming plans to send a force to Europe, two August 1915 newspaper articles which claimed that the military was making plans to call 1,000,000 men were not completely off the mark. The President had surely not envisioned this type of military policy in his notes to Garrison and Daniels in July. The story that Wilson threatened to dismiss the entire General Staff if he learned that these allegations were true is most likely the stuff of legends.⁽¹⁸⁾ Nonetheless, the War College Division felt compelled to issue an outright denial of the newspapers' charges:

	The article in the Baltimore Sun of Tuesday  morning, August 24, 1915, headed
'	May Call 1,000,000 Men,' purporting to give an account of  the plans for war with
	Germany, is made up out of whole cloth and does the General Staff and the Army
	War College great injustice in ascribing to them the preparation of plans based on
	the 'idea of sending an army to Europe.'

	No such plans have ever been prepared, nor even contemplated by the General Staff.

In addition, M.B. Mercer, Chief Clerk of the War College Division, sent a memorandum early in 1916 to the civilian employees of the Division, cautioning them "to engage in no discussion whatever concerning the progress of the European War and especially to refrain from the expression of any views of a partisan nature in connection therewith."⁽¹⁹⁾

The General Staff's plan met with opposition even within the military. Lieutenant Colonel W.H. Johnston, himself a General Staff officer, questioned whether the army could obtain enough men for this proposal. In the past fiscal year, the army had recruited only 35,941 men, far short of the General Staff's annual requirement of 320,000 for the regular army and Continental force. It was doubtful that the army could find almost ten times more interested recruits than it had the year before, Johnston argued, since able-bodied young men could hardly be expected to give up their jobs periodically "simply to receive [the regular army pay of] 50 cents a day. . . ." Volunteers would simply not suffice. Conscription was the only possible means by which such a force could be raised, but although many military planners privately favored such an idea, the United States in 1915 was hardly ready to accept a peacetime draft.⁽²⁰⁾

Not surprisingly Garrison could not accept the General Staff's study. In addition to the flaws pointed out by Johnston, the $506 million first-year price tag--a four-fold increase in the army's current budget--would "chill, if not effectively destroy" any support for preparedness. On 2 August Garrison returned the study to the General Staff for revision, asking it to produce a plan that would have a chance of gaining Congressional approval. Since existing facilities could house no more than 140,000 troops, he instructed the military planners to use that figure for the regulars and to rely on the Continental Army for the remainder of the nation's defense needs.⁽²¹⁾

The War College Division's eventual proposal, the "Statement of Proper Military Policy for the United States," included a regular army of 140,000 and a Continental Army raised in annual increments of 133,000 until a reserve force of 400,000 was established. The regulars would enlist for a two-year tour of active duty followed by four years of reserve obligation. Those who volunteered under the Continental Army Plan would commit to periodic training over three years without obligation except that they return to the army "in the event of war or imminence thereof." Although it never explicitly determined the exact amount of training, the General Staff used a period of two months per year to figure the costs of the proposal.⁽²²⁾

Although a bit more reasonable than its predecessor, the General Staff's revision still contained many of the political liabilities of the earlier "Epitome." It made no mention of how the army planned to raise the necessary numbers of recruits, so the specter of conscription still haunted the plan. More fatal to this policy, however, was that by looking to the Continental Army reserves to supplement the regulars, the General Staff completely abandoned the organized militia as a first-line defense. In addition to the military planners' disdain for the quality of the militia as a fighting force, there were other factors which weighed in this conclusion. First, the army wanted a unified force under a central and standard command; the fragmented nature of the existing state militias threatened America's security. Second, there was great concern that any attempt to federalize the militia would be struck down as unconstitutional, and the military planners were rightfully hesitant to base the national defense on contestable legislation. Although fully supported by the Secretary of War, his senior advisors and even the President himself, this aspect of the General Staff's policy would be its doom.⁽²³⁾

Attempting to undermine the power of the National Guard through a volunteer reserve force did not sit well with the militia's powerful supporters in Congress, especially states' rights advocates from the South such as James Hay, Chair of the House Military Affairs Committee. Although a long-standing opponent of military expansion, Hay had initially relented and agreed to be "guided in large measure by the President's views" on national defense. This was only true until the War Department's proposed legislation so blatantly affronted the militia. Although Hay reiterated his support for a brief time after Garrison had submitted the Continental Army Plan, he soon retreated from this position as other Democrats in Congress reconsidered their own backing of the proposal.⁽²⁴⁾

In addition to defending the National Guard in principle, some feared that any program of national training would put weapons into the hands of African-Americans. In October General Wilbur Fisk Sadler, Jr., a prominent Trenton banker and the Adjutant General of the New Jersey National Guard, warned Wilson that many adjutants general of the Guard, "especially those from the South," strongly opposed Garrison's plan and believed "that the Continental Army in their sections will be composed of negroes, the only men that can be gotten if the troops are apportioned as proposed."⁽²⁵⁾

