Army & Navy – COMMAND: The Pros

General George C. Marshall’s conception of a democratic army (see U.S. AT WAR) is an army in which “leadership is not exclusively concentrated in a professional soldier class.” Said he: “This is the type of army which . . . had to be extemporized to meet our needs in. World War I and World War II.” The extemporizing U.S. Army had in deed spread responsibility widely; most of its officers were citizen soldiers. But the top leadership of the Army was still largely Regular. Out of 1,300 general officers in the Army today, only 25 are Reservists (e.g., Lieut. General James Doolittle, boss of the Eighth Air Force); only 14 were drawn direct from civilian life (e.g., Lieut. General William Knudsen, boss of Army Air Forces Technical Service).

The semi-pro National Guard had contributed 76 generals, and perhaps they were the cases to point the way to wider leadership by citizen soldiers in the postwar Army. In World War II the top jobs had apparently been parceled out in fairly direct proportion to training in the years of peace.