PERSONNEL: THE SEPARATION OF THE LAY AND THE EXPERT. The years between the Civil War and World War I saw the emergence of the essentials of a professional personnel system. Entry into the officer corps was primarily at the lowest ranks and through the service academies. The higher ranks were almost monopolized by academy graduates. The traditional system of promotion by seniority, which had withstood earlier attacks, was qualified and restricted although the fear of politics kept it as the basic criterion. A retirement system, previously virtually nonexistent, was introduced. The prohibitions upon officers participating in nonmilitary activities were sharpened and clarified. All these developments tended to enhance the separate, corporate existence of the officer corps, to tighten the bonds among its members, and to widen the gap between it and other segments of society.
The indifference of business pacifism toward military affairs and its contrast with the Jacksonian approach were reflected in the willingness with which Congress narrowed the channels of entry into the officer corps to the military academies. Junior line officer appointments in the Navy were monopolized by Annapolis graduates in the post-Civil War years. The needs of the Navy were small, and the Academy was more than able to meet them. At the turn of the century, when the expansion of the Navy increased the demand for officers, the number of appointments to the Academy was doubled. In the event that there were insufficient Annapolis graduates to fill the quotas, Congress also authorized the promotion of warrant officers to ensigns, but these opportunities were hedged about by strict limitations. From 1890 on, all the higher positions in the Navy, except in the specialized staff departments, were filled by Annapolis men. The more extensive officer requirements of the Army did not permit West Point to achieve the same degree of monopoly which Annapolis did. Nonetheless, Congress in 1878 firmly established the priority of Military Academy graduates in receiving appointments and required rigorous professional tests for those entering the officer corps by other routes. In 1898 West Pointers made up 80 per cent of the officer corps, but were still in a minority at the highest ranks. Twenty years later World War I was fought under almost exclusively professional leadership, politics and influence being rigidly excluded from appointments and assignments. Almost three-quarters of the 441 Regular Army generals (other than medical officers) commissioned between 1898 and 1940, virtually all of whom entered the service between 1861 and 1917, were West Point graduates.18
Continued adherence to the seniority system coupled with the contraction of the Navy after the Civil War caused promotions to stagnate. Officers remained in the lower ranks for interminable lengths of time, reaching the higher grades about when due for retirement. The reforms suggested were either promotion by selection or an efficient system for weeding out the less competent officers. The advocates of promotion by selection were hindered, however, by the efforts of congressmen and others to influence the assignment of officers. Officers were dubious of the possibility of an impartial selection system, fearing that if seniority were abolished, politics would intrude upon promotion as well as assignment. The alternative to promotion by selection was elimination by selection, which was eventually provided for by Congress in the Personnel Act of 1899. Controversy and demands for further reform still continued, however, within the officer corps, and the final step in the completion of the Navy promotion system was made in 1916 when Congress replaced the 1899 scheme by a plan for limited selection which gave the Navy a highly advanced professional system of promotion.
The Army lagged behind the Navy in qualifying the workings of seniority. Under prevailing practice, promotion was by seniority up to and including the rank of colonel. Generals were selected, but here, too, the customs of seniority were usually followed. In 1890 a minimum level of professional competence was insured by requiring examinations for the promotion of all officers below the rank of major. Systematic personnel reports on the character and efficiency of officers were instituted in the middle 1890’s. Elihu Root and others strongly supported the introduction of promotion by selection. But the officers feared that selection would only bring about the intrusion of “social or political influence” which at all costs must be avoided if the integrity of the officer corps was to be preserved. Root’s efforts for reform were unsuccessful.19 Here, as in the Navy, professional suspicion of politics led the officers to settle for a lower standard of professionalism, rather than risk a higher standard which might be more susceptible to manipulation by outside forces. The fears of the officers were primarily directed toward congressional influence, and their opposition to selection is another example of the way in which the separation of powers hampered the development of military professionalism.
Prior to 1855 no retirement system existed in either the Army or Navy. In that year, however, Congress, persuaded of the necessity for cleaning out the upper ranks of the Navy, created a “reserved list” for officers incapable of duty. In 1861 Congress approved a continuing scheme of compulsory retirement of Army and Navy officers for incapacity and introduced the first provisions for voluntary retirement. Subsequent legislation in the 1860’s and 1870’s required the compulsory retirement of naval officers at the age of sixty-two and attempted to stimulate voluntary retirements by increasing retirement benefits. Legislation in 1862 and 1870 provided that Army officers could be retired on their own application after thirty years of service or by compulsion at the discretion of the President. Mandatory retirement at the age of sixty-four, a reform long advocated by professionally minded officers, was finally enacted by Congress in 1882.20 By the end of the century both services had adequate professional systems of superannuation.