Realizing that his preparedness programs faced stiff opposition, Wilson took his case directly to the nation's people. With addresses to the New York Federation of Churches, the Railway Business Association and the Motion Picture Board of Trade on 27 January, the President kicked off a week-long campaign which took him through several major Midwestern cities, including Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Waukegan, Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee, Chicago, Joliet, Rock Island, Davenport, Iowa City, Grinnell, Des Moines, Topeka and Kansas City. On 3 February Wilson delivered the final speech of the tour before an audience of 18,000 in the Saint Louis Coliseum. With the exception of the stop in Topeka, throngs of supporters warmly received him. An estimated one million Americans had turned out in frigid temperatures to greet him or hear him speak. Confident in his power of moral suasion, the President labeled the campaign "a most interesting and inspiring experience, much fuller of electrical thrills than I had expected."⁽²⁶⁾

This apparent groundswell of support, however, was illusory. Pacifists were still pacifists; the President's speeches had done nothing to persuade them and had even alarmed some. William Jennings Bryan, in his magazine, The Commoner , wrote that Wilson was "actually considering a state of war in which the United States will be the aggressor." In addition, by speaking to city audiences in the Midwest, Wilson missed those in the rural areas who most staunchly opposed preparedness. More importantly, of course, Wilson's campaign did little to impress opponents of preparedness within Congress, including Percy E. Quinn of Mississippi and William Gordon of Ohio, two members of the House Military Affairs Committee who conducted a number of anti-preparedness rallies to rebut the President's tour.⁽²⁷⁾

On 5 February 1916, Hay informed Wilson that the Continental Army did not meet with his Committee's approval. The Cleveland News had correctly prophesied at the beginning of the preparedness debate that "Mr. Hay will have what amounts to the deciding voice in any measure for national defense," and that voice opposed the War Department's plan. He instead suggested federalizing the militia, a proposal that could provide the numbers of men that the War Department sought, but one that Garrison would find unacceptable because it still failed to yield a force under a single authority.⁽²⁸⁾

On 9 February, Garrison wrote Wilson, "If . . . we are not in agreement upon the fundamental principles, then I could not, with propriety, remain your seeming representative." In attempting to force Wilson to confront Congress, Garrison sealed his own fate. While committed to preparedness as a concept, much of the President's support stemmed from political opportunity, and he would not risk his relationship with his own party members in the legislature to secure any particular plan to which he was not dedicated. The President had even written to Garrison's strongest opponent that "I [do] not consider myself irrevocably or dogmatically committed to any one plan of providing the nation with [an adequate defense]." The President faced the option of having his plan killed in Congress or of accepting Hay's proposal. He quickly made his decision. Wilson responded to his Secretary of War the next day, warning Garrison "to draw very carefully the distinction between your own individual views and the views of the administration." Upon receipt of Wilson's letter, Garrison submitted his resignation and together with Assistant Secretary of War Henry C. Breckinridge walked down the halls of the War Department and out of the building.⁽²⁹⁾

Following Garrison's departure, Wilson deferred to Congress, endorsing Hay's plan of a federalized militia. While dead in name, the idea of a national volunteer reserve force remained alive in concept. At Judge Advocate General Enoch Crowder's suggestion, George Chamberlain, Chair of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, included in his Army Reorganization Bill of March 1916 a proposal for a volunteer reserve plan more flexible than the Continental Army. This attempt at compromise met with the same objections as had Garrison's plan, and although it survived five weeks of committee hearings, it died on the floor of the House in May 1916. In the vacuum created by Wilson's withdrawal of support, the influence of the National Guard combined with America's reluctance to accept anything that hinted at peacetime conscription and again killed any thoughts of a national reserve force.⁽³⁰⁾

The eventual National Defense Act of 3 June 1916 provided for an increase of the regular army to 175,000 over a five-year period. In addition to establishing the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, the Act enlarged the Military Academy. In recognition of the importance of industrial mobilization in modern warfare, the Act created the Council of National Defense composed of the Secretaries of War, Navy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, and gave the President the authority to appoint an advisory committee of experts from outside of the President's cabinet, "qualified by the possession of special knowledge of the industrial and commercial resources of the country," to work in conjunction with the Council. Finally, to meet the nation's potential manpower needs, the Act provided the means to bring the National Guard into federal service, enlarged the militia from its current strength of 100,000 to 400,000 over five years and permitted the Guard to operate outside the United States. The suggestions of a volunteer reserve force subject solely to federal training and control had been completely rejected.⁽³¹⁾

