What were the key lessons learned for the army from the Spanish American War ? Who was like who root and how did he transform the army in the early 20th century . What changes took place that improved the National Guard for answers to these questions and more army transformational insights . Stay tuned . Welcome to the U . S . Army history and Heritage podcast . The official podcast of the United States Army Center of Military History . The Center of Military History , writes and publishes the army's official history , manages the US Army Museum enterprise and provides historical support throughout the U . S . Army . Hello everyone and welcome to the United States Army history and Heritage podcast . I'm lee Reynolds , the strategic communications officer for the Center of Military History . In this episode , I'm speaking with CMH historian . Dr Matt Marge is about the transformational time period for the army after the spanish american war and going into the First World War . Welcome Mat and thanks for joining me . Thanks for having me again . So dr Matt Marge's works with the U . S . Army Center of Military History as the historian for the office of the Chief of Staff of the Army . He's been with CMH since 2017 . And prior to his current position , he worked as a researcher for the CMH History's division . His area of expertise is late 19th century and early 20th century military professionalization , which is exactly the focus of this episode . So we got the right guy here . He graduated with a PhD from Iowa State University in 2016 . His dissertation , America's progressive army , how the National Guard grew out of progressive era reforms , won the caress award for outstanding dissertation in 2017 . And , and and I think that's great . He's currently converting his dissertation into a manuscript for publication . Doctor Marge's has written articles on african american service during World War One and numerous book reviews . He recently published a chapter on consolidating gains during Operation Market Garden in an Army University press volume on large scale combat operations . So great . Matt anything else that uh , about your , your background that we need to cover ? No , I think that about covers it . All right . Well , great . Well , you know , you're with us for the last episode talking about the spanish american war . And so now as we begin this , um , you know , learning the lessons learned from the spanish american war . Can you just give us an overview of , you know , what the army looked like coming out of the war and what were those key lessons learned ? Yeah . So after the main fighting in cuBA ends in august 18 98 going into 89 as the , as the treaty that ends the war in december by 18 99 the U . S . Government , the U . S . Army realizes there's a lot of a lot of problems um , particularly with logistics , supply , transportation , the size of the army was too small . The ability to expand the army in a systematic way failed during the mobilization . The attempts were there to try to use volunteerism to fill the ranks , but that wasn't really efficient um effectiveness just kind of waned . There was no easy way to incorporate the militia into the uh basically the army structure . And there was this , the bigger problem was the functions of the various bureaus that were , there was this constant infighting between Quartermaster Corps , quartermaster Department , the Adjutant General Corps . Is there all the all the kind of the bureau's that kind of drove the army ? There was , they were in somewhat independent of themselves and there was no unifying structure to oversee that what they call bureaus at the time , they post the branches is what we call them . There were there were the different bureaus and really one of the other issues was the commanding general of the U . S . Army , The position that existed since General Washington was somewhat ill defined . And over the course of 19th century there was a lot of back and forth on whether this was like a chief of staff or if this was more of a field commander . And by 18 98 in the in the years after the Civil War it became much more of a field commander type position and it really was ineffective at again unifying the army for overseas operations . So they basically the war just demonstrated that something needed to happen . And because at this point now with the with the success of spanish american war , um The defeat , we defeated the Philippine insurrection . Um the army has now expanded . America has expanded and and of course the army is part of that were overseas . So , um , so now we're a bigger army , we have more responsibility . Um so reforms were needed . Yeah , actually , and as you just mentioned , victory in the war actually provided the catalyst for reform because like now we have this overseas force , how do we sustain it ? How do we manage it ? How do we continue to rotate soldiers through everything ? Everything kind of comes into play . So we get a new army Chief of Staff or what's the title at the time ? Well , eventually that the Chief of Staff will be created in 1903 , but before that um it really has to start with and then just as now civilian control of the military . Right ? So this it requires congressional action , it requires some kind of executive push and it's really going to come from , is really gonna start with elihu Root who is going to become secretary of war in august of 80 99 . He's