US History/US History (Bureau Development Inc.)(1991).ISO/dp/0046/00467.txt

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$Pretitle{58}
$Title{American Military History
Chapter 16  Transition and Change:  1902-1917}
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$Author{Matlof, Maurice, General Editor}
$Affiliation{US Army}
$Subject{army
war
states
american
general
united
new
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troops
military}
$Volume{CMH Pub 30-1}
$Date{1985}
$Log{Chasing Pancho Villa*0046701.scf
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Book:        American Military History
Author:      Matlof, Maurice, General Editor
Affiliation: US Army
Volume:      CMH Pub 30-1
Date:        1985

Chapter 16  Transition and Change:  1902-1917

     For the United States the opening years of the twentieth century were a
time of transition and change.  At home they marked the beginning of a
peaceful revolution - often designated the "Progressive Era" - when political
leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt undertook to solve the economic and social
problems arising out of the rapid growth of large-scale industry in the late
nineteenth century.  Increasing public awareness of these problems as a result
of the writings of the "Muckrakers" and social reformers provided popular
support for efforts to solve them by legislative and administrative measures.
In foreign affairs it was a period when the country had to begin adjusting its
institutions and policies to the requirements of its new status as a world
power.  In spite of a tendency after the end of the War with Spain to follow
traditional patterns and go back to essentially isolationist policies, the
nation's new responsibility for overseas possessions, its expanding commercial
interests abroad, and the continued unrest in the Caribbean made a reversion
to insularity increasingly unfeasible.

     The changing conditions at home and abroad inevitably affected the
nation's military establishment.  During the decade and a half between the War
with Spain and American involvement in World War I, both the Army and the Navy
would undergo important reforms in organization and direction.  Although the
United States did not become a participant in any major conflict during these
years, both services were frequently called upon to assist with administration
of the newly acquired overseas possessions.  Both aided with protection of
investments abroad threatened by native insurrections, revolutions, and other
internal disturbances.  And both contributed in other ways to upholding the
vital interests of the nation in an era of greatly increased competition for
commercial advantage and colonial empire.

Modernizing the Armed Forces

     The intensification of international rivalries led most of the Great
Powers to seek additional protection and advantage in diplomatic alliances and
alignments.  By the early years of the twentieth century the increasingly
complex network of agreements had resulted in a new and precarious balance of
power in world affairs.  This balance was constantly in danger of being upset,
particularly because of an unprecedented arms race, characterized by rapid
enlargement of armies and navies and development of far more deadly weapons
and tactics.  While the United States remained aloof from "entangling
alliances," it nevertheless continued to modernize and strengthen its own
armed forces, giving primary attention to the Navy - the first line of
defense.

     The Navy's highly successful performance in the Spanish-American War
increased the willingness of Congress and the American public to support its
program of expansion and modernization.  For at least a decade after the war
Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, and other
leaders who favored a "Big Navy" policy with the goal of an American fleet
second only to that of Great Britain experienced little difficulty in securing
the necessary legislation and obtaining the funds required for the Navy's
expansion program.

     For the Navy another most important result of the War with Spain was the
decision to retain possessions in the Caribbean and the western Pacific.  In
the Caribbean the Navy acquired more bases for its operations such as that at
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.  The value of these bases soon became apparent as the
United States Pound itself intervening more frequently in the countries of
that region to protect its expanding investments and trade.  In the long run,
however, acquisition of the Philippines and Guam was even more significant,
for it committed the United States to defense of territory thousands of miles
distant from the home base.  American naval strength in the Pacific had to be
increased immediately to insure maintenance of a secure line of communications
for the land forces that had to be kept in the Philippines.  One way to
accomplish this increase, with an eye to economy of force, was to build a
canal across the Isthmus of Panama, so that Navy ships could move more rapidly
from the Atlantic to the Pacific as circumstances demanded.  Another was to
acquire more bases in the Pacific west of Hawaii, which was annexed in 1898.
Japan's spectacular naval victories in the war with Russia and Roosevelt's
dispatch of an American fleet on a round-the-world cruise lasting from
December 1907 to February 1909 drew public attention to the problem.  But most
Americans failed to perceive the growing threat of Japan to United States
possessions in the western Pacific, and the line of communications to the
Philippines remained incomplete and highly vulnerable.