The Continental Army found both its birth and its demise in the context of Presidential politics. Perceiving an issue which might both further his diplomatic goals abroad and at the same time undermine a Republican challenge to his incumbency at home, Wilson latched onto and fostered the growing preparedness sentiment. When a major part of that very preparedness policy threatened to subvert his backing among his own party members in Congress, however, Wilson withdrew his tenuous support for his Secretary of War and acquiesced to the demands of the legislature. Although some of the General Staff's suggestions were largely unrealistic even in military terms, others--such as its rejection of the National Guard as the first line of defense--reflected perceptive realizations of America's needs and resources and were policies that the US would be forced to adopt when it finally committed itself to the fight in Europe. Political efficacy rather than strategic considerations guided Wilson's reaction to these General Staff proposals. While he had clearly demonstrated civilian authority over the nation's war-planning and war-waging machine, he had also foreshadowed that he would make many of his decisions on military policy with relatively little consideration given to the realistic considerations of the military means to support his increasingly interventionist diplomacy.⁽³²⁾

Wilson's diplomacy continued to grow more global in its approach, even after Garrison's resignation. Signed on 17 February, the House-Grey Memorandum seemed to promise American intervention on the side of the British and French if Germany rejected calls for a conference to end the war. The exact nature of the President's proposed intervention was unclear, since less than two weeks earlier he had effectively killed the only existing, viable means of raising an army which might have had even a remote chance of influencing events in Europe. While the Continental Army would have had little immediate effect in strengthening the American armed forces, it was a step toward a more realistic, if distant, military policy. After its demise, Wilson offered no alternative which might have lent credence to his foreign policy, and therefore the gap between the plans of the military policy-makers and the desires of the President continued to grow. It would not be bridged in the immediate future.⁽³³⁾

Although no doubt disheartened by Wilson's withdrawal of support both for Garrison and for the Continental Army, the General Staff did not give up on considering military policy in the context of an American confrontation with Germany. Such consideration, however, was still noticeably domestic in its focus and therefore still markedly distinct from the President's diplomatic efforts. In early 1916, in response to the Allied decision to arm merchant vessels, Germany adopted a policy of unrestricted U-boat warfare. Alarmed by conjecture in the public press concerning relations with Germany, General Hugh L. Scott, serving as interim Secretary of War, asked the War College Division on 24 February if any plans existed for action "in the event of a complete rupture" with Germany.⁽³⁴⁾

Macomb's response came five days later. Alluding to the "Statement" of 1915, he explained that the existing plans assumed a German invasion of North America. Recognizing that Germany at that time posed little threat of immediate attack, he suggested to Scott that, in the event of the complete severance of diplomatic relations, the President be asked to take measures to safeguard against sabotage of munitions plants, arsenals and depots; to implement the listing by the Census Bureau of all aliens of the Central Powers; to establish national censorship; to issue a call for 400,000 volunteers to bring the regular army to war strength; and to summon the militia to provide for seacoast defense.⁽³⁵⁾

Apparently Scott had acted independently when he made his request. No record exists in the Papers of Woodrow Wilson indicating that the President instructed Scott or that the Chief of Staff informed Wilson of the War College Division's response. Unfortunately, the cabinet diaries of Josephus Daniels are missing for the year 1916, so it is impossible to determine whether Scott made any mention of his request at Cabinet meetings. Therefore, no conclusions can be drawn about Wilson's reaction to these plans. This individualistic approach on the part of Scott, however, illustrates the frequent lack of communication that existed between the President and the military planners. Such a lack of coordination is almost understandable; surely Wilson would have hamstrung any such planning if he had learned about it, and certainly such plans, had they become public, would have created a political and diplomatic embarrassment for the President who had kept the nation "out of war." Even though the United States would begin to send an expeditionary force across the Atlantic in less than a year- and-a-half, military policy-making still existed in only a fragmented form.⁽³⁶⁾

On 24 March 1916 a German U-boat torpedoed the French steamer Sussex , injuring several Americans. Greatly angered, Wilson sent a note to the German government demanding that they renounce their submarine policy. Germany finally acquiesced on 4 May, but not before this event had further tarnished that nation in Wilson's eyes. Meanwhile, the British Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, was meeting with Lieutenant Colonel Charles O. Squire, the American Military Attaché in London. Kitchener suggested that a break in diplomatic relations between Germany and the United States would inevitably lead to war, either through a German declaration or through some overt act that would force Wilson's hand. The two discussed the possibility of committing an American expeditionary force to European soil. Kitchener claimed that American involvement would hasten the war's conclusion and, when pressed, even claimed that it would do so "at least by the end of the year." Either Kitchener's assessment of the American military was grossly unrealistic or, more likely, he was hoping to entice the Wilson administration into joining the fight through the promise of a hasty finish. Kitchener also suggested that American troops be trained in France instead of in the United States so that they could enter combat "in the shortest possible time."⁽³⁷⁾

