The General Speaks

Into the debate on the post-war world, amply charged with theory and speculation, hard-bitten U.S. Chief of Staff General George Catlett Marshall last week injected words of caution and realism. Said he, before the august Academy of Political Science:

"I don't think I am overstating to assert that if our Government had gone through with the terms of the National Defense Act of June 4, 1920,*it is quite possible that we would not be involved in this terrible situation of today. There was laid down in the law a very comprehensive plan for the military security of the United States. I cannot believe that the German War Party would have dared to become involved in a war to which we were to be a party.

"I think we will have to compress theories into realities. We will have to bear in mind the inevitable human reactions of the post-war aversion to military matters, and of the taxpayers' pressure to reduce military appropriations. We will have to take the nations of the world as they are, the prejudices and passions of the people as they exist, and with those considerations, develop a method so that we can have a free America in a peaceful world."

*This called for what now seems an infinitesimally small standing army of 280,000, plus National Guard and reserve corps. When it was rejected by Congress, the world knew that the U.S. had lost interest in military matters.

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