     The Navy fared much better in its program to expand the fleet and
incorporate the latest technological developments in ship design and weapons.
The modernization program that had begun in the 1880's and had much to do with
the Navy's effectiveness in the Spanish-American War continued in the early
1900's.  Construction of new ships, stimulated by the war and Roosevelt's
active support, continued at a rapid rate after 1898 until Taft's
administration, and at a somewhat slower pace thereafter.  By 1917 the United
States had a Navy unmatched by any of the Great Powers except Great Britain
and Germany.

     The Army, aware of the serious deficiencies revealed in the War with
Spain and of the rapid technological changes taking place in the methods of
warfare, also undertook to modernize its weapons and equipment.  Development
of high-velocity, low-trajectory, clip-loading rifles capable of delivering a
high rate of sustained fire had already made obsolete the Krag-Jorgensen
rifle, adopted by the Army in 1892.  In 1903 the Regular Army began equipping
its units with the improved bolt-action, magazine-type Springfield rifle,
which incorporated the latest changes in weapons technology.  The campaigns of
1898 also had shown that the standard rod bayonet was too flimsy; starting in
1905, the Army replaced it by a one pound knife bayonet with a 16-inch blade.
In 1906 addition of a greater propellant charge in ammunition for the
Springfield provided even higher muzzle velocity and deeper penetration of the
bullet.  Combat at close quarters against the fierce charges of the Moros in
the Philippines demonstrated the need for a hand arm less cumbersome and
having greater impact than the .38-caliber revolver.  The Army found the
answer in the recently developed .45-caliber Colt automatic pistol, adopted in
1911.

     Far more significant in revolutionizing the nature of twentieth century
warfare than these improved hand weapons was the rapid-firing machine gun.
The manually operated machine gun - the Gatling gun - which the Army had
adopted in 1866, was employed successfully in the Indian wars and the
Spanish-American War.  American inventors, including Hiram Maxim, John
Browning, and Isaac N. Lewis, the last an officer in the Army's coast
artillery, took a leading part in developing automatic machine guns in the
years between the Civil War and World War I.  Weapons based upon their designs
were adopted by many of the armies of the world.  But not until fighting began
in World War I was it generally realized what an important role the machine
gun was to have in modern tactics.  Thus in the years between 1898 and 1916,
Congress appropriated only an average of $150,000 annually for procurement of
machine guns, barely enough to provide four weapons for each Regular regiment
and a few for the National Guard.  Finally in 1916 Congress voted $12 million
for machine gun procurement, but the War Department held up its expenditure
until 1917 while a board tried to decide which type of weapon was best suited
to the needs of the Army.

     Development of American artillery and artillery ammunition continued to
lag behind that of western European armies.  The Army did adopt in 1902 a new
basic field weapon, the 3-inch gun with an advanced recoil mechanism.  Also,
to replace the black powder that had been the subject of such widespread
criticism in the War with Spain, both the Army and the Navy took steps to
increase the domestic output of smokeless powder.  By 1903 production was
sufficient to supply most American artillery.

