If much of these military preparations was not translated into accomplishment before the war ended, it was because the United States was preparing wisely for a long struggle and it seemed necessary that the foundations should be broad and deep. "America was straining her energies towards a goal," said the Director of Munitions, "toward the realization of an ambition which, in the production of munitions, dropped the year 1918 almost out of consideration altogether, which indeed did not bring the full weight of American men and matériel into the struggle even in 1919, but which left it for 1920, if the enemy had not yet succumbed to the growing American power, to witness the maximum strength of the United States in the field." It was the knowledge of this preparation which, to some extent, helped to convince the German General Staff of the futility of further resistance and thus to bring the war to an early end.
The dependence of the United States upon the Allies for equipment and munitions does not deserve the vitriolic anathemas of certain critics. The country did not enter the struggle as if it expected to fight the war single-handed. Distribution of labor and supplies between the United States and the Allies was merely a wise and economic measure. At their own request, the Allies were furnished with that which they most needed—money, food, and man-power. In return they provided the United States with the artillery and machine guns which they could spare and which they could manufacture more cheaply and rapidly. Finally there is the outstanding fact, of which America may always be proud, that this heterogeneous democracy, organized, so far as organization existed, for the pursuits of peace, was able in the space of sixteen months, to provide an army capable of fighting successfully one of the most difficult campaigns of the war, and that which led directly to the military defeat of Germany.
The ultimate success of President Wilson's war policies could hardly have been achieved except by the process of centralization which he never lost from view. His insistence upon centralized responsibility and control in political matters was paralleled in the military field. Nothing illustrates this principle better than the centralization of the American Expeditionary Force under the absolute and unquestioned command of General Pershing. The latter was given free rein. The jealousies which so weakened the Union armies during the first years of the Civil War were ruthlessly repressed. No generals were sent to France of whom he did not approve. When the Allies threatened to appeal to Washington over Pershing's head, President Wilson turned a deaf ear.
In the United States, the President sought similar centralization through the General Staff. It was this body which prepared the different plans for the Draft Act, the Pershing expedition, and finally for the gigantic task of putting a million men in France by the summer of 1918. To the staff was given the formulation of the training programme along the lines recommended by Pershing. Always, however, it was hampered by the multiple responsibility that characterized the old-style army machine with its bureau chiefs competing with each other, with the navy, and with the Allies. Quartermaster Department, Ordnance Department, Signal Corps, and the other bureaus were uncoördinated, and inevitable waste and inefficiency followed all their operations. It was the crisis that arose from the problem of supplies, in the winter of 1917, that furnished the President with the opportunity to cut red-tape and secure the centralization he desired. That opportunity came with the blanket powers bestowed upon him by the Overman Act, the full significance of which can only be appreciated after a consideration of the measures taken to centralize the industrial resources of the nation.
CHAPTER VII
THE HOME FRONT
On May 18, 1917, President Wilson issued a proclamation in which are to be found the following significant sentences:
In the sense in which we have been wont to think of armies there are no armies in this struggle, there are entire nations armed. Thus, the men who remain to till the soil and man the factories are no less a part of the army that is in France than the men beneath the battle flags. It must be so with us. It is not an army that we must shape and train for war—it is a Nation. To this end our people must draw close in one compact front against a common foe. But this cannot be if each man pursues a private purpose. All must pursue one purpose. The Nation needs all men, but it needs each man, not in the field that will most pleasure him, but in the endeavor that will best serve the common good. Thus, though a sharpshooter pleases to operate a trip-hammer for the forging of great guns, and an expert machinist desires to march with the flag, the Nation is being served only when the sharpshooter marches and the machinist remains at his levers. The whole Nation must be a team, in which each man shall play the part for which he is best fitted.
If President Wilson deserves severe criticism for his failure to endorse adequate plans of preparation for war while his country was at peace, he should be given due credit for his appreciation that the home front must be organized if the fighting front was to be victorious. He perceived clearly that it was necessary to carry into the industrial life of the nation that centralizing process which characterized his military policy. That the nation at home was made to feel itself part of the fighting forces and coöperated enthusiastically and effectively in the organization of the national resources was not the least of the triumphs of the United States. Such organization demanded great sacrifice, not merely of luxuries or comforts, but of settled habits, which are difficult to break. It must necessarily be of an emergency character, for the United States possessed no bureaucratic system like that which obtains on the continent of Europe for the centralization of trade, manufactures, food production, and the thousand activities that form part of economic life. But the event proved that both the spirit and the brains of the American people were equal to the crisis.