Newton D. Baker, easing into his new position as Secretary of War, received this memorandum with little interest. Again, no evidence exists that Baker briefed Wilson on this meeting between Kitchener and Squire, probably for the same reason that Scott had kept his questions to the War College Division hushed. In addition, Wilson was apparently kept ignorant of discussions to mobilize US shipping to carry an American army to Europe in the event of war. This proposal, prepared on 4 April by American naval and military attachés in London and Paris and by two American officers assigned with the British Expeditionary Forces, warned that "any system adopted at the moment and operated without previous study and experience is more than apt to bring discredit on the Navy, and useless danger to the army and the Nation." Even the military planners ignored this recommendation until November 1916.Again, coordinated military planning was forsaken and once more American military leaders neglected realistic contingencies, leaving the consideration of such ideas to the very eve of the American declaration.⁽³⁸⁾

While the administration and the military leadership were doing their best to avoid any hint of war-planning, the American Military Attaché to Athens, Captain Edward Davis, sent a series of memoranda in November and December 1916 suggesting a strategy in the event that US forces were sent overseas. Fearing that the US might be forced to enter the war as the belligerent powers courted Japanese involvement to the detriment of American interests, his plan sought to avoid the bloody inertia of the Western Front and instead to concentrate the nation's forces for an offensive in Macedonia. Davis's plans had some serious strategic omissions which the War College Division would point out once they considered them in depth. On the other hand, he astutely observed the need for coordination of political and military ends, an approach that would unfortunately not be adopted any time soon. These proposals, had they become known, would surely have embarrassed the General Staff, which had repeatedly and earnestly denied that any such plans were being made to send troops to Europe. Although some in the War College Division probably welcomed the rational consideration of American involvement in the war, they were compelled to sweep these recommendations under the rug. Brigadier General Joseph E. Kuhn, then Chief of the War College Division, warned Davis: "Unless you can be absolutely certain that there is no risk of such reports coming to the attention of outside persons, it would be well to refrain from dispatching them." Although they would reemerge after the break in US-German diplomatic relations in early February 1917, Davis's plans met with little consideration at this time.⁽³⁹⁾

This lack of American preparation had several causes. The military planners themselves were far from innocent, and the anachronistic view of the conjunction between American military and foreign policy formed the first hurdle to adequate planning. To claim that American military strategy before 1917 was wholly unrelated to the nation's diplomatic goals would be slightly incorrect. As a matter of fact, the nation's various military strategies meshed quite well with some foreign policy assumptions and objectives. The problem was that the traditional approach to American foreign relations which these military strategies best supported--the Monroe --had already been modified with no commensurate change in the military policy which backed it up.

By restricting the Western Hemisphere to US influence, the Monroe Doctrine was doubly limiting; not only did it proscribe European nations from involvement in the Americas, it also restrained the diplomatic and political objectives of the United States to that territory. American military policy through the turn of the century did much to support this foreign policy goal. The American military doctrine laid down under Secretary of War Elihu Root was founded on the opinion that until the US possessed a navy strong enough to be divided between the two oceans, the main portion of the fleet would be stationed in the Atlantic and would stand ready to enforce the Monroe Doctrine to prevent the possible encroachment of European powers.⁽⁴⁰⁾

The easy victories against Spain in Cuba and the Philippines in the late nineteenth century lulled Americans into a sense of military complacency in which they believed they could enjoy all the fruits of world power with no commensurate commitment of military strength. As American eyes turned toward more distant foreign policy objectives, such as those in the Far East, the American military policy remained stagnantly rooted in defense of the North American continent. Consequently, John Hay, the American Secretary of State under President Theodore Roosevelt, was impotent to check Japanese expansionism in the Far East through his diplomatic efforts. America's military policy, more particularly its naval doctrine, allowed for no means of projecting her influence that far away from its shores.⁽⁴¹⁾

Neither was the army free from such myopia. Between 1911 and the spring of 1917, American military interests focused on the conflict with Mexico which resulted in invasions by American forces in 1914 and 1916. Historian Edward M. Coffman argues that even though there was no formal declaration of war with Mexico, the tension caused by these events and the possibility of an escalation of the conflict dominated military thinking in this period. This tunnel-visioned concern with exclusive defense of American soil precluded any serious consideration of the events in Europe even as the President was suggesting through the House-Grey Memorandum that the US might fight alongside the Allies against Germany.⁽⁴²⁾

By the time of the First World War, the United States clearly had interests that exceeded its geographic boundaries. Military policy, however, had not kept pace with diplomatic expansion. The Naval Act of 116 had indeed launched a far-reaching buildup of the battle fleet with the eventual goal of sixty capital ships by 1925. To begin progress toward this goal it had authorized the expenditure of $315 million on ten battleships, six battle cruisers and support vessels. In spite of this expansion, such naval policy still created an unbalanced fleet, the very weakness that would have prevented adequate defense of the Philippines in the event of war with Japan: Construction Authorized by Naval Act of 1916.⁽⁴³⁾