going to replace , he's gonna replace Russell Alger Alger oversaw the mobilization um and was pretty much dragged through the mud for how it didn't go Well . Uh so William McKinley is going to replace him with with Root and uh , when Theodore Roosevelt becomes president , he's going to maintain route as the secretary of war . So what some background on route , where did he come from ? What was his experience ? So so he was a lawyer , he had served , he was kind of a well known , he he was a federal attorney for a while in the 18 seventies , I think he actually defended um boss tweed in a new york case . Um but he was not a military person , he was not , he had no military experience , he didn't work with the army , he didn't work with uh the Navy in any capacity . Um at the same time , you know , Theodore Roosevelt who was serving in the in the military when he becomes president , right , He was assistant Secretary of the Navy prior to serving um as probably resigning to go fight in cuba um route does not have that background . Route was a lawyer , he was educated um but he understood bureaucracy and he understood efficiency , he was a progressive , this is the this is the progressive era , the kind of the focus of a lot of progressivism that I think gets misunderstood today , when we when we hear the term progressive , but it was really about middle class progressives in the 18 eighties , nineties . And then in the early 20th century , they really wanted to reform society to make it effective and efficient . They they saw this this idea of scientific management that if you could implement kind of managerial protocols across society , you could reshape it in the way that they saw is better , whether it was better or not is up for debate , but it was how they viewed it . And so root comes from that background . So he believes that if you could just apply kind of a managerial scientific approach to the war department that it would improve efficiency , improve effectiveness and improve overall quality of soldiers and officers . Yeah . So um so what was his innovations ? What what changes did he um he implement ? Yeah . So he's gonna push for a handful of changes and again he can't do this on his own . He Congress to ultimately do it and it's not gonna happen overnight . But what he wants to do is create a general staff with the chief who would be subordinate to the Secretary of war . What the Secretary of Army of the Army today . But at the time the Secretary of war , who would basically be the chief , who would then oversee a centralized staff that would actually implement executive policy . That this would supplant the bureau system . That the bureau chiefs would no longer have autonomy . They would now fall under this general staff that would answer directly to the Secretary of war , i . E . The president . Um , so the idea was that by doing that , you would have a more efficient staff process and it would reduce the fight because a lot of what these bureaus were doing was they would , you know , rub elbows with senators and Congressmen . Hey Senator give the Quartermaster Corps some more money and they would they would write bills that would give the quarterback so that it was very much these kind of independent generals who were out kind of self interested . They wanted to reduce that . And his his idea was that general staff would do that . He believed that the planning was lax which it certainly was . Um , so one of his reforms is going to be to establish and then grow the U . S . Army war college . He believed that the curriculum and the processes at West Point were a bit outdated and that he didn't think West Point should be an engineering school . He wanted to be much more of a military school . He also thought it needed to be larger and needed a larger faculty . So he's going to work to expand that . He establishes now these , I shouldn't say established , the schools were already out there , There were , there were branch schools , the cavalry school , the infantry school artillery school , um , those already existed . But he is going to make efforts to expand those and make them much more um manageable , make them much more effective and actually get them professionalize them effectively . Yes . And then finally he is going to push for away . Now , he's not a big fan of the National Guard . Um , he didn't think the National Guard or the militia at the time was an effective force , but he's gonna be up against some very strong lobbying efforts . So he basically will say , okay , if , if you could , if you can improve the efficiency of the guard , then let's then stick with it for a while . And so one of the things they're going to do is figure out ways to actually improve as they saw the effectiveness of the , what would become the National Guard in 1903 . But with him creating the general staff , was this just something that He created or is he basing that on a model from other countries ? There were there were certainly models um one of the key models or one of the main ones that they would look to was the Prussian by this time , the German model Germany had a general staff . Um it didn't look exactly like what the US1 would look like . Um there had been a semblance of the general staff in the in the United States during the civil war . Uh France had a staff Switzerland . Um so there were some european kind of staff processes and other reformers . Um particularly like Colonel Emory Upton , he had gone through europe and he had observed um and and written a book of the armies of europe and Asia . Uh most of his ideas aren't gonna be incorporated until after he's dead . He commits suicide , but by 1900 his books that have been posthumous released , right , those are starting to influence . Um And so there's kind of foreign ideas , but but also he's looking at root is just looking at the business world , he's looking at how do corporations function and they don't function by having every little piece of a corporation being independent . They need a ceo effectively . Um and that's what he sets out to do . But again , it's gonna require congressional action so it takes some time . Um in 1901 congress authorizes or passes the uh the army reorganization act . Um This grows the size of the army , the regular army to about 65,000 . Um it and it creates like this , it changes some building limits like that . You could serve in a if you came to serve temporarily , for example , the Quartermaster Corps . Um it basically cap that at four years . So so you couldn't be a line officer served for the Quartermaster Corps , get a brevet promotion to colonel and and be there 10 years . They kind of cap that . Um So that was like , it was like baby steps . Um it wouldn't be until 1903 that the General Staff act is actually actually passed . And who was the first Chief of Staff . So the first Chief of Staff will be Lieutenant General Samuel baldwin Marks Young . Um and at the time it again , it was , it was a little bit different than it is . Now , a lot of the functions , A lot of the processes weren't well defined yet . How exactly the Chief of Staff would look what his role was was not clearly defined . It was not a capstone position like it is today . Today , the Chief of Staff you serve , there's nowhere else to go unless you become the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff . So basically , once you do your four year term as Chief of Staff today , that's it . You retire from the from the army . That wasn't the case then . Uh Now for some , for some of the early chiefs , it was almost a pat on the back . Congratulations , you're 64 a half years old . Your mandatory retirement is in six months , you're the new Chief of Staff of the Army . Uh And six months later they're they're out . Um So it wasn't , it didn't have the kind of prestige for those early kind of chiefs that it's going to develop over time . Um And part of that was because Congress , even in creating the general staff in 1903 was still wary of the bureaus and they still didn't want to completely supplant the bureau system because again , they're they're very cozy with some of these bureau chiefs . Um And so they will , they'll they'll kind of establish the general staff of 44 total officers with the chief being again , a general officer . Um Some of them were given a third star early on like General Young , others weren't other state at the two star level while they were chief . Um But it's it's really doesn't become the functioning thing that it will until a few years down the road , some of its early successes of the staff . They create new field service regulations in 1905 1910 1914 . Um They're the ones that are gonna make a plan for an ex expeditionary force that's going to go to CUBA in 1906 briefly and then come back . They're going to coordinate the relief of the san Francisco earthquake in 1906 efforts . Um They're going to drop some more plans . Uh The Army War College actually becomes Sort of a again this is a root reforma route creation once it's established also in 1903 , it's gonna become sort of a unofficial staff office . It's going to do a lot of the planning coordinating because again , that bureau system is still there . So they just kind of go around and use the War College as sort of this unofficial capacity to do that . Um It's really not going to be until Leonard Wood becomes chief of staff when so he'll become chief of staff in uh 19 what was the year ? Um This is probably the World War One prior to World War One . Uh He will become Chief of Staff in 1910 . And what's gonna kind of happen , there is again , there's there's not really a clear role and the most influential Bureau Chief at the time was the Adjutant General , Major General fred C . Ainsworth and Ainsworth had a lot of power prior to 1910 . The attorney general was really more the the really the leader of the of the staff in a lot of ways , so that it was all they had a lot of power and um they kind of absorbed , they handled all the administrative functions of the army . And Wood is going to basically Starting in 1910 , kind of go to go to fight with with Haynsworth . Um Root is gone by this time in a couple of the secretaries of war and a couple of the early Chief Staff really didn't take much of an active role . They kind of business as usual . Um Wood is going to find General Leonard . Wood is going to find his kind of kindred spirit in Secretary of War . Henry stimson stimson comes in around the same time as him . And the two of them are going to see eye to eye on what needs to happen . And basically Wood is like I said , he's going to go to war with Haynsworth . Um And there's a lot of bitter fighting and Wood is going to do some things that you kind of have to laugh at . Like he's gonna he's gonna issue some orders out of the General staff that basically say anything to General Court . Does anything the answer to General does we have to stamp off on it . So it was basically just a way of like creating chaos for making Ainsworth life more difficult um really to try to go to him because they realize that Ainsworth has a lot of power . That he realized that Ainsworth and the general core has a lot of power with Congress . He one of his most influential friends is congressman James Hay of Virginia , who just happens to be , you know , head of the Armed Services Committee . Um So there's a lot of these kind of issues going on and basically Stimpson and would Goad Ainsworth into vocal and subordination . And then we'll say they're really trying to push them out , trying to push them out and their choices are , oh , you have just now been insubordinate . You can either retire or face court martial . Um And that's how that's how Ainsworth career ends . So he retired . He he didn't call their bluff , he retires . Now , he doesn't go away . He just starts working behind the scenes . Um Again with his with his very influential friends . Some of that's gonna come into play in 1916 . So , for example , when , when the I'll talk about this a little later , but the National Defense Act of 1916 actually cut some of the staff power , but the Secretary of war at the time decides to interpret it differently . But but it's a it's a back and forth . It's a bitter fight . But what would is able to do is by his , by the time his 10 year ends in 1914 , he was able to create a structure where the Chief of Staff has more power . Um And then his successors , especially up through World War One Hugh Lenox scott tasker Bliss . They're going to be uh , chiefs who are going to expand on that . And then once the war gets going , once the , once World United States actually goes to World War One goes out to fight in World War One , the staff becomes much more important because now it's now it is that coordinating effort . And so the kind of , it really does succeed in breaking the bureau power and then subsequent National Defense acts do away with the all right . And um , you mentioned also , and I don't want to jump away from any , any other route reforms that you think are , are important to note . Um , but the National Guard went through transition also . So , um , unless there's something else on , on the route reforms , um , do you want to talk about the National Guard changes ? Absolutely . Um , so the National Guard as a , if you think back to post Civil War era , there was no National Guard , it was the militia . Um , and the militia's reputation was not stellar . Things have to change after 1877 . What happens in 1877 is the , uh , the Great Railroad strike and the federal government is gonna send some troops in some cases . In other cases , governors are going to call their militias to quell the strike and to basically try to restore order in places where riots were breaking out and it does not go well for the militia . In some cases , soldiers who come from a very middle to upper class background are very hostile towards the strikers and will fire without orders into crowds . In other cases , national militia soldiers who come from more working class backgrounds will find solidarity with the with the strikers and lower and drop their weapons and go join the strike site . Um and so it's not a good look . And Officers in the militia realized that officers in the militia realized that our organization as a whole , this kind of national group of independent armies , really about 48 , independent little many armies under the control of the governor That if they want to stay around , if they want to be relevant , they need to change . So in 1879 , they're going to create the National Guard Association which is made up of uh militia officers . A lot of them start calling themselves the National Guard , trying to break break the negative connotation and they're gonna launch a series of reforms from within where they're trying to improve efficiency and effectiveness . They realize what they need to do . This though is congressional support because if a state governor only gives or state legislature only gives x amount of money to the militia , there's only so much that these officers can do to reform from within uh they do convince Congress to allow militia officers to start going to some of these schools . Um they do start basically improving their own training capacities in the 18 nineties . Regular army officers will go to militia encampments , that kind of oversee training efforts . So there are these efforts for about 30 years , 25 years where they're trying to improve . But Congress is just the final hump is the big money because congress doesn't want to allocate money to the states for this purpose . Um , that's going to change after 18 98 after the mobilization issue where there was no easy way to get the militia into the army . They realized , okay , the effectiveness is just not there . And the 17 92 law that they had been operating on the Militia act of 17 92 just did not apply in 1902 . so partly under roots efforts , partly guided by the National Guard Association . Um , but especially guided by a Ohio National Guard , Ohio militia general uh , named um , Charles , who also happened to be a congressman . Uh , he replaced uh , the old called him , he'll eventually replace the Ohio kingmaker , Mark Hanna when he dies , he'll become Senator . But in 1903 , he's congressman , 1902 . and he's gonna work with route . He's going to work with the National Guard Association . He's going to work with other members of Congress and they're going to create a bill that will become known as the militia act of 1903 , commonly known as the Act that will defined the National Guard as the organized militia of the United States ? So it takes that constitutional line and says , this is now the National Guard . The organized militia of the United States is the National Guard . The old idea where every able bodied male between 18 and 45 serves in the quote unquote militia , they're still gonna be on the books . That's the unorganized militia . So That's , that's actually gonna be kind of the premise for the draft law that's gonna come out in 1917 is that everyone every able bodied male between 18 and 45 is quote unquote in the militia . Um , but they created this idea of the organized and unorganized and they allowed and there's gonna be some changes . It's not again doesn't happen overnight , but that first 1903 allows the president in cases of emergency , invasion or insurrection , to federalize the organized militia for up to nine months . Now that that's not a fix all because it doesn't allow for overseas deployment . It's capped at nine months . But it's a first step uh states are given until 1907 to comply because they also have to meet training standards . Part of what comes out of this is that there will be federal inspectors that will go to these guard regiments , which is now the National Guard and they will basically see what their level of readiness is ? What are you training on ? What are you doing , what do you , are you all wearing uniforms ? What are your weapons ? Um these types of things and if you're not , if you don't comply , you lose your status . And a lot of governors were sort of at first like what do we care ? Okay , they're no longer National guards are still our militia . What do we care ? Well , the money was now quadrupled . And so these states are now getting a lot of extra funding as long as they maintain these up to standard . Um so the money is a part of it . But even with that , a lot of states are slow to develop this and by 1907 , when they're all supposed to be in place , I think four or five states are actually in compliance and the rest are just not there yet . And so in 1908 they're gonna make some amendments to the Act . They're going to make some amendments to it again in 1910 , they're going to make some changes to how it's implemented . Um And by 1910 it still looked very similar to 1903 . But now most states were in compliance and still could still couldn't be deployed overseas without governor approval , but the president could activate the militia or the National Guard uh for insurrection or invasion for up to a year . Um in which case they would also invasion against the United States , not us going out . And when would that change for overseas deployments ? That's going to change 1916 , the National Defense Act . Um and I guess the one other thing that the national , what this does with the National Guard is it it also allows if they're federalized and this is kind of , this is one of the big things for the states . They would now be paid by the army if they're federalized . So it would um oh and it also did away with the practice of Electing officers . Um a lot of militia units prior to 1900 . Still not all that was kind of going away that was dying out again . Those internal reforms . This process was dying out , but some states still use this where officers were chosen by the soldiers and it was they did away with that . They said that you can't do that anymore . They need to be officers need to be trained , they need to go through these schools , They need to know what they're , they need to take tests to prove that they actually have their actually know what they're doing at what point excuse me , was where National Guard officers um going to the war college . So they start being allowed to go after basically right away . Not a lot , not a lot of , only a handful are allowed . You know , there's only so many slots , I think one or two are given a national that would be paid for . Um getting there was kind of on their own . But uh they were no T DY no DY , but once they were there , their pay would come , they were considered on federal staff . And , and I think that kind of remember is at the time this is all tied to popular perception . Um , these reforms , especially for the National Guard don't necessarily come just from , I mean , I've kind of been making it sound like this is they realize there's a need for overseas service and all this . They need to have this effectiveness . But it's really coming from the , from a lot of popular perceptions . Uh , the national , the militia was not used often in this role . If you actually look at , it's only a handful of times , but those handful of times are very , very public and very prominent . That's , and that's during race riots , Labor strikes and other and , and similar issues or similar instances . Those are very kind of people see it , it's very , it's very visible and when the militia performs well , it doesn't get talked about a lot when the militia doesn't perform well . It's national news . And that's one of the reasons the militia really wants to improve effectiveness . It wants to go out during labor strikes during , during race riots and say , you know , we're professional , were professional soldiers were not just a bunch of ragtag people and that's what's really pushing this . Um , and by 1910 it's almost there now you had the Army Reserve also created sometime during this time period , The Reserve is going to be a bit different . The Reserve is going to in 1916 . 1 of the things the National Defense Act of 1916 will do is create the Reserve Officer Training Corps ROTC um the National or the Army Reserve as we kind of conceive of it today is going to be a post World War One creation um in World War One , they create the National Army drafted troops , Division 76 up . Um And that's gonna be kind of what would later on become the Army Reserve . But in the , in 19 , in this period 1900 , about 1917 , the reserve is the National Guard , but now you've mentioned the National Defense Act of 1916 a few times . Um but also that in 1916 we were being threatened from Mexico by Pancho villa and we launched the punitive expedition in into Mexico . So a couple questions here was the National Defense Act , a response to that or or did it come before the punitive expedition ? So the wheels were in motion , but a lot of the failures of the punitive expedition and what's going to happen with the National Guard deployment after although the National Guard deployment didn't really have much to do with the pushing of the bill . So the wheels have been motion for some time , but a lot of that is going to be Sped up in 1916 . Um and another important part of this is of course by 1916 the war had been raging in Europe for two years and the preparedness movement in the United States , 1915 is in full swing . And so Congress is reacting to all that . Um , yeah , there was an inevitability , a sense of inevitability that we may get into that war . Yeah , or at least , or at least we had to be prepared for something and to the National Defense Act is kind of a response to a lot of those things . But in 1916 it kind of all kind of all comes together and then , so the punitive expedition , how did the route reforms um , affect how we responded to that ? So , so yeah , I won't get into the first real test of it . It is in some ways and I won't get into too many details of like operations there or anything . But um , so tensions with Mexico had been high , uh , Francisco pancho villa raids , a couple of US towns . Um , they send this punitive expedition under , uh now Brigadier General john J Pershing , who jumped over , forget how many hundreds of people to get his from captain , he gets to go from captain to Brigadier general . Not , not a a pretty pretty successful promotion there . Um , and some of the reforms are , are there in the sense that the army is now , you know , the general staff is now overseeing how this is going to carry out the general staff is making some of the policy decisions . Um , the officers who go the soldiers who go are better trained better , you know , they've , they've gone through these new schools . What's going to the problems that they're going to face is one . Northern Mexico is big and you , you're chasing effectively one person and his small and his very small army in hostile enemy territory . Uh , another problem is technology is untested . The US army hasn't had a lot of experience with planes with radios , with automobiles , um , european armies had by this time , americans hadn't uh , this is a good test for some of those and a lot of ways to see that our plane doesn't really perform that well . Um , so there's a lot of those kind of tests going on , but it didn't really the reforms that that route put in place that started in 1903 or that started in 1900 went through 19 oh 34 . They're not really gonna be showcased until uh , the National Guard goes to the border . And then again in World War , in the First World War , um , the National Guard border deployment was a specific response to the punitive expedition not capturing via uh President Wilson said , You know what if he does it again . And so in June of 1916 , about a week after the national fence ex pax passes , but before it goes into effect , he mobilizes the entire National Guard and sends it to the mexican border , the entire nationally , entire National Guard existence . So all 48 states and territories . Um I believe one of , I believe , Utah one of the states didn't have a National Guard , so that one didn't go , but it was like , but 48 48 so about 100 and 40,000 soldiers are going to go to the mexican border and they're gonna find a lot of problems . They're gonna find that they're not really prepared either . They're out of shape , they do some marches and they're out of shape , they can't do it , they don't know how to fire their weapons . Um There are new weapons in place . So the army's adopted , it's early machine guns , the army has issued the Springfield 1903 to a lot of soldiers . Um We have aviation . Now , aviation is coming into play . Uh and they realized that a lot of these for all the reforms of National Guard have been doing for all the efforts that have been going into it . They still just weren't quite ready . So what's gonna end up happening is from june 1916 till february of 1917 and some of these guard units are only there for a month , some are there for two , some are there for the whole time . Um , but they go through these , it's basically a prolonged training exercise and they're not training to capture Pancho Villa . They're , they're doing mock