Legal restrictions upon the participation of officers in nonprofessional activities also appeared during these years. In 1870 Congress espoused a concept of civil-military relations fundamentally at odds with the constitutional theory of the Framers when it prohibited any officer on active service from holding any civil office either by election or by appointment. Subsequent legislation elaborated this restriction and placed limitations upon the employment of retired officers. The two services also attempted to curtail the legislative activities of their officers, adding regulations to this effect in 1876, 1896, and 1900.21
ORGANIZATION: THE STRUGGLE AGAINST TECHNICISM. The fundamental organizational problem for both the Army and the Navy at the end of the nineteenth century was to provide an organ to perform the professional military function and to represent professional military interests. Inevitably solution of this problem required subordination of the technical-administrative units which played a major role in the structure of both services. At the level of personnel organization, the problem demanded the elimination or limitation of the specialized staff corps. In the Army, appointments to the various staff departments had been awarded more or less upon a patronage basis; officers once appointed spent their entire career with the staff speciality, becoming technical experts rather than military experts. This situation was modified in 1894 when Congress required that all subsequent appointments in the staff departments should be made from the line of the Army. At the turn of the century, Elihu Root led the fight on permanent commissions in the staff corps, pointing out that among the officers of the line serving on the frontier or overseas, the feeling existed that the staff departments were closed corporations “with all the luxuries, and the privileges and all the power” coming from constant association with the members of Congress in Washington. Congress responded to Root’s demands in 1901 by establishing four-year details from the line for officers in the staff departments. This effectively broke the isolation of the staff corps from the rest of the Army, and was a major step toward the creation of a homogeneous military profession.
The naval officers were also divided between the line and the several staff corps. Within the Navy, as within the Army, there was a feeling that the staff departments had preempted first place. The better pay and promotion opportunities of shore duty in the nonmilitary departments attracted the Annapolis graduates. The most troubles
ome problem was the relation between the line and the Engineering Corps established in 1842. These two bodies were constantly at swords’ points over their respective rights and privileges. By the 1890’s, however, the basis for the distinction between the two was disappearing. A Personnel Board under the chairmanship of Assistant Secretary Roosevelt reported in 1898 that all engineers should be line officers, and all line officers should be engineers. The Navy needed, the Board argued, “one homogeneous body, all of whose members are trained for the efficient performance of the duties of the modern line officer.” The Navy Personnel Act of 1899 embodied the recommendations of this board and provided for the amalgamation of the two corps.22
The other, and more important, aspect of the struggle against technicism concerned the administrative organization of the departments: the relations which should exist between the secretaries, the bureaus, and the spokesmen for the professional military interests. Naval organization still reflected Secretary Paulding’s theory that only the technical-administrative operations of the Navy required special expertise and that the Secretary himself could handle the direction of military affairs. This theory had proved impractical in the Civil War, and the increasing complexity of naval science now made it impractical in peace. Some institution was required to deal with the military needs of the Navy, the preparation of war plans, and the employment and distribution of the fleet. This need was articulated by Secretary Whitney in 1885. Repudiating the Paulding theory, Whitney pointed out that the separate executive responsibilities of the bureau chiefs made it impossible for them to furnish the Secretary with the “intelligent guidance” which he needed in the “art of war.” In contrast to Paulding’s self-confidence in military affairs, Whitney’s declaration a half century later represented official secretarial recognition that the military side of the Navy was now an expert profession.23 No immediate changes were made as the result of Whitney’s plea, but his statement touched off a debate on naval organization which continued for thirty years until the establishment of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in 1915. This debate took the form of an outpouring of articles, reports, discussions, and proposals which may well be unique in the history of American public administration. The focus of the controversy was the role of the professional military chief in relation to the bureau heads and Secretary.
One school of thought, the naval traditionalists, led by Luce and Mahan, advocated a balanced system of organization. They stressed the neglect of the military side of the naval establishment. The Navy existed for war and, unless departmental organization provided a spokesman for the military needs of the Navy, the civil activities of the bureaus, which properly had a supporting role, tended to become ends in themselves. The traditionalists thus wanted to balance the bureaus by creating an organ to represent the military side of the Navy. Since they emphasized the purely military and professional character of this need, they did not insist that the new office be given supervision over the civil side of the Department. Recognizing the inherent conflict between the Navy’s military and civil aspects, they assigned to the Secretary the job of reconciling the two. Accustomed to secretarial direction of the military side of the Department, they were not troubled by the problem of the command relationships existing among the military chief, the Secretary, and the President. The Secretary was viewed as the President’s agent in all matters concerning the naval establishment, civil and military. The traditionalists took as their model the British system of naval organization with its division of military and civil duties between the First Sea Lord and the other Admiralty officials, all under the supreme authority of the civilian First Lord of the Admiralty.
