Possibly the tests, ever so swift in war, were swifter in France than at home. It was soon evident that some regular officers could rise to their tasks, and that some could not. Some of them had fallen into habits that did not permit long concentration of mind. They had not the physical vitality to endure long hours of labor. They were obsessed by small details, when they were suddenly given charge of a department store instead of a little store with one clerk for an assistant. Some were simply overwhelmed by their new burdens, or more possessed with the pride of authority than its efficient exertion. They were the ones who would show reserve officers that building a bridge or baking a loaf of bread or putting up a crane or organizing a laboratory was a different matter when you did it for the army. Some who had vitality and concentration were hopelessly lacking in capacity for organization. They were particularly impressed with their awful responsibility in having to train reserve officers not only in combat but in the Services of Supply. They would not admit that there was anything about the army which a reserve officer could do as well as a regular. The capacity of many for prolonged controversy over theory and for writing memoranda was astounding; a result of the days of talking "shop" and speculative discussion at the posts. Where naval officers have always a fleet in being, and are always on a war footing—which means a successful secretary of the navy if he will only sign the papers placed on his desk—army officers had only an army in imagination, which meant that a "successful" secretary of war must indeed be a great man.
From the first there was a struggle in France between two elements: between the ruthlessly progressive and the reactionaries who were set in traditions; between the able, energetic, ambitious, enduring, and others who might have finer but not as aggressive qualities; between the men who were sure of themselves and those who were not. For his immediate advisers Pershing had to turn to the Leavenworth men, who had been trained in the theory of a large organization and who had used it as the basis of intelligent observation of the operations of the French and British armies. A Leavenworth man believed in Leavenworth men. He had enormous capacity for desk work which he had developed as a student at Leavenworth. A scholastic preparation thus became the criterion for practice in organization. Leavenworth men believed in the gospel of driving hard work; of rewards for success, and merciless elimination for failure—which is the basic theory of successful war.
All armies are looking either back at the last war or ahead to the next. One element, leaning back on its oars, considers the lessons of the last war, if it were won, as setting all precedents for present policy. Another, usually the men who were not in the last war except as captains and lieutenants, considers that new conditions will again set new precedents in the next war. The officers in the forties in the days of the war with Spain and the Philippine rebellion, who chafed at the Civil War traditions of their seniors, now had command of divisions, while in the Great War the Leavenworth men who were in the thirties and forties were pushing up from below. If the later generation lacked rank on this occasion, it had power in France as the result of Leavenworth and the new staff system, while promotion by selection called its ambition.
Leavenworth graduates sat in the seats of the mighty on the right and left hand of the Commander-in-Chief; the tables of organization were of their devising; the orders signed by the Chief of Staff, which the divisional and the corps generals and all the generals of the Services of Supply had to obey, originated from this inner circle in the barracks buildings at Chaumont, which was surrounded with professional mystery. Divisional and corps chiefs of staff were Leavenworth men in touch with the inner circle. The disrespectful thought of these officers as the Leavenworth "clique"; but it was not the fashion to do much thinking aloud about them, such was their power. They did not think of themselves as a clique; not even the members of a secret society think of themselves in that way. They were a group of veterans, who if they had not the scars won in battle—we had had no great battles since the Civil War—had burned the midnight oil and played the war game together. They had, as volunteers, in order to learn their profession, when the people of the country knew no more of their existence than if they had been in a monastery, gone through a post-graduate course as rigorous as West Point itself. They thought of themselves as apostles, their voices unheard in a land saturated with pacifism and indifference, who, in fasting, prayer, and industry, had studied the true gospel in their holy of holies. They alone had conned the pages of the sacred books behind the altar where the regular army kept the sacred fires burning.
"War is the greatest game on earth," as one of them said. In this thought they had the same reason for enthusiasm in study as a chemist in his experiments or an architect in his building. In their school in the wheat fields of Kansas they were manipulating in theory forces which made a hundred million dollar corporation an incidental pawn. But they were dealing with the imaginary, and the managers of the corporation with the real. When the war came all their forces of imagination became real.
