classes 187410 1876 in Nov. 1918; classes 187710 1884 in Dec. 1918; classes 1885 and 1886 in March 1919; class 1887 in April 1919. The
1900 class which was the last called up during the war and which had not fought was discharged on leave and called up again at the end of 1919 and the beginning of 1920. With the discharge of these classes, and with that of other special categories of the younger classes, the total number of men with the colours, which in Nov. 1918 exceeded 3,500,000, was reduced on July I 1919 to about 900,000, of whom 72,000 were in the colonies, 54,000 in Albania, 27,000 in Macedonia, 9,000 in Asia Minor, 7,500 in France, and 2,000 in Russia. By the same date 225 generals and 76,000 other officers had been discharged.
During the latter part of 1919 nine other classes were discharged, as follows: class 1888 at the end of June, class 1889 at the end of July, classes 1890 to 1892 at the end of Aug., classes 1893 and 1894 at the end of Sept., class 1895 at the end of Oct., class 1896 at the end of December. Immediately afterwards men belonging to the pre-war second and third categories of classes 1897 to 1899 were discharged, so that at the beginning of 1920 the Italian army con- sisted only of men of the first category of 1897, 1898 and 1899 classes. At the same time 130,000 reserve officers out of the 165,000 in service at the time of the Armistice had been discharged. The principal reductions in the different units of the army up to the beginning of 1920 consisted of the breaking-up of 5 commands of army, 21 commands of army corps, 45 commands of infantry divi- sion, one command of cavalry division, 31 infantry brigades, 6 bri- gades of bersaglieri, 49 Alpine battalions, 12 squadrons of cavalry, 180 field batteries, 80 mountain batteries, 105 heavy field batteries, 600 siege batteries. All the men of the 1897, 1898 and 1899 classes were discharged in Feb. 1921, when only the 1900 and the
1901 classes (the latter had been called up in Nov. 1920) were with the colours. By this date the last men who had fought in the World War had left the army.
VI. UNITED STATES
In 1911 the actual strength of the U.S. regular army was 4,888 officers and 70,250 men, of whom 56,753 officers and men were stationed in the United States. Deducting the coast artillery, there was left, in the United States, a mobile army of only 31,850 officers and men. This small force was distributed among 49 army posts in 24 states and territories with an average strength of 700 men to each post, only one post having a capacity for a brigade. The result was a regular army extraordinarily expensive to maintain, the separate units of which had no organ- ization higher than the regiment. There was no opportunity for manoeuvres on a large scale, little opportunity for the joint training of the several arms, and no practical experience for the officers of the staff- work and leadership necessary to the handling of larger commands. A partial concentration of troops on the Mexican border in 1911 gave the U.S. army its first opportunity for a division manoeuvre.
Under the Act of 1901 the National Guard of the different states had been assimilated to the regular army in organization and equipment, and was receiving financial assistance from the Federal Government in the shape of equipment and pay for manoeuvres and the loan of officers from the regular army for training. In 1911 this force was in far better condition than it had been at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War (1898), but it was still locally organized, was made up of men whose military association and activity were merely an incident added by interest and preference to their ordinary civilian occupation, and was affected by traditions and associations based upon state rather than national service. In 1911 the reported strength of the National Guard was 117,980 officers and men, and an Act of Congress authorized the president to increase the army estab- lishment so as to provide 200 officers of the active list of the regular army for duty as inspectors and instructors of the organized militia and National Guard.
Reorganization of 1916. Successive Secretaries of War had vainly urged upon Congress the necessity of a reorganization of the regular army on the basis of larger tactical units. In June 1916 there was finally passed and approved the bill known as the National Defense Act. This provided for an increase of the regular army to a total not to exceed 1 1,450 officers and 175,000 troops of the line, including the Ordnance Department, 42,750 non-combatant troops and un- assigned recruits, and 5,733 Philippine Scouts, in all about 235,000 officers and men. The number of regiments was to be increased to 65 of infantry, 25 of cavalry, 21 of field artillery, 7 of engineers, with an additional 2 battalions of mounted engineers. These increases were to be carried out by July 1921 and five annual increments, but the President was authorized, in case of emergency, to put them into
immediate effect. The general officers of the line were increased in number from 7 to II major-generals and from 17 to 36 brigadier- generals to provide the necessary general officers for the contem- plated divisions and brigades and higher staff appointments. The period of enlistment in the regular army was altered to 3 years with the colours and 4 in the reserve. The National Defense Act also provided for bringing the organized militia of the several states into a single national guard, the entire expenses of which were assumed by the Federal Government. It was estimated that this force would ultimately reach in peace-time a strength of 17,000 officers and 440,- ooo men of all arms, so apportioned that when assembled at the call of the Government it would constitute 16 divisions. The Act further authorized (a) an Officers' Reserve Corps, to be selected, trained and commissioned in time of peace for use in war only, up to and in- cluding the grade of major, and (6) an Enlisted Reserve Corps, specialists for the technical departments of the army, to be recruited in time of peace for use in war only.