Ship Type	Number Authorized	First Year Appropriations
Battleships	10	4
Battle Cruisers	6	4
Light Cruisers	10	4
Destroyers	50	20
Fleet Submarines	9	0
Coast Submarines	59	30
Fuel Ships	3	1
Repair Ships	1	0
Transports	1	0
Hospital Ships	1	1
Destroyer Tenders	1	0
Submarine Tenders	1	0
Ammunition Ships	2	1
Gunboats	2	1

The US would be at war for more than three and a half months before it revised this Naval Act, and even then the resultant policy was rather ludicrous. The government spent $25 million on wooden submarine chasers, and although it contracted for $250 million worth of destroyers, only forty- four were completed during the war; the remaining 223 were built after the Armistice. Likewise, serious policy-making and strategic planning for the army would have to wait.⁽⁴⁴⁾

Preparedness, of course, had ultimately been completely unrelated to realistic military policy. Support for this policy had been wide, but shallow and short-lived. Most proponents -- especially Wilson himself -- had viewed it not as a prelude to war, but rather as war's alternative. However strong public and political support might have seemed for sound military planning, preparedness did not mark a turning point in the American view toward the role and nature of the military, and it was inadequate in the final reckoning to overcome the major hurdles which stood in the way of such a goal.

A second hindrance to military planning, the nation's prevailing isolationist mood, cannot be discounted. Many segments of American society clearly expressed their desire to remain above the fray which had engulfed Europe. Wilson's admonishment to remain neutral in thought as well as action was as much a reflection of American opinion as it was a guidepost for US policy. Significant minorities of the American public, including the eight million German- Americans and four million Irish-Americans, had little desire to assist the Entente. Even though most "old-stock" Americans seemed to favor the British and French, they still believed that the wisest path for America was neutrality, either because they believed that the Allies would win as a matter of course, because they believed that the conflict involved little direct American interest or because, as was the case with many pro-Allied intellectuals, because they were idealistic pacifists. Even Wilson's Anglophile ambassador to Great Britain, Walter Hines Page, wrote on the eve of the war, "Again and ever I thank Heaven for the Atlantic Ocean."⁽⁴⁵⁾

Not only did Americans feel geographically separated from the conflict, but they felt morally distant as well. Even some of Wilson's political rivals initially supported the desire for neutrality, with notable exceptions including Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus Peabody Gardner, the Massachusetts Republican who warned in October 1914 that "bullets cannot be stopped by bombast nor powder vanquished by platitudes." Wisconsin Senator Robert M. LaFollette's commitment to American non-intervention would outlast even Wilson's, and former President William Howard Taft wrote:

	[The war] is a cataclysm.  It is a retrograde step in Christian civilization....  All
	Europe is to be a battlefield....

While we can be sure that such a war as this, taking it by and large, will be a burden upon the United States and is a great misfortune, looked at solely from the standpoint of the United States, we have every reason to be happy that we are able to preserve strict neutrality in respect to it.⁽⁴⁶⁾

Women activists in America also staunchly opposed US involvement. Within days of the outbreak of the war in 1914, women in New York began planning a peace parade for 29 August to protest the horrors of warfare. Decrying war's destructive effects on the protection, nurture, fulfillment, conservation, and ascent of human life, prominent social worker Jane Addams helped to form the Women's Peace Party, hoping that if "women in Europe -- in the very countries which are now at war -- receive a message from the women of America solemnly protesting against this sacrifice, they may take courage to formulate their own." Addams even persuaded the American business leader Henry Ford to finance an attempt to initiate a peace settlement, and on 4 December he sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey, in his chartered "peace ship," the Oscar II of the Scandinavian-American Line. In such a strong and homogenous climate of opinion, active military planning appeared at once useless, absurd and even dangerous, and therefore was to be avoided.⁽⁴⁷⁾

The civilian-military relationship that existed before 1917 formed the third of the obstacles to a coordinated and realistic approach to military planning in the period before 1917. While the President clearly could have formed no military policy without the consent of Congress, and while the legislators had proven reluctant to fight the inertia of domestically focused planning, Wilson himself showed no inclination that he desired a significantly broader or more cohesive approach to policy-making than the lawmakers were willing to give. The President and some others in the Administration viewed the military as having little if any role in the formation of domestic policy. When tensions between America and Japan mounted in April and May 1913 following he California legislature's adoption of a measure prohibiting Japanese land ownership in that state, fears mounted among navy leaders that Japan might attempt an attack on the Philippines. The Joint Board of the Army and Navy recommended the dispatch of three American warships to defend those islands, but the President refused and ordered the Joint Board to hold no further meetings until ordered to do so. Wilson's first Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, was led by this incident to remark, "[military officers] could not be trusted to say what we should or should not do, till we actually got into war."⁽⁴⁸⁾

Wilson himself staunchly defended the constitutional dictate of civilian command over the military. He was appalled in the summer of 1918 when he received an unsolicited etching that portrayed him in military uniform. He replied to the artist that:

Putting me in uniform violates a very fundamental principle of our institutions, namely, that the military power is subordinate to the civil. . . . The armed forces of the country must be the instruments of the authority by which policy [is]determined. . . . I do not think this is a mere formal scruple on my part. I believe that it goes to the root of things.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Such an atmosphere proved harsh to any approaches to military policy, even in the most theoretical form, which exceeded Wilson's narrowly dictated restrictions.

