An Army of the People the Constitution of an Effective Force, of Trained Citizens (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from An Army of the People the Constitution of an...)
Excerpt from An Army of the People the Constitution of an Effective Force, of Trained Citizens
IN this little book I have attempted to give a detailed description of a N ational Military System for the United States. I trust that this Military System Will be found to meet the requirements of adequate military strength, under forms that are in full harmony With American political traditions and ideals.
In order to avoid a monotonous treatment of the many details of military organization in the form of a technical prospectus, I have attempted to present a graphic picture of the completed structure. For this purpose I have adopted the fiction that Congress is to pass The National Defense Act in the near future, and that I am simply writing a popu lar history of the American Army of the People as it stands complete a few years later.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
John McAuley Palmer was an American soldier, author, and politician.
Background
John McAuley Palmer was born on April 23, 1870 in Carlinville, Illinois, United States. He was the son of John Mayo and Ellen Clark Robertson Palmer. His paternal grandfather, a friend and contemporary of Abraham Lincoln, was a governor of Illinois, United States Senator, and, in 1896, the National Democratic ("gold") presidential candidate. Palmer grew up in a prosperous, socially prominent, and politically active family.
Education
John McAuley Palmer attended high school in Springfield, Illinois, before graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1892.
Career
John McAuley Palmer began his military career in the Fifteenth Infantry Regiment. He served at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, and participated in the confrontation between rioters and federal troops during the railway strike of 1894. In 1896 he was transferred to Fort Grant, Arizona. Two years later he was appointed the first professor of military science at the University of Chicago, but the Spanish-American War abruptly terminated his academic assignment. Although he reached Cuba after the cessation of hostilities, he did see action with the China Relief Expedition in 1900.
While teaching chemistry at the United States Military Academy from 1901 to 1906 he published a series of light-hearted articles advocating regulatory legislation for monopolistic corporations in McClure's magazine and became friendly with Ray Stannard Baker, Ida Tarbell, and other well-known muckrakers. After rejoining his regiment in the Philippines in 1906, Palmer, who had been promoted to captain, was appointed civil governor of the Lanao district of Mindanao, where he sought nonviolent means for pacifying the Muslim renegades. He returned to the United States in 1908 and spent the next two years as a student at the Army School of the Line and Staff College, in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he formed a fast friendship with George Marshall.
While serving on the army general staff (1911 - 1912) he presented a plan for reorganizing the army into tactical units ready to take the field in an emergency rather than the existing system of politically sited garrisons and administrative overhead suited only to peacetime conditions. His associations with Henry Stimson, Chief of Staff Leonard Wood, and former Secretary of War Elihu Root did much to further his political and military education. Palmer returned to the Fifteenth Infantry in 1911 at Tientsin, where the regiment formed part of a multinational garrison stationed in China following the Boxer Rebellion. He returned to duty on the general staff in 1916, as a major, and participated in the planning of the American Expeditionary Force to France.
On June 1917, General John J. Pershing, who was to command the AEF, selected Palmer as assistant chief of staff for operations. Palmer devised plans for a two-million-man expeditionary force and negotiated with the French to secure an all-American sector of the front where the AEF could apply its tactical ideas. Hampered by the lack of an adequate staff, Palmer drove himself mercilessly and ultimately suffered a serious breakdown. To assist his recuperation, Pershing sent him on a quasi-diplomatic mission to Italy, to help restore morale after the Italian defeat at Caporetto.
In 1918 he returned to France and commanded the Fifty-eighth Infantry Brigade of the Twenty-ninth Division in its successful assault on the Hindenburg line north of Verdun. Pershing recommended him for promotion to brigadier general, but the Armistice intervened. Palmer subsequently returned to Washington as Pershing's representative in the congressional discussions on postwar reorganization of the army. His testimony before a Senate subcommittee on military affairs so impressed the legislators that he was invited to serve as military consultant. Palmer had presented a carefully conceived plan for maintaining a small and economical regular army supplemented by an organized territorial reserve of citizen soldiers led by reserve officers. One year of universal military training would assure the nation of a large pool of trained manpower. The regular army could thus be rapidly expanded in wartime, but would remain small and inexpensive in time of peace. His stand placed Palmer in direct opposition to his superior, Chief of Staff Peyton C. March, who advocated a large regular army and saw citizen soldiers primarily as rank fillers in time of war.
Palmer was a principal author of the National Defense Act of 1920, although Congress rejected his plan for universal military training, a number of his proposals for strengthening the civilian components were ultimately incorporated into this historically significant statute. When Pershing became chief of staff in 1921, he selected Marshall and Palmer for his personal staff. Although this assignment placed Palmer in a position of direct influence, many of his major schemes for effective national defense were frustrated when an economy-minded and isolationist Congress reduced the army to a skeleton force. Promoted to brigadier general in December 1922, Palmer assumed command of a brigade at Gatun, Canal Zone.
He retired in 1926. Palmer, always concerned to induce his fellow regulars to appreciate not only the potential of the citizen soldier but also the importance of organizing and training the civilian components in peacetime, wrote five books advocating this objective. After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, he helped frame the Selective Service Act in 1940, a peacetime compulsory-training measure. Just before Pearl Harbor, Marshall, then chief of staff, recalled Palmer to active duty as an adviser on reserve forces. He became absorbed in planning for the postwar army, unsuccessfully reiterating his plea for universal military training. He had considerably more success in his efforts to establish a strong, well-trained, organized reserve. His influence is clearly discernible in Marshall's final report, with its strong plea for universal military training. In September 1946 Palmer retired for a second time, priding himself on being the oldest army officer on duty. He died in Washington, D. C. on October 26, 1955.
John McAuley Palmer was a gifted raconteur with a whimsical sense of humor and great personal charm. He was epitomized by Marshall as "the civilian conscience of the Army. "
Interests
John McAuley Palmer wrote numerous books and articles about military policy.
Connections
On June 14, 1893, John McAuley Palmer married Maude Laning. They had two children.