     Experience gained in the Spanish-American War also brought some
significant changes in the Army's coastal defense program.  The hurriedly
improvised measures taken during the war to protect Atlantic ports from
possible attack by the Spanish Fleet emphasized the need for modern seacoast
defenses.  Under the strategical concepts in vogue, construction and manning
of these defenses were primarily an Army responsibility since in wartime the
naval fleet had to be kept intact, ready to seek out and destroy the enemy's
fleet.  On the basis of recommendations by the Endicott Board, the Army
already had begun an ambitious coastal defense construction program in the
early 1890's and in 1905 a new board headed by Secretary of War William Howard
Taft made important revisions in this program with the goal of incorporating
the latest techniques and devices.  Added to the coastal defense arsenal were
fixed, floating, and mobile torpedoes and submarine mines.  At the same time,
the Army's Ordnance Department tested 16-inch rifles for installation in the
coastal defense fortifications, in keeping with the trend toward larger and
larger guns to meet the challenge of naval weapons of ever-increasing size.

     Of the many new inventions that came into widespread use in the early
twentieth century in response to the productive capacity of the new industrial
age, none was to have greater influence on military strategy, tactics, and
organization than the internal combustion engine.  It made possible the motor
vehicle, which, like the railroad in the previous century, brought a
revolution in military transportation, and the airplane and tank, both of
which would figure importantly in World War I.

Reorganization of the Army:  Establishment of the General Staff

     After the Spanish-American War the Army also underwent important
organizational and administrative changes aimed in part at overcoming some of
the more glaring defects revealed during the war.  Although the nation had won
the war with comparative ease, many Americans realized that the victory was
attributable more to the incompetence of the enemy than to any special
qualities displayed by the Army.  In fact, as a postwar investigating
commission appointed by President McKinley and headed by Maj. Gen. Granville
M. Dodge brought out, there was serious need for reform in the administration
and direction of the Army's high command and for elimination of widespread
inefficiency in the operations of the War Department.

     No one appreciated the need for reform more than Elihu Root, a New York
lawyer appointed Secretary of War in 1899 by McKinley.  The President had
selected Root primarily because he seemed well qualified to solve the legal
problems that would arise in the Army's administration of recently acquired
overseas possessions.  But Root quickly realized that if the Army was to be
capable of carrying out its new responsibilities as an important part of the
defense establishment of a world power, it had to undergo fundamental changes
in organization, administration, and training.  Root, as a former corporation
lawyer, tended to see the Army's problems as similar to those faced by
business executives.  "The men who have combined various corporations . . . in
what we call trusts," he told Congress, "have reduced the cost of production
and have increased their efficiency by doing the very same thing we propose
you shall do now, and it does seem a pity that the Government of the United
States should be the only great industrial establishment that cannot profit by
the lessons which the world of industry and of commerce has learned to such
good effect."

     Beginning in 1899, Root outlined in a series of masterful reports his
proposals for fundamental reform of Army institutions and concepts to achieve
that "efficiency" of organization and function required of armies in the
modern world.  He based his proposals partly upon recommendations made by his
military advisers (among the most trusted were Maj. Gen. Henry C. Corbin, The
Adjutant General, and Lt. Col. William H. Carter) and partly upon the views
expressed by officers who had studied and written about the problem in the
post-Civil War years.  Root arranged for publication of Col. Emory Upton's The
Military Policy of the United States (1904), an unfinished manuscript which
advocated a strong, expansible Regular Army as the keystone of an effective
military establishment.  Concluding that after all the true object of any army
must be "to provide for war," Root took prompt steps to reshape the American
Army into an instrument of national power capable of coping with the
requirements of modern warfare.  This objective could be attained, he hoped,
by integrating the bureaus of the War Department, the scattered elements of
the Regular Army, and the militia and volunteers.

     Root perceived as the chief weakness in the organization of the Army the
long-standing division of authority, dating back to the early nineteenth
century, between the Commanding General of the Army and the Secretary of War.
The Commanding General exercised discipline and control over the troops in the
field while the Secretary, through the military bureau chiefs, had
responsibility for administration and fiscal matters.  Root proposed to
eliminate this division of authority between the Secretary of War and the
Commanding General and to reduce the independence of the bureau chiefs.  The
solution, he suggested, was to replace the Commanding General of the Army with
a Chief of Staff, who would be the responsible adviser and executive agent of
the President through the Secretary of War.  Under Root's proposal,
formulation of broad American policies would continue under civilian control.

