Preparedness Controversy

Preparedness Controversy (1914–1917).The outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914 provoked significant disagreement in the United States over its implications for America. Conservatives, who had espoused patriotic service and national power since the 1890s, saw the war as clear proof of the need to enlarge the military establishment. Reformers and radicals, suspicious of the motives of conservative business interests, viewed the conflict as an impressive argument against abandoning America's traditional antimilitarism.

The earliest agitation for greater “preparedness” was led by a small group of northeastern Anglophiles including the former president Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Their message, however, fell on largely deaf ears in the Woodrow Wilson administration and in the country.

All this changed when Germany initiated submarine warfare and especially after German U‐boats sank the Lusitania in May 1915. Newly formed and well‐financed preparedness organizations like the National Security League were swamped with applications. Magazines, books, and even movies described a possible military invasion of the United States. By July, Wilson, frustrated by the Lusitania negotiations and fearful of leaving the preparedness issue to his Republican opponents, was rethinking his position. On 20 October, in a stunning reversal, Wilson approved a proposal for a five‐year naval building program. On 4 November, he announced plans to expand the regular army and create a centralized new reserve, the “continental army.”

The left reacted with extreme hostility, for Wilson seemed to be renouncing a widely held belief that war is necessarily destructive of efforts to achieve social justice. In the resultant split in reformist ranks, a number of Democratic and Republican progressives united to oppose the president. Facing a strong congressional antipreparedness coalition, Wilson in February 1916 abandoned the continental‐army idea and accepted the federalization, in emergencies, of the National Guard—making a concession that led his secretary of war to resign. However, Wilson's new flexibility, together with the appointment of the antimilitarist Newton D. Baker as a secretary of war, rekindled confidence in the president among his former supporters. In March, the House voted to increase the army from 100,000 to 140,000 troops.

Subsequent events further weakened the antipreparedness forces. In May 1916, American intervention in Mexico and the German torpedoing of the Sussex prompted Congress to more than double the peacetime army and enlarge the National Guard. In June, the Senate, inspired by the sea battle of Jutland, voted to complete the administration's naval proposal in three, not five years; the House approved this in August.

During the 1916 presidential campaign, both parties posed as champions of preparedness, yet almost no one talked in terms of sending U.S. forces to Europe. Astonishingly, when Congress declared war in April 1917, the army still numbered only 5,791 officers and 121,797 enlisted men. Wilson had moved in the direction of preparedness but critics such as Theodore Roosevelt continued to argue that the nation remained ill‐prepared to assume its role as a global power.
See also Military, The; Peace Movements; World War I.

Bibliography

John Patrick Finnegan , Against the Specter of a Dragon: The Campaign for American Military Preparedness, 1914–1917, 1974.
David M. Kennedy , Over Here: The First World War and American Society, 1980.

Keith L. Nelson