Sympathy for a vertical remedy for the Navy Department’s organizational ills had long existed in the service, and in the 1890’s the vertical system received new support from a younger generation of naval insurgents led by Admirals H. C. Taylor and William S. Sims. The naval insurgents stressed a different imperative from that of the traditionalists, emphasizing not the need for a military representative to balance the bureaus, but the desirability of a military administrator to coordinate the bureaus. They pointed to the independent ways of the bureaus, their overlapping responsibilities, the lack of coordination in the entire Department, and the lack of knowledge and experience of the secretaries. The Secretary, they argued, should have a single responsible adviser, either an individual or a board, for all matters concerning the Department. They viewed this adviser as a general staff whose authority would extend over the bureaus. The insurgents cited German military organization in their support. But in this, they made the same mistake that Elihu Root did: they misinterpreted the German system as establishing the power of the general staff over all elements of the military establishment.24
During the years of debate the Secretaries of the Navy and the bureau chiefs tended to side with the traditionalists against the insurgents. The chiefs defended their direct access to the Secretary. The secretaries saw the problem as one of furnishing themselves with professional assistance on military affairs without abdicating policy control to the military head. Except for those who succumbed to Roosevelt’s influence, they rejected the vertical scheme, fearful that under it, the Secretary would sign the papers, and the military chief would run the Department. They were virtually unanimous in their support of what Secretary Daniels described as a “calculated policy of dispersion.” Their opposition to vertical organization also tended to make them skeptical of the desirability of even a balanced plan of departmental control. Here they were caught in a dilemma. They recognized, with Secretary Whitney in his 1885 report, that the Secretary needed professional military assistance. They were, however, afraid that a military chief, even if originally limited in authority to purely military affairs, would tend to extend his power over the bureaus. Secretary Whitney himself pointed out that a Naval Advisory Board, which had been created to assist the Secretary, had tried to take over executive functions and intrude on the responsibility of the bureaus. Subsequently, in 1904 the Secretaries also complained that the General Board established in 1900 to prepare war plans was encroaching on civilian duties: administering navy yards, running naval reservations, and becoming involved in legal problems. The expansionist tendency of military organs, in itself testimony to the difficulty of maintaining a balanced organization in the American scheme, weakened the enthusiasm of the secretaries for any plan of reform.
The ideas and forces entering into the great organizational debate eventually crystallized in the act establishing the Chief of Naval Operations in 1915. The immediate initiator of the Act was Admiral Bradley Fiske who, going behind the back of the Secretary, urged naval reorganization upon sympathetic congressmen. An amendment was made to a Navy appropriation bill establishing a Chief of Naval Operations who was to be “responsible for the readiness of the Navy for war and be charged with its general direction.” This proposed legislation thus provided for a vertical scheme. Secretary Daniels objected strenuously and was successful in getting the bill significantly altered. As finally passed, the law provided that the CNO “shall, under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, be charged with the operations of the fleet, and with the preparation and readiness of plans for its use in war.”25 Daniels thus achieved the two essentials of a balanced organization: the level of the authority of the CNO was subordinate to the Secretary; the scope of the authority of the CNO was limited to military affairs, not extending to the civil activities of the bureaus. The Luce-Mahan traditionalist viewpoint had prevailed.
The reform of War Department organization took quite a different course from that in the Navy. It was much more the work of civilian outsiders rather than a product of extensive discussion and debate among the officers themselves. Indeed, prior to the Spanish-American War, Army officers displayed little interest in organizational matters. Apparently they were generally content with the existing coordinate system. Even in 1900, when the Military Service Institution sponsored a prize essay contest on the best staff organ
ization for the Army, none of the articles submitted was judged worthy of the award. The initiative for reform came primarily from Elihu Root who became Secretary of War in 1899. At the time of his appointment Root knew virtually nothing about military affairs, but once in office he made vigorous efforts to inform himself. He absorbed the prevailing admiration for the German general staff system and was much impressed by Spenser Wilkinson’s analysis of German organization in The Brain of an Army. In approving reorganization plans for the War Department, however, Root attempted to remedy two deficiencies by a single reform. The Department required both improved performance of professional military functions and more effective central coordination and control. The first need could have been met by subordinating the Commanding General to the Secretary and furnishing the General with a staff to prepare military plans. The second need could have been met by enhancing the legal authority of the Secretary and strengthening his office, so that he could effectively control both Commanding General and bureau heads. These reforms would have given the Department a balanced system of organization reflecting in essence both the German system and the ideas of Spenser Wilkinson. Root, however, took but a single step, establishing a Chief of Staff as the principal military adviser to the Secretary. Thoroughly imbued with a Neo-Hamiltonian outlook, Root gave the Army a vertical system of organization reflecting a mixture of military and political functions. The General Staff Act of 1903, embodying Root’s theories, marked a sharp break with the old coordinate pattern of organization in three respects.
(1) It abolished the direct command relationship of the military chief to the President. Under the new system, “command should . . . be exercised by or in the name of the Secretary of War, through a Chief of Staff.” While the law put the Chief of Staff under the direction of the President as well as the Secretary of War, nonetheless, in practice, the new plan required that the Secretary of War alone become “the representative of the Constitutional Commander-in-Chief — the President.” The job of the Chief of Staff was to “assist a superior officer [the Secretary of War] who has command, and to represent him, acting in his name and by his authority, in carrying out his policies and securing the execution of his commands.”
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