     A lack of any long-range planning by the Army had been another obvious
deficiency in the War with Spain, and Root proposed to overcome this by the
creation of a new General Staff, a group of selected officers who would be
free to devote full time to preparation of military plans.  Planning in past
national emergencies, he pointed out, nearly always had been inadequate
because it had to be done hastily by officers already overburdened with other
duties.  Pending Congressional action on his proposals, Root in 1901 appointed
an ad hoc War College Board to act as an embryonic General Staff.  In early
1903, in spite of some die-hard opposition, Congress adopted the Secretary of
War's recommendations for both a General Staff and a Chief of Staff, but
rejected his request that certain of the bureaus be consolidated.

     By this legislation Congress provided the essential framework for more
efficient administration of the Army.  Yet legislation could not change
overnight the long-held traditions, habits, and views of most Army officers,
or of some Congressmen and the American public.  Secretary Root realized that
effective operation of the new system would require an extended program of
re-education.  This need for re-education was one important reason for the
establishment of the Army War College in November 1903.  Its students, already
experienced officers, would receive education in problems or the War
Department and of high command in the field.  As it turned out they actually
devoted much of their time to war planning, becoming in effect the part of the
General Staff which performed this function.

     In the first years after its establishment the General Staff achieved
relatively little in the way of genuine staff planning and policy making.
While staff personnel did carry out such appropriate tasks as issuing in 1905
the first Field Service Regulations for government and organization of troops
in the field, drawing up the plan for an expeditionary force sent to Cuba in
1906, and supervising the Army's expanding school system, far too much of
their time was devoted to day-to-day routine administrative matters.

     The General Staff did make some progress in overcoming its early
weaknesses.  Through experience, officers assigned to the staff gradually
gained awareness of its real purpose and powers.  In 1910 when Maj. Gen.
Leonard Wood became Chief of Staff he reorganized the General Staff,
eliminating many of its time-consuming procedures and directing more of its
energies to planning.  With the backing of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson
(1911-13), Wood dealt a decisive blow to that element in the Army itself that
opposed the General Staff.  In a notable controversy, he and Stimson forced
the retirement in 1912 of the leader of this opposition, Maj. Gen. Fred C.
Ainsworth, The Adjutant General.

     The temporary closing of most Army schools during the Spanish-American
War and the need to co-ordinate the Army's educational system with the Root
proposals for creating a War College and General Staff had provided an
opportunity for a general reorganization of the whole system, with the
over-all objective of raising the standards of professional training of
officers.  In 1901 the War Department directed that the schools of instruction
for officers thereafter should be the Military Academy at West Point; a school
at each post of elementary instruction in theory and practice; the five
service schools - the Artillery School, Engineer School of Application, School
of Submarine Defense (mines and torpedoes), School of Application for Cavalry
and Field Artillery, and Army Medical School; a General Staff and Service
College at Leavenworth; and a War College.  The purpose of the school at
Leavenworth henceforth was to train officers in the employment of combined
arms and prepare them for staff and command positions in large units.  To meet
the requirements for specialized training as a result of new developments in
weapons and equipment, the Army expanded its service school system, adding the
Signal School in 1905, the Field Artillery School in 1911, and the School of
Musketry in 1913.

     Creation of the General Staff unquestionably was the most important
organizational reform in the Army during this period, but there were also a
number of other changes in the branches and special staff designed to keep the
Army abreast of new ideas and requirements.  The Medical Department, for
example, established Medical, Hospital, Army Nurse, Dental, and Medical
Reserve Corps.  In 1907 Congress approved of division of the artillery into
the Coast Artillery Corps and the Field Artillery, and in 1912 it enacted
legislation consolidating the Subsistence and Pay Departments with the
Quartermaster to create the Quartermaster Corps, a reform earlier recommended
by Secretary Root.  The act of 1912 also established an enlisted Quartermaster
service corps, marking the beginning of the practice of using service troops
instead of civilians and combat soldier details.

