(largely on the model of the Prussian military).34 At the same time, Root spearheaded reforms to revamp education for all levels of the military. He created the Army War College and worked to coordinate its offerings with the service academies and the growing number of state colleges that emerged after the Morrill Land-Grant College Act (1862). That act required colleges to offer military training as part of their curriculum, and Root wanted to standardize the curriculum to train future officers.35
While much more can be said about the process by which the army professionalized at the turn of the century, for our purposes, the events that followed the Spanish-America War emphasize the fact that Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lucius Clay entered military service at a time when the army itself undertook a broad transition in its capabilities and focus. In fits and starts over the next two decades it transformed from a small frontier garrison to a global projection of American power that included nation building efforts outside American borders. Thus, the careers of all three men were swept along by these broader currents of institutional change, and their ability to anticipate and lead that change in turn advanced their careers.
The oldest of the three, MacArthur entered West Point in June 1899, just as his father began to serve as military governor in the Philippines. His entry seemed predestined by the fact that his father had already become an army legend whose legacy he struggled to match. Eisenhower entered West Point in 1911 almost entirely through personal ambition. His family had little money or fame. Clay, the youngest of the three, entered West Point in 1914. He gained admittance as a political legacy: his father, Alexander Clay, had been elected to the United States Senate as a Democrat from Georgia three times before dying suddenly in 1910.
MacArthur was the best student of the three, finishing first in his class.36 Clay had a chance to match that record, finishing first in several subjects (including English and history); however, he finished 128th in “conduct” out of about 150 plebes. Seven weeks before graduation he stood only four demerits short of expulsion. “The discipline at West Point was mainly petty,” he said, “I thought it was foolish.”37 It showed. Eisenhower, in contrast to the other two, finished middle of the pack, generally more interested in athletic rather than academic competition. That said, his graduating class, the class of 1915, became famous as “the class the stars fell on.” More than one-third of its 164 members went on to hold the rank of brigadier general or higher, including (obviously) Eisenhower and his longtime friend and collaborator during World War II, Omar Bradley.38
Unlike their counterparts in European military academies, many plebes did not plan on a life in the military. Students often attended West Point for the free college education it offered. Unfortunately, they often got what they paid for. West Point lagged far behind the new research universities popping up around the country.39 Its curriculum had hardly changed since its creation during the presidency of James Monroe in 1817. Students memorized and regurgitated. Nothing more. Grades reflected the accuracy of the regurgitation. Nothing else. When plebes studied strategy, they consulted the battles of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant.40 If a plebe asked a question or wanted to understand the material he recited, the faculty cut him short: “I’m not here to answer questions,” they said, “but to mark you.”41
The absurdity of this approach nearly got Eisenhower expelled. One morning he forgot to prepare a math lecture. He stood at the board puzzling it out and, after a few tries, succeeded—but not in the prescribed way. “Mr. Eisenhower,” his instructor said, “you memorized the answer, put down a lot of figures and steps that have no meaning whatsoever … in hope of fooling [me].” Eisenhower took this as an accusation of cheating. He became “red-necked and angry” and went right back at his professor, a clear act of insubordination. As tensions rose, a more senior faculty member happened to walk by. After looking over Eisenhower’s work, the senior instruction said, “Eisenhower’s solution is more logical and easier than the one we’ve been using. I’m surprised that none of us … has stumbled on it.” Eisenhower survived. But so did the academy’s hostility to initiative or innovation. This particular professor never forgave him.42
A decade earlier, in 1903, when MacArthur graduated from West Point, most plebes thought that the best assignment lay with the Corps of Engineers—probably because it led most easily to a private sector career. Promotions in this branch often came sooner than in the other branches. MacArthur, as the top of his class, obviously ended up in the corps. His first assignment took him to the Philippines, just a few years after his father had left. He took up the job of constructing roads and barracks and, eventually, a wharf. Once, while searching for timber, two Filipino insurrectionists ambushed him, shooting his hat from his head. MacArthur returned fire and killed both men. An observing sergeant, figuring that only Providence had saved MacArthur, predicted “the rest of the Loo’tenant’s life is pure velvut.”43
A year later, it seemed anything but. MacArthur had contracted malaria and the “dhobe itch.” In October 1904, he returned to San Francisco to recover. By this point his father had become a major general, and Arthur MacArthur arranged for his recovering son to become his own aide-decamp. As a perk, the assignment included a long tour of Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. In particular, the two MacArthurs observed the workings of the Japanese, German, French, and British colonial empires. In all, they traveled nearly twenty thousand miles, and the experience convinced the younger MacArthur that America’s future was “irrevocably entwined with Asia and its island outposts.”44
When Arthur MacArthur suddenly passