Preparedness Movement

The Preparedness Movement, a campaign to improve America's defense capabilities, began around 1910 and continued past the beginning of World War I. The movement can arguably be dated to Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood becoming the Army chief of staff in July of 1910. Wood used his position to attack the problems of the armed services with the same zeal he had displayed as military governor of Cuba from 1900 to 1902. Wood and his staff instituted efficiency measures to prepare the military to meet the demands of defending the nation in the 20th century. In 1910 Wood inherited an army of 100,000 men spread across the globe in China, the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Panama Canal Zone. These out-posts, along with the resources needed to defend the long continental coastline of the United States, meant the Army was spread thin. The strength of the U.S. Navy (at the time ranked third in the world behind Britain and Germany) mitigated that vulnerability, although more than 90 percent of its ships were understaffed. Still, it was the strength of the Navy that allowed the Army to wither while the United States was protected behind its ocean moats. When pleas to Congress met with resistance, Wood and his followers found other ways to prepare the Army. Wood then sought to harness the power of public opinion to overcome a tight fisted Congress.

Wood gathered like-minded individuals such as former president Theodore Roosevelt, military historian Frederick L. Huidekoper, and Henry Cabot Lodge to support his initiatives. Their first action was to establish an Army League to lobby for Army issues much as the already established Navy League did for the Navy. In December 1914 the National Security League formed under the leadership of S. Stanwood Menken. Claiming prominent citizens among its members, including financiers and business executives, the National Security League appealed for a congressional investigation of the nation's defenses. These civilian lobbyists could make a more persistent and vigorous case than Wood could as a member of the General Staff.

The Army also copied a naval program that took college students on board ship for a summer. Wood's idea was to bring college students to a summer camp to learn the rudiments of soldiering. Wood's camp at Gettysburg in 1913 was one of two that he sponsored. The aim of these camps was twofold: to provide military instruction and to expose future American leaders to military ideas. Thus these camps not only provided the Army with potential officers in a crisis but also introduced ideas and concepts to leaders who could then spread the doctrine of preparedness.

The beginning of the war in Europe in August 1914 stunned Americans who believed the world too civilized for war. It also made them all too aware of the shortcomings of the U.S. Army. The fighting on the Western Front in Europe shocked those Americans who could imagine their fate if the United States were made to face the winner of that conflict. Suddenly their ocean moat seemed much smaller, and General Wood's pleas for military preparedness more worthy of a hearing. The sinking of the Lusitania, a British ship with many Americans on board, by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, increased popular protests about and support for military preparedness and offered encouragement to preparedness advocates.

...