     In the new field of military aviation, the Army failed to keep pace with
early twentieth century developments.  Contributing to this delay were the
reluctance of Congress to appropriate funds and resistance within the military
bureaucracy to diversion of already limited resources to a method of warfare
as yet unproved.  The Army did not entirely neglect the new field - it had
used balloons for observation in both the Civil and Spanish-American Wars and,
beginning in 1898, the War Department subsidized for several years Samuel P.
Langley's experiments with power-propelled, heavier-than-air flying machines.
In 1908, after some hesitation, the War Department made funds available to the
Aeronautical Division of the Signal Corps (established a year earlier) for the
purchase and testing of Wilbur and Orville Wright's airplane.  Although the
Army accepted this airplane in 1909, another two years passed before Congress
appropriated a relatively modest sum - $125,000 - for aeronautical purposes.
Between 1908 and 1913, it is estimated that the United States spent only
$430,000 on military and naval aviation, whereas in the same period France and
Germany each expended $22 million, Russia, $12 million, and Belgium, $2
million.  Not until 1914 did Congress authorize establishment of a
full-fledged Aviation Section in the Signal Corps.  The few military airplanes
available for service on the Mexican border in 1916 soon broke down, and the
United States entered World War I far behind the other belligerents in
aviation equipment, organization, and doctrine.

Reorganization of the Army:  The Regular Army and the Militia

     In the years after the Spanish-American War nearly a third of the Regular
Army troops, on the average, served overseas.  Most were in the Philippines
suppressing the insurrection and when that conflict officially ended in
mid-1902, stamping out scattered resistance and organizing and training a
native force known as the Philippine Scouts.  Other Regulars were garrisoned
in Alaska, Hawaii, China, and elsewhere.  To carry out its responsibilities
abroad and to maintain an adequate defense at home, the Regular Army from 1902
to 1911 had an average of about 75,000 officers and men, far below the 100,000
that Congress had authorized in 1902 to fill thirty infantry and fifteen
cavalry regiments, supported by a corps of artillery.  To make up for this
deficiency in size of the Regular forces and at the same time to remedy some
of the defects revealed in the mobilization for the War with Spain, the
planners in the War Department recommended a reorganization of the volunteer
forces.

     Secretary Root took the lead in presenting to Congress in 1901 a program
for reform of the National Guard.  In response to his recommendations,
Congress in 1903 passed the Dick bill, which thoroughly revised the obsolete
Militia Act of 1792.  It separated the militia into two classes - the
Organized Militia, to be known as the National Guard, and the Reserve Militia
- and provided that, over a five-year period, the Guard's organization and
equipment be patterned after that of the Regular Army.  To help accomplish
these changes in the Guard, the Dick bill made available federal funds;
prescribed drill at least twice a month, supplemented with short annual
training periods; permitted detailing of Regular officers to Guard units; and
directed holding of joint maneuvers each year.  Failure of the new measure,
however, to modify significantly the longstanding provisions that severely
restricted federal power to call up Guard units and control Guard personnel
limited its effectiveness.  Subsequent legislation in 1908 and 1914 reduced
these restrictions to some extent, giving the President the right to prescribe
the length of federal service and, with the advice and consent of the Senate,
to appoint all officers of the Guard while the Guard was in federal service.

     Although the largest permanent unit of the Regular Army in peacetime
continued to be the regiment, experience in the Spanish-American War,
observation of new developments abroad, and lessons learned in annual
maneuvers all testified to the need for larger, more self-sufficient units,
composed of the combined arms.  Beginning in 1905, the Field Service
Regulations laid down a blueprint for the organization of divisions in
wartime, and in 1910 the General Staff drew up a plan for three permanent
infantry divisions to be composed of designated Regular Army and National
Guard regiments.  Because of trouble along the Mexican border in the spring of
1911, the plan was not carried out.  Instead, the Army organized a provisional
maneuver division, ordering its component units, consisting of three brigades
comprised of nearly 13,000 officers and men, to concentrate at San Antonio,
Texas.  The division's presence there, it was hoped, would end the border
disturbances.

