Annual Report of the Assistant Secretary of War.. Annual Report of the Chief of Staff... Appendix A. Report of the Board of Commissioners of the United States Soldiers' Home and report of inspection of the home. Appendix B. Assignments, strength and loss statistics of the Army. Appendix C. Miscellaneous statistics pertaining to the Army... ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF WAR Mr. PRESIDENT: My annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1938, comprised in part a summary of the continuous improvement effected in the Military Establishment during your incumbency in office as President of the United States. The enhancement in the military proficiency and morale of personnel had been most gratifying. Officers and soldiers and the units which they manned had reached a plane of professional efficiency never before attained by our peacetime Armyand in making that assertion I had reference not only to the personnel of the permanent establishment, our Regular Army, but to those enrolled in the National Guard and the Organized Reserves. At minimum cost a very essential enlisted reserve had been provided for the Regular Army which promised much toward the maintenance of a more efficient land defensive force. Between March 4, 1933, and June 30, 1938, a powerful striking arm-definitely defensive in purpose, if offensive in tactical and strategical employment-had been instituted in the form of the General Headquarters Air Force. Motorization and mechanization had received appropriate emphasis in the modernization of combat elements. Continuous and intensive experimentation had been conducted with a view to the determination of those organizational changes in strength and equipment necessary to provide combat units of greater mobility and greater battlefield effectiveness. On a small scale, provision had been made for the conduct of command post exercises and field maneuvers in which there participated elements from the combined arms of all three components of the Army of the United States. May I repeat the statement contained in my last year's annual report that "Combining as they do participating personnel from the Regular Army, the National Guard, and the Organized Reserves, they (these exercises and maneuvers) go far toward fostering that most desirable conception of a single Army of the United States in which all soldiers, be they of the permanent establishment or the civilian components, play essential and indispensable roles." Also, with considerable assistance from so-called emergency funds, there had been effected marked betterment in housing facilities and other military installations which had deteriorated in the decade following the termination of the World War to an alarming degreealarming so far as pertained to the safety and health of personnel, the preservation of supplies, and the efficiency of plant operation. In that report I also outlined the responsibilities-the very heavy responsibilities-which devolved upon our initial protective force, comprising the units of the Regular Army and the National Guard. I made the statement that, despite the advancements in the efficiency of our land-protective forces during the 5 preceding years, there still remained "deficiencies in organization, equipment, and personnel which must be corrected before we can be assured of the maintenance of a military force adequate for our defensive needs." My recommendations in the conclusion of my 1938 annual report I considered of extreme importance from the standpoint of the security of our Republic. They included assurance of complete military perfection in the units which comprised our initial protective force-our peacetime establishment; strengthening of the defenses of the Panama Canal, which I stated "must be made impregnable," primarily by augmentation of the air forces and antiaircraft artillery installations of the Canal Zone; and prompt provision for the procurement of critical items of equipment of noncommercial type with which to supply those units, which, in the event of major emergency, would follow the initial protective force into the field. At the time of the rendition of my 1938 report, armed conflicts were raging on the Spanish Peninsula and in the Far East. Furthermore, the clouds of war hovered low over Europe where one so-called crisis followed another in continuous, but dread, procession. The entire world was apprehensive of an early outbreak of a second World War. International tension was close to the breaking point. Those factors made essential a reorientation of our military policy. Furthermore, with extreme rapidity there had been developed, within the preceding 10 years or so, engines of destruction of such speed, range, and power-on the land, in the air and on the seaswhich demanded further vitalization of our Military Establishment. As I stated to the Subcommittee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives in June 1939 that while the international situation had served to focus attention on the necessity for reorientation of our defense program, primarily it had been the extremely rapid, scientific development of new instruments of war that had made essential the augmentation of our land defenses. I remarked that, unfortunately for civilization, those scientific developments had not been confined to improvements which served to promote peace and progress. And I added that the continuous development of speedier and more powerful weapons of war had awakened the American public to the realization that our national security was no longer assured by the broad expanses of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, and that in the military sense the Americas are no longer continents. The Americas are no longer continents? That observation brings me to a discussion of the so-called hemispherical defense. As Secretary of War, I do not visualize hemispherical defense as a strengthening of the Monroe Doctrine. As such, I do not visualize hemispherical defense as a Pan-American protective alliance. All those considerations, important as they may be, are political, and, as such, they do not lie within the province of the Department of War of this Nation, nor within my province as the Secretary of War. It is the simple, unadulterated fact that the range and destructive potentialities of weapons of warfare, primarily those whose realm is the skies, have, in recent years, so shortened the elements of distance and time that any hostile air base established anywhere within effective striking proximity of the Panama Canal would prove a vital threat to that waterway-and, therefore, a threat to the very security of these United States. In speaking, therefore, of hemispherical defense I am speaking, from the military standpoint, of the defense of this Republic. In January 1939 you sent a message to Congress recommending the placing of our armed forces in what Gen. Malin Craig, then Chief of Staff, termed "a position of readiness" for any eventuality. The response of the Congress and of the American people to that message was instantaneous and practically unanimous in approval. There were made available by the Congress funds to expand the Army's Air Corps to the extent essential to provide a balanced aviation arm, both in personnel and matériel. Provision also was made for the procurement of over $100,000,000 of so-called critical items of equipment, vitally required to make our Army a "going concern," prepared to meet any emergency calls made upon it. Contributing to the same purpose were appropriations of some $16,000,000 for the placing of educational orders with industrial plants, by means of which the foundation might be laid for the speedy procurement, should the demand arise, of essential items of military equipment of noncommercial nature. As Secretary of War I am charged, also, not only with the responsibility for the operation and maintenance of the Panama Canal with its various commercial subsidiaries, but with the defense of that interoceanic waterway, which is the very life line of our defensive set-up. It was extremely reassuring to me, therefore, that your recommendation for the augmentation of the defenses of that vital waterway should receive prompt approval by the Congress. Anticipating that approval, I directed that immediate steps be taken to strengthen the defensive installations of the Panama Canal. The Congress made available for expenditure for the Army's military purposes close to $1,000,000,000-a rather staggering sum. But, in considering the necessity for such expenditures, it must be realized that within the past two decades there has been developed a new arm of war-air power. True it is that there has been, and still persists, considerable conjecture over the ultimate military effect of air power. Only a major war can determine the full potentialities of military aviation. But to underestimate those potentialities might result in the extinguishment of a nation's existence. For that reason it is essential that there be maintained within the Military Establishment of this Nation an adequate, balanced air force. The extent to which the maintenance of such an air force has contributed to increased national defense expenditures can best be illustrated when I state that of the total appropriations for the Army of the United States for the fiscal year which will terminate June 30, 1940, 23 percent was designed for the support of the Army Air Corps. Yet, be the expenditures what they may, I am positive in my belief that the American public-the very vast majority of the American people-fully approves of any expenditures which have as their sole purpose the assurance of the security and the peace of this Republic. These are the days when by the threat of the exercise of armed might, or by the actual employment of military violence, the maps of the world are changed overnight. The peoples of the world reluctantly, but definitely, have lost faith in international agreements which have as their purpose the preservation of peace. Under such circumstances there is but one road along which a peace-loving people can travel with security. That road is a national defense highway, with a foundation of such firmness as to assure the support of any required military load. |