battles between with 10,000 Attackers against 5000 entrenched defenders . They're training for the kind of fight they're going to be seeing later in on the western front . My understanding is the , uh , the reason we had so many people on the border at the time , whether it's National Guard or Regular Army , which just like you're saying is , is that training that envisioning the need to deploy ? But also was that show of force to the Mexicans ? It was a bit , um , I think it was at first , uh , when I there's some debate on whether or not Woodrow Wilson , how he really wanted to use this massive force reporter . Um , The debate is basically , was , was he sincere in just saying there is a real threat of further bandit incursions ? Or was he as he's running in 1916 this campaign season as he's running on , he kept us out of war . Was he actually training to go to war ? There's some debates on that , but I think there was sincerity early on . Uh , but by august of 1916 , it was pretty clear that there were gonna be no more raids that that threat had had subsided . But the they're still there . So it really became a training ground . It really , it really does . And one of the , so there's sort of two unexpected consequences . One positive , one negative . One of the good things is that now you have a cohort of 100 and 40,000 National Guard soldiers who were highly trained , um , Better trained in a lot of cases and some of their regular army counterparts and certainly better trained than any volunteers who will be coming into the army in 1917 . The problem is that in the National Defense Act , which I've mentioned a few times , one of the things it does for the National Guard is it creates the ability to be deployed overseas . The President can now federalize the National Guard and deployed overseas . But in order to make that kind of all legally fine , they had to basically say that Now if you enlisted National Guard , you have to take two oaths before you just took an oath to your state . Now you have to take an oath to your state and a second oath to the federal government today when you joined the National Guard that is combined into one , but there was two separate ones and a lot of soldiers at the border who deployed under the old 1910 Law , we're told , okay , you gotta take a second oath now . And they said no , I don't , I don't want , I , I didn't sign up to join the Regular Army . I signed up to join the militia . I joined up to join the National Guard . I don't want the President to be able to send me anywhere . So I'm not going to take the second oath . So Secretary of War Newton baker after some back and forth . Finally says fine , anybody who doesn't want to take the oath , you're discharged . Okay , So so the National Guard is going to go from 140,000 Down to about 120,000 . And then it's gonna shrink even more . A lot of soldiers just leave . So when border duty ends , the National Guard was actually smaller . Um but those national guardsmen who remained again , they were they were trained . A lot of them are going to become the kind of the cohort who's going to be some of the first soldiers to go over to France . And then the other ones who aren't in those divisions will be the trainers to train up people who are coming in a couple other things for the National Defense Act as kind of . And that as I mentioned , it creates the ROTC program . Um and one of its authors was James hey , the same James , hey , who was friends with fred Ainsworth . So it's going to shrink the size of the general staff and it's actually written in there that it's some in some ways it can strengthen the bureau's back . But Secretary of War Newton baker , he interprets that as basically applying administrative details to each bureau as being subordinate to the to the staff . So he just so he kind of just says , okay , I'm gonna I'm gonna play this game if you're giving , you know , special duties to each bureau , I'm just gonna say they're all subordinate to the staff and you know , chief of Staff bliss , you're still in charge . So the attempt to kind of undermine the staff fails . It actually strengthens , strengthens it . So , so by the end of this , you know , february 17 , you know , we um uh Zimmerman telegram , that time frame comes out and april 6th of 1917 , we declare war on Germany . Um So what does the army look like at that period ? The army still unfortunately is is not quite ready . The regular army was still small . Um Its authorized strength was I think about 100 and 15,000 , but it was not there . Uh there were still only about 70,000 regular duty regular army soldiers . As I mentioned , the National Guard . It has 80,000 in february of 1917 , 80,000 guardsmen are still federalized at the border . Uh The other , the rest of the 120,000 have returned home . Um a lot of them have left service . Uh and Even though they're kind of better trained than they had been before , uh kind of working through all , the that still leaves you with about 200,000 total soldiers who actually have A certain modicum of training and expertise . It's gonna require millions of soldiers to fight in France . So I think we mobilized about four million will get up to four million two million will actually be overseas with another two million waiting to go . So it's just it's not ready yet , it's not there yet . Um it's going to get there but it's gonna require some it's gonna require a conscription act