     The effort proved only how unready the Army was to mobilize quickly for
any kind of national emergency.  Assembly of the division required several
months.  The War Department had to collect Regular Army troops from widely
scattered points in the continental United States and denude every post,
depot, and arsenal to scrape up the necessary equipment.  Even so, when the
maneuver division finally completed its concentration in August 1911, it was
far from fully operational, since none of its regiments were up to strength or
adequately armed and equipped.  Fortunately, the efficiency of the division
was not put to any battle test, and within a short time it was broken up and
its component units were returned to their home stations.  Because those
members of Congress who had Army installations in their own districts insisted
on retaining them, the War Department was prevented from relocating units so
that there would be a greater concentration of troops in a few places.  The
only immediate result of the Army's attempt to gain experience in the handling
of large units was an effort to organize on paper the scattered posts of the
Army so that their garrisons, which averaged 700 troops each, could join one
of three divisions.  But these abortive attempts to mobilize larger units were
not entirely without value.  In 1913 when the Army again had to strengthen the
forces along the Mexican border, a division assembled in Texas in less than a
week, ready for movement to any point where it might be needed.

Caribbean Problems and Projects

     The close of the War with Spain brought no satisfactory solution for the
Cuban problem.  As a result of years of misrule and fighting, conditions on
the island when the war ended were deplorable.  Under provisions of the Teller
amendment, the United States was pledged to turn over the rule of Cuba to its
people.  American forces, however, stayed on to assist the Cubans in achieving
at least a modicum of economic and political stability.  The first step was to
set up a provisional government, headed in the beginning by Maj. Gen. John R.
Brooke and later by General Wood.  This government promptly undertook a
program of rehabilitation and reform.  An outstanding achievement was
eliminating yellow fever, which had decimated Army troops during the war.
Researches and experiments carried out by the Army Medical Department
culminated in the discovery that the dread disease is transmitted by a
specific type of mosquito.

     When order had been restored in Cuba, a constituent assembly met.  Under
the chairmanship of General Wood, it drew up an organic law for the island
patterned after the American Constitution.  At the insistence of the United
States, this law included several clauses known as the Platt amendment, which
also appeared in the subsequent treaty concluded in 1903 by the two countries.
The amendment limited the amount of debt Cuba could contract, granted the
United States naval bases at Guantanamo and Bahia Honda, and gave the United
States the right to intervene to preserve "Cuban independence" and maintain a
government "adequate to the protection of life, property and individual
liberty."  In 1902, after a general election and the inauguration of the
republic's first president, the Americans ended their occupation.  But events
soon demonstrated that the period of tutelage in self-government had been too
short.  In late 1906, when the Cuban Government proved unable to cope with a
new rebellion, the United States intervened to maintain law and order.  On the
advice of Secretary of War Taft, President Roosevelt dispatched more than
5,000 troops to Havana, the so-called Army of Cuban Pacification, which
remained in Cuba until early 1909.  Again in 1912 and 1917, the United States
found it necessary to intervene, but each time withdrew its occupying forces
as soon as order was restored.  Not until 1934 did the United States,
consistent with its new Good Neighbor Policy, give up the right of
intervention embodied in the Platt amendment.

     Emergence of the United States as a world power with a primary concern
for developments in the Caribbean Sea increased the long-time American
interest in an isthmian canal.  Discovery of gold in California in 1848 and
the rapid growth of the west coast states had underlined the importance of
developing a shorter sea route from Atlantic ports to the Pacific.  The
strategic need for a canal was dramatized for the American people during the
Spanish-American War by the sixty-six-day voyage of the battleship Oregon from
Puget Sound around Cape Horn to Santiago, where it joined the American Fleet
barely in time to participate in the destruction of Cervera's ships.