To be a "Leavenworth man" meant a title to staff position, which you must take whether you wanted it or not. There were many excellent officers who never went to Leavenworth; officers who were masterly company, battalion, and regimental commanders, and who had the quality of natural leaders. They did not want to train for the staff. They preferred the line. Their ambition, nursed through the years of service, with never an assignment to Washington, was to make sure of a command in the field if war came.
"I had rather lead a battalion of infantry than be chief of staff of an army," as one of them said. Another said, early in the war, "I'm all for the Leavenworth men to do the chessboard work, but we'll find that they have studied so much that some of them don't know how to make decisions when they are dealing with a real instead of a paper army. I don't envy them. I obey their orders. I'll make a good regiment; that is all I ask—let me be with troops." He was right in saying that the men who stood high at Leavenworth ran the danger of being too academic for practical war, as surely as the best students at college are unfitted for practical business life. Yet all criticism of the Leavenworth coterie runs foul of the question: "What should we have done without them in France?" If you have to build a great bridge and there is no engineer who has ever erected one, why, it would be better to choose a man who had been through a first-class engineering school to make the plans, than to choose the contractors who got out the stone or sunk the caissons, or the financiers who furnished the funds. Every Leavenworth man had pet ideas of his own, as the result of his study, which he sought to apply when authority came to him, with inevitable interference with team-play. He had all the enthusiasm of a graduate of the Beaux-Arts who is given a million-dollar appropriation to build a state capitol as his first assignment.
In relation to our little army with its scattered posts, their problem in making a great army organization was much the same as the transformation of Japan from medievalism to modernism, or amalgamating and improving all the small plants of individual business of fifty years ago in a year's time into a modern trust. The thing required broad vision. Some of them possessed it, but not all, even if they were Americans. Such was the loyalty of graduates to Leavenworth that I have heard them say that it was the best staff school in the world. A French officer might respond: "Perhaps, but we have had more opportunities for practice in handling large bodies of troops." The British and French staffs thought that our men were worthy of the highest praise; but they thought that our staff was inexperienced and sophomoric. They would not have been averse, as we know, to taking over the staff direction of our army, which, considering the feeling of the line toward the staff on all occasions, would have led to additional inter-allied friction. Relations would be smoother by having the resentment of the men who bore the brunt of casualties directed into home channels.
The Leavenworth men, thinking as army officers and for the army, did not wish to yield power. They wanted to establish a staff system and a tradition for a large American force, in the hope that universal service would be accepted and continued, making the system permanent. Where were they to get the host of additional staff officers required for the armies, the corps, and the divisions in battle? A few student observers could be sent to the British and French staffs; but not a sufficiently large number when any outsider was in the way in the crowded quarters of a series of dugouts, or the ruined houses of a village. Moreover, Leavenworth wanted no system half British and half French, but one suited to our own army for all time. Leavenworth was always thinking of our military future. Following our national bent for excellence and this thought of the future, which led us to aim for the best gas mask, the best aeroplane motor, the best machine-gun, the best gas, the best of everything, Leavenworth proposed to make the best staff. To this tendency of ours to seek perfection the Allies might reply: "Perfection is all very well; but we have tested equipment, and a staff system the result of three years' trial, and time is valuable against the German."
Just as the West Point system, which takes the "plebes" in hand, was being applied in our training camps, so Leavenworth staff college was reproduced in France in the ancient city of Langres, near Chaumont, which had been a fortress in many wars. Here regulars worked beside reserves, while the regulars had no special privileges except the first choice of horses to ride. Here they were to learn how to solve the tactical management of troops in action, the technique of all the different G's of the staff: G-1 and G-4, which had to do with transport and supply; G-2, which had to do with intelligence; G-3, with operations, and G-5, with training.