The General Staff Corps. Before 1903 the American army had possessed no general staff. Since the early history of the country there had been a commanding-general of the army and a system of semi-independent War Department bureaus, loosely coordinated either with each Other or with the line of the army, and there had always existed uncertainty and dispute as to the respective functions and authority of the Secretary of War, the commanding-general and the bureaus. In Feb. 1903 a Congressional Act abolished the office of commanding-general and created a General Staff Corps, to be composed of 45 officers, with a chief -of-staff who, under the direction of the President and the Secretary of War, was charged with the supervision of all troops of the line and all the War Department bureaus. In actual practice, however, the separate and combined jealousies of the long-established bureaus, and still more the initial lack of training and experience in the first officers detailed to the new general staff reduced the latter almost to complete uselessness and impotence. Nevertheless, the traditional national distrust of anything savouring of a military oligarchy caused Congress in 1912 to decrease the number of general staff officers to 36. The National Defense Act raised this number to 57 to be reached, how- ever, only in five annual increments, and with the proviso that not more than half of these officers should be " at any time stationed, or assigned to or employed upon any duty in or near the District of Columbia."
In connexion with the army legislation of 1916 Congress created also a Council of National Defense, to consist of the Secretaries of War, the Navy, the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, with an advisory commission of 7 specially qualified citizens;. and to this Council was committed the task of studying and coordinating the military, industrial and commercial resources of the nation in connexion with its defense.
The disorders in Mexico since 1911 had made almost continually necessary the patrolling of the long international boundary by the bulk of the regular army. In March 1916 a raid into U.S. territory by Villa had led to the calling-out of the National Guard and its concentration along the border, while an expeditionary force of regular troops under Gen. Pershing was sent into Mexico. In Feb. 1917 the expeditionary column was withdrawn and the National Guard organizations returned to their respective states. The close of this emergency, almost coincident with the entry of the United States into the World War, left the regular army with a large per- centage of its men due for discharge because of expiration of their terms of enlistment and left the National Guard in the throes of a combined demobilization and reorganization.
1917 to 1919. In March 1917 the actual strength of the regular army was 5,791 officers and 121,797 men, of the National Guard 3,199 officers and 76,713 men, a total of 207,500 officers and men. In addition there were' 97, 295 enlisted men of the National Guard who had not yet taken the oath of federalization. The General Staff Corps, though by this date composed of trained and competent officers, had a total strength of only 41 members, of whom, under the law, only 19 could be stationed in or near Washington. Soon after the declaration of war by the United States, April 61917, the evident and acknowledged military unpreparedness of the United States led to tentative suggestions from the Allied Powers that such forces as the United States had at its disposal be at least temporarily merged into the more experienced units of the Allied armies. But the Government in Washington considered that, in spite of popular enthusiasm, American sentiment would not tolerate any such ab- sorption. Accordingly, the order appointing Gen. Pershing command- er-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Force specifically charged him, while cooperating in all ways with the Allied military authori- ties, to " reserve the identity of the U.S. force." It was further thoroughly understood and agreed on by the U.S. authorities that the mission of the overseas force was to be an offensive one. These two conceptions, maintained throughout the war, governed all war plans and activities of the United States both at home and abroad.
It was immediately decided, as a tentative programme, (a) to send overseas promptly a small but complete body of American troops, in the form of one tactical division to serve as a nucleus for the organization and training of American overseas troops and in order that some American troops might be put into the trenches at the earliest possible moment, and (6) to follow this by an expedition-