     A few months after the end of the War with Spain, McKinley told Congress
that a canal under American control was "now more than ever indispensable."
By the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901, the United States secured abrogation of
the terms of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 that required the United States
to share equally with Great Britain in construction and operation of any
future isthmian canal.  Finally, in 1903, the long-standing question of where
the canal should be built - Nicaragua or Panama - was resolved in favor of
Panama.  An uprising in Panama against the government of Colombia provided
President Roosevelt with an opportunity to send American naval units to
support the rebels, assuring establishment of an independent republic.  The
new republic readily agreed to permit the United States to acquire control of
a ten-mile strip across the isthmus, to purchase the property formerly
belonging to the French syndicate that had attempted to construct a canal in
the 1880's and to build, maintain, and operate an interoceanic canal.
Congress promptly appropriated the necessary funds for work to begin and the
Isthmian Canal Commission set about investigating the problem of who should
construct the canal.

     When the commission advised the President that overseeing the
construction of so vast a project was beyond the capabilities of any private
concern, Roosevelt decided to turn the job over to the Army.  He reorganized
the commission, assigning to it new members - the majority were Army officers
- and in 1907 appointed Col. George W. Goethals as its chairman and chief
engineer.  In this capacity, Goethals, a graduate of the Military Academy who
had served in the Corps of Engineers since 1882, had virtually sole
responsibility for administration of the canal project.  Displaying great
organizational ability, he overcame many serious difficulties, including
problems of engineering, employee grievances, housing, and sanitation, to
complete the canal by 1914.  Goethals owed a part of his success to the
support he received from the Army's Medical Department.  Under the leadership
of Col. William C. Gorgas, who earlier had played an important role in
administering the sanitation program in Cuba, the Army carried through
measures to control malaria and virtually wipe out yellow fever, ultimately
converting the Canal Zone into a healthy and attractive place to live and
work.

     The completed Panama Canal stood as a magnificent engineering achievement
and an outstanding example of the Army's fulfillment of a peacetime mission;
but its opening and operation under American administration were also highly
significant from the point of view of military strategy.  For the Navy, the
Canal achieved economy of force by eliminating the necessity for maintaining
large fleets in both the Atlantic and Pacific.  For the Army, it created a new
strategic point in the continental defense system that had to be strongly
protected by the most modern fortifications manned by a large and well-trained
garrison.

The Army on the Mexican Border

     Early in the twentieth century, the Army found itself frequently involved
in hemispheric problems, not only with the countries of the Caribbean region,
but also with the United States' southern neighbor, Mexico.  That nation,
after a long era of relative political stability, entered a period of
revolutionary turmoil.  Beginning in 1911 internal conflicts in the northern
part of the country led to recurrent incidents along the Mexican border,
posing a serious threat to peace.  President William Howard Taft first ordered
strengthening of the border patrols and then, in the summer of 1911,
concentration of the maneuver division at San Antonio.  After a period of
quiet, General Victoriano Huerta in 1913 deposed and replaced President
Francisco Madero.  The assassination of Madero shortly thereafter led to
full-scale civil war between Huerta's forces and those of General Venustiano
Carranza, leader of the so-called Constitutionalists, and Emiliano Zapata,
chief of the radicals.  Woodrow Wilson, who had succeeded Taft as President,
disapproved of the manner in which Huerta had come to power.  In a significant
shift from traditional American policy, the President decided not to recognize
Huerta on the grounds that his assumption of power did not meet the test of
"constitutional legitimacy."  At the same time, Wilson imposed an arms embargo
on both sides in the civil war.  But in early 1914, when Huerta's forces
halted the Constitutionalists, Wilson endeavored to help Carranza by lifting
the embargo.