In retrospect, then, sound, American military policy- making, despite the hoopla surrounding the preparedness campaign, seemed doomed from the beginning. The military planners were hardly inclined to pursue a policy suited to the realities of America's relationship with the European war, even had they operated under free reign. Such uninhibited planning, however, was impossible in the context of American isolationism and in light of Wilson's personal attitudes toward the military, especially during the election campaign in 1916. The German military leaders correctly assessed the condition of America's military at the end of 1916; even after wrangling with neutral rights and submarine warfare and after trumpeting the bugle of preparedness, the nation had no means at that time to wage war in Europe. Ironically, it was Germany's own decision which would spark change in American military planning. Fearing nothing from Wilson and the United States, the Germans themselves chose war. There seemed little indication that the US would have radically altered its military policy in the near future had events proceeded as they appeared at the close of 1916. The German resumption of submarine warfare, however, guaranteed that it would.

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1. Henry L. Stimson, "What is the Matter with Our Army,"

Independent 72 (18 April 1912): 827-28. See also the other

articles in the series: Major General Leonard Wood, 301-04;

Brigadier General W.W. Wotherspoon, 338-44; Brigadier

General Clarence R. Edwards, 408-11; Lieutenant Colonel

Hunter Legget, 460-64; Major George H. Shelton, 619-23; and

Brigadier General Robert K. Evans, 777-80. This and the

following three paragraphs come from: John M. Palmer,

America in Arms (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941),

142-46; "The Organization of the Land Forces of the United

States," 1:69-128.

2. Other war plans existed, including contingencies for

hostilities with Great Britain and a plan for an invasion of

Canada.

3. "War Plan Black," War Portfolios, General Board Records, Navy Department, Washington, cited in John A.S. Grenville and George Berkeley Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy: Studies in Foreign Policy, 1873-1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 319.

4. "War Plan Orange," cited in ibid., 317-18.

5. William G. Haan to Charles Crawford, 1 August 1914, quoted in Coffman, "American Military and Strategic Policy in World War I," 70; Martin and Kreidberg, History of Military Mobilization , 189-90; John W. Adams, "The Influences Affecting Naval Shipbuilding Legislation, 1910-1916," Naval War College Review 22 (December 1969): 52.

6. Walter Millis, Road to War: America, 1914-1917 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1935), 164; John M. Cooper, Jr., "World War I: European Origins and American Intervention," Virginia Quarterly Review 56 (Winter 1980): 8-9; Wilson to Garrison and Wilson to Daniels, 21 July 1915, PWW , 34:4-5.

7. Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1979), 21-46, updated edition of Link, Wilson, the Diplomatist: A Look at His Major Foreign Policies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963 [1957]); May, The First World War and American Isolation, 1914-1917 , 175-78.

8. Wilson, "A Colloquy with a Group of Antipreparedness Leaders," 8 May 1916, PWW , 36:645-46; Link and Chambers, "Woodrow Wilson as Commander-in-Chief," 321-22.

9. Robert E. Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest in American Foreign Relations: The Great Transformation of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 206-07.

10. Ibid., 132-33; George C. Herring, Jr., "James Hay and the Preparedness Controversy," Journal of Southern History 30 (November 1964): 383; New York Times 26 May and 26 August 1915; Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921), 240-41.

11. Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon , 40.

12. Bliss to Garrison, 15 February 1915, Bliss Papers, Box 189, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, cited in Ball, Of Responsible Command , 133. Garrison to Macomb, 11 March 1915, and Bliss to Macomb, 17 March 1915, Record Group 165 (Records of Chief of Staff, War Plans, and War College Division), File 9053-1, National Archives, Washington, DC (hereafter, RG 165, NA), cited in Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon , 44; Wilson to Garrison, 21 July 1915, PWW , 34:4; Bliss had been appointed Assistant Chief of Staff on 13 February 1915. Frederick Palmer, Bliss, Peacemaker: The Life and Letters of General Tasker Howard Bliss (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1934), 102.

13. Scott to Garrison, 13 May 1915, Box 18, The Papers of Hugh L. Scott, Library of Congress Manuscript Division (hereafter, Scott Papers, LOC); Scott to Macomb, 16 June 1915, RG 165/9053-33, NA, and Macomb to Scott, 18 June 1915, RG 165/9053-34, NA, cited in Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon , 47.

