supreme unified command of the army and navy. But
while the responsibility is his, actual control often rests in the hands
of others. Members of Congress always take a keen interest in army
matters; many of them have been or are militia-men. They have always
opposed a single army which could be recruited, trained, and operated as
a unit, and approved the system of State militia which makes for
decentralization and gives to the separate States large influence in the
formation of military policy. Even the President's control of the Federal
army, regulars and volunteers, is limited by the decentralized
organization of the different army bureaus, which depend upon Congress
for their appropriations and which operate as almost independent and
frequently competing units. The creation of a single programme for the
army as a whole is thus a task of extreme difficulty.

President Wilson, as historian, was well aware of the tremendous price
that had been paid in past wars for such decentralization, accompanied as
it was, inevitably, by delays, misunderstandings, and mistakes. He was
determined to create a single cooerdinating command, and his war policies
were governed from beginning to end by this purpose. He set up no new
machinery, but utilized as his main instrument the General Staff, which
had been created in 1903 as a result of the blunders and confusion that
had been so painfully manifest in the Spanish War. When the United States
entered the World War the General Staff had by no means acquired the
importance expected by those who had created it.[3] But to it the
President turned, and it was this body enlarged in size and influence
that ultimately put into operation Wilson's policy of centralization. It
was in accordance with the advice of the men who composed the General
Staff that the President elaborated the larger lines of the military
programme, and they were the men who supervised the operation of details.

[Footnote 3: In April, 1917, the General Staff consisted of fifty-one
officers, only nineteen of whom were on duty in Washington. Of these,
eight were occupied with routine business, leaving but eleven free for
the real purpose for which the staff had been created--"the study of
military problems, the preparation of plans for national defense, and
utilization of the military forces in time of war."]

None of the processes which marked the transition of the United States
from a peace to a war basis are comprehensib