     Resentment over Wilson's action contributed to the arrest in February of
American sailors by followers of Huerta in the port of Tampico.  Although they
were soon released with an expression of regret from Huerta, Rear Adm. Henry
T. Mayo, commanding the American Fleet in the area, demanded a public apology.
Huerta refused.  Feeling that intervention was unavoidable and seeing an
opportunity to deprive Huerta of important ports, President Wilson supported
Admiral Mayo and proposed to occupy Tampico, seize Veracruz, and blockade both
ports.  When a German steamer carrying a cargo of ammunition arrived
unexpectedly at Veracruz in late April, the United States put ashore a
contingent of marines and sailors to occupy the port and prevent unloading of
the ship.  Naval gunfire checked a Mexican counterattack and by the end of the
month an American force of nearly 8,000 - about half marines and half Army
troops - under command of Maj. Gen. Frederick Funston occupied the city.  For
a time war with Mexico seemed inevitable, but both Wilson and Huerta accepted
mediation and the Mexican leader agreed to resign.  Carranza had barely had
time to assume office when his erstwhile ally, Francisco "Pancho" Villa,
rebelled and proceeded to gain control over most of northern Mexico.

     Despite the precariousness of Carranza's hold on Mexico, President Wilson
decided to recognize his government.  It was now the turn of Villa to show
resentment.  He instigated a series of border incidents which culminated in a
surprise attack by 500 to 1,000 of his men against Columbus, New Mexico, on
March 9, 1916.  Villa's troops killed a substantial number of American
soldiers and civilians and destroyed considerable property before units of the
13th Cavalry drove them off.  The following day, President Wilson ordered
Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing into Mexico to assist the Mexican Government in
capturing Villa.

     On March 15 the advance elements of this punitive expedition entered
Mexico in "hot pursuit."  For the next several months, Pershing's troops
chased Villa through unfriendly territory for hundreds of miles, never quite
catching up with him but managing to disperse most of his followers.  Although
Carranza's troops also failed to capture Villa, Carranza soon showed that he
had no desire to have the United States do the job for him.  He protested the
continued presence of American troops in Mexico and insisted upon their
withdrawal.  Carranza's unfriendly attitude, plus orders from the War
Department forbidding attacks on Mexicans who were not followers of Villa,
made it difficult for Pershing to deal effectively with other hostile Mexicans
who blocked his path without running the risk of precipitating war.  Some
clashes with Mexican Government troops actually occurred.  The most important
took place in June at Carrizal where scores were killed or wounded.  This
action once again created a critical situation and led President Wilson to
call 75,000 National Guardsmen into federal service to help police the border.

[See Chasing Pancho Villa: General Pershing and his troops during the pursuit
of Villa.]

     Aware that the majority of Americans favored a peaceful solution, Wilson
persuaded Carranza to resume diplomatic negotiations.  The two leaders agreed
in late July to submit the disputes arising out of the punitive expedition to
a joint commission for settlement.  Some time later the commission ruled that
the American unit commander in the Carrizal affair was at fault.  Although the
commission broke up in January 1917 without reaching agreement on a plan for
evacuating Pershing's troops, relations between the United States and Germany
had reached so critical a stage that Wilson had no alternative but to order
withdrawal of the punitive expedition.

     Pershing failed to capture Villa, but the activities of the American
troops in Mexico and along the border were not entirely wasted effort.
Dispersal of Villa's band put an end to serious border incidents.  More
important, from a military point of view, was the intensive training in the
field received by both Regular Army and National Guard troops who served on
the border and in Mexico.  Too, the partial mobilization drew further
attention to the still unsolved problem of developing a satisfactory system
for maintaining in peace time the nucleus of those trained forces that would
be required to supplement the Regular Army in national emergencies.
Fortunately, many defects in the military establishment, especially in the
National Guard, came to light in time to be corrected before the Army plunged
into the war already under way in Europe.