and everything else . But we're in a much better position because of the root reforms because of the National Defense Act . Those lessons learned coming out of the spanish american war made a difference . Absolutely . That that sets the foundation for the ability to conscripted army . That sets the foundation for the president to be able to just draft the militia , the National Guard . And this is the phrasing . They used to draft the National Guard into Federal Service to to basically build up the divisional strength it allows to it allows the United States to get a four small though it is to France early . Um It's gonna take time for the american expeditionary force to get ready to go . It never it it's the U . S . Expects to fight in 1919 . So their their anticipation is okay we have a year to build an army before we're going to be . No no one expected it to end in 1918 . Um And so they had this like training system put in place that they never really get to fulfill . But it sets the foundation all those root reforms set the foundation , having the war college there as a planning entity , having the staff there that establishes an intelligence section , establishes an operations planning section that can actually go through and streamline all the processes . George Goethals who I talked about last time , who oversaw the conclusion of the completion of the Panama Canal . He's gonna be brought back in and he's going to serve in a in a staff position to help plan The deployments of soldiers from the United States to Europe throughout the war . So there's a lot of these these things that come into place , these they all kind of coalesce . Um and and the root reforms that started at the turn of the century , really set the foundation for the army to be able to do all that . Yeah , it took about 16 , 17 years . It took some time . But it has a lasting legacy . I mean , to this day , the route reforms are are , you know , may have some things may have changed . Um but they're still in place . Absolutely , the General Staff . Again , it's changed quite a bit and it's makeup and it's some of the , you know , some of the nuance , but but it's still there . The National Guard is still the organized militia , the organized militia of the United States . It is still it's a key component now . The Total Army along with the Army Reserve . And we've seen that with all the recent wars . Absolutely . I mean , you can say from Desert shield , Desert Storm to now , um the National Guard and the Army Reserve combined have have made up at least 40% of of our forces overseas . Was there anything else about the route reforms um or the transformation that that you want to address ? No , I think that about covers it . All right , well , great . And um before we close , it's time for our trivia about this time period . So do you have any significant trivia you wanna share ? Just kind of a something I find comedic . Um one of the unintended consequences . I mentioned that that oath issue , right , A lot of these National Guard soldiers saying I'm not taking a second oath until they get out and so they think I'm free and clear I'm out of the out of the army , I'm out of this . Well , they're still eligible for the draft . So a lot of them are going to actually be drafted in 1917 and 1918 uh against their will . Where maybe had they just stayed in , they would have been at least with uh with their local unit . Um , and so that's going to kind of be be an issue . And then , and then the other one sort of less less comical is after war . Um the Judge Advocate general is going to declare that if you served in the Regular Army , your state obligation is no longer . So it's actually , he's gonna , he's gonna flip that and the National Guard is gonna all but disappear in 1919 . Um it's got to rebuild itself , but oh , fascinating . So a lot of little interesting things that come out of this and we'll address a lot more of that in the future episodes including and then we just briefly touched on the mexican expedition in the beginning of World War One , but we'll we'll have separate episodes in the very near future , More in depth discussions about all of those key um key events . So matt , thanks so much again for your discussion insights today . Yeah . Um covering the route reforms and then the army and transition . I mean a critical time period that really set up the army for the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st century . Very important . And if anyone wants to learn more about the army and transition and the root reforms or learn more about army history in general , I encourage you to explore our website at history dot army dot mil . And if you want to experience army history every day then visit our social media sites on facebook twitter and instagram . Please join us every week on this podcast for more in depth discussions as we cover topics from all eras of U . S . Army history examining battles , soldier experiences , equipment , weapons and tactics . Thanks for joining us today on the United States Army history and heritage podcast for the center of military history , I'm lee Reynolds and until next time we're history . The views expressed in this podcast reflect those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views policies or opinions of the US Army or Department of Defense . For more information about the army's proud history and heritage , go to history dot Army dot mil .