14. Epitome of Military Policy," 10 July 1915, RG

165/9053-49, NA, cited in Finnegan, Against the Specter of a

Dragon , 47-8.

15. "Study No. 7," May 1915, RG 165/9053-22, NA; Memorandum for Chief of Staff on Report of Captain Nolan, 30 June 1915, RG 165/9053-40, NA, cited in ibid., 49-50.

Finnegan notes that the War College Division's assumption that Germany could land 435,000 troops and 91,457 animals on the East Coast in 15.8 days was absurd, suggesting as it does that the US Navy would be "impotent to prevent the troop-carrying armadas from shuttling across the Atlantic with the regularity of the Staten Island Ferry."

16. See Chapters 3 through 5 of this thesis.

17. Statement of a Proper Military Policy," 114; James L. Abrahamson, America Arms for a New Century: The Making of a Great Military Power (New York: The Free Press, 1981),105-06.

18. Washington Post, 21 August 1915, and Baltimore Sun, 24 August 1915; According to Link and Chambers, the most often cited source for this claim is Frederick Palmer, Newton D. Baker: America at War, 1:40-41. Palmer himself cites an undated memorandum by Major General Tasker H. Bliss who supposedly heard the story from Assistant Secretary of War Henry C. Breckinridge. The editors of the Papers of Woodrow Wilson, however, have been unable to find any direct evidence to support the contention. Link and Chambers, "Woodrow Wilson as Commander in Chief," 346.

19. Memorandum for Chief of Staff Hugh L. Scott from Brig. Gen. Macomb, Chief of the War College Division, August 1915, RG 165/6966-152, NA; Memorandum from M.B. Mercer, Chief Clerk, War College Division, 31 January 1916, RG 165/6966-176, NA.

20. Memoranda by W.H. Johnston, 17 June 1915, RG 165/9053-38, NA, and 14 August 1915, RG 165/9053-71, NA, cited in Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon , 51.

21. Garrison to Wilson, 17 September 1915, PWW , 34:482-85. Garrison to Macomb, 2 August 195, RG 165/9053-49, NA, cited in ibid., 51-2.

22. "Statement of a Proper Military Policy for the United States," 1:113-35.

23. Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon , 53-5; Herring, "James Hay and the Preparedness Controversy," 389; Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 15 of the US Constitution grants Congress the power "to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." It makes no explicit provision for sending the Militia beyond the shores of the nation.

24. New York Times , 22 September 1915; Herring, "James Hay and the Preparedness Controversy," 388; Martha Derthick, The National Guard in Politics , Harvard Political Studies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 33-44.

25. Sadler to Wilson, 30 October 1915, PWW , 35:138-41. See also John Whiteclay Chambers, II, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America (New York: Free Press, 1987), 107-12. Much of the opposition to the Selective Service Bill in May 1917 would be based on similar sentiment, as indicated by Mississippi Senator James K. Vardaman's fear that conscription of blacks would put "arrogant strutting representatives of the black soldiery in every community," quoted in David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 159.

26. Wilson to Richard Olney, 7 February 1916, PWW, 36:138. The texts of the President's speeches can be found in ibid., 36:4-19, 26-48, 52-73, 75-85, 87-122; for newspaper accounts of the campaign, see New York Times , 27 January - 3 February, 1916. See also Arthur S. Link, Wilson , vol. 4, Confusions and Crises, 1915-1916 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 45-9.

27. William Jennings Bryan, "Do You Want War?" The Commoner 16 (February 1916): 1-2; Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917 , The New American Nation Series, ed. Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 185-86; New York Times , 28 and 31 January 1916.

28. Cleveland News , 28 July 1915; Hay to Wilson, 5 February 1916, PWW , 36:134-35. Coincidentally enough, this plan, which also provided for the creation of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at educational institutions, had been drawn up with the assistance of the General Staff's old nemesis, former Adjutant General Fred C. Ainsworth.

29. Garrison to Wilson, 9 February 1916, PWW , 36:143-44; Wilson to Hay, 18 January 1916, ibid., 35:499-500; Wilson to Garrison, 10 February 1916, ibid., 36:162-64; Herring, "James Hay and the Preparedness Controversy," 394; Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon , 90.

30. Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon , 149-53

31. "Report of the Secretary of War," in War Department Annual Reports, 1916 ,23-59; Kreidberg and Henry, History of Military Mobilization , 193-96; Paxson, "The American War Government, 1917-1918," 56-7. Paxson points out that it was the provision for the advisory committee which would yield the great power of the Council of National Defense, since otherwise it would have merely been a conglomeration of Cabinet officials each with their own separate departments and concerns.

32. For a more supportive interpretation of Hay's plan to federalize the militia, see Herring, "James Hay and the Preparedness Controversy," 402-04. Herring argues that while Hay's proposal did not adequately prepare the US for involvement in the war, neither would the Continental Army, which would not have reached its full size until 1921. In addition, Herring argues that Hay's plan facilitated the incorporation of the National Guard in the nation's defense program once America had declared war and that those Guard units which did see combat fought well under the able leadership of commanders such as Douglas MacArthur. While Herring's argument does force one to recognize the merit of the National Guard, the US would nonetheless be forced to abandon the militia as the mainstay of American defense once the full demands of involvement were realized.

33. Link, Wilson , vol. 4, Confusions and Crises, 1915-1916 , 101-41.

34. Scott to Macomb, 24 February 1916, RG 165/9433-1, NA.

35. Confidential Memorandum for the Chief of Staff [Scott], from Macomb, 29 February 1916, RG 165/9433-1, NA.

36. David E. Cronan, ed., The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus Daniels, 1913-21 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963).

37. Arthur Walworth, Woodrow Wilson , vol. 2, World Prophet , 2nd rev. ed. (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1965 [1958]), 32-35; Memorandum from Squire to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, 27 April 1916, Box 1, Document 64, the Papers of Newton D. Baker, Library of Congress Manuscript Division (hereafter, Baker Papers, LOC).

38. Evidently this plan dd not survive. It is referred to in a memorandum of 14 November 1916, Record of the Joint Army and Navy Board , cited in Grenville and Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy , 334-35.

39. Memoranda from Davis, 17 November 1916, RG 165/9910-1, 18 November 1916, RG 165/9910-2, 27 November 1916, RG 165/9910-3, and 18 December 1916, RG 165/9910-4, NA. Kuhn to Davis, 5 February 1917, RG 165/9910-6, NA. See also Ronald H. Spector, "'You're Not Going to Send Soldiers Over There Are You!': The American Search for an Alternative to the Western Front, 1916-1917," Military Affairs 36 (February 1972): 1-2

40. Grenville and Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy , 300-307. See also Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People , 10th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980 [1940]), 475-76 and 483-84.

41. Norman A. Graebner, Foundations of American Foreign Policy: A Realist Appraisal from Franklin to McKinley (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1985), 351-55; Grenville and Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy , 312-16; Richard W. Turk, "Defending the New Empire, 1900-1914," in In Peace and War: Interpretations of American Naval History, 1775-1978 , ed. Kenneth J. Hagan, Contributions in Military History 16 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978): 193-97.

42. Coffman, "American Military and Strategic Policy in World War I," 70-2.

43. Navy Yearbook , 1916, 480-81, cited in Adams, "The Influences Affecting Naval Shipbuilding Legislation," 62. See also David F. Trask, "The American Navy in a World at War, 1914-1918," in In Peace and War: Interpretations of American Naval History, 1775-1978 , ed. Kenneth J. Hagan, Contributions in Military History 16 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978): 208-09.

44. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I , 47; Paulo E. Coletta, "The American Naval Leaders' Preparations for War," in The Great War, 1914-18: Essays on the Military, Political and Social History of the First World War , ed. R.J.Q. Adams (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1990): 174-75.

45. Page to Wilson, 29 July 1914, PWW , 30:314-16; Daniel M. Smith, The Great Departure: The United States in World War I, 1914-1920 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 2-3; Arthur S. Link, Wilson , vol 3: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914-1915 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 18-19.

46. New York Times , 16 October 1914; John M. Cooper, Jr., The Vanity of Power: American Isolation and the First World War, 1914-1917 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1969), 19-32; Cooper, "World War I: European Origins and American Intervention," 7-8; William Howard Taft, "A Message to the People of the United States," Independent 79 ( 10 August 1914): 98-99.

47. Jane Addams, "What War is Destroying," Advocate of Peace 77 (1915): 64-5. See also Barbara J. Steinson, American Women's Activism in World War I, The Modern American History Series, ed. Frank Freidel (New York: Garland Publishing, 1982), 1-47; and Steinson, "'The Mother Half of Humanity': American Women in the Peace and Preparedness Movements in World War I," in Women, War, and Revolution , ed. Carol R. Berkin and Clara M. Lovett (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980): 259-84; Millis, Road to War , 242-45.

48. Bryan quoted in Ernest R. May, "The Development of Political-Military Consultation in the United States," Political Science Quarterly 70 (June 1955): 166; Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917 , 86-7. Members of the Joint Board seem to have taken the Presidential admonishment to heart, since Henry Breckinridge, Assistant Secretary of War from 1913 to 1916, recalled it in a 1958 interview as "a board I fooled with on hot summer afternoons when there was nothing else to do," quoted in Edward M. Coffman, "American Military and Strategic Policy in World War I," 68-70.

49. Wilson to Bernhardt Wall, 8 July 1918, PWW , 48:557. The etching was sent to Wilson on 17 June 1918 and is shown in the illustration section of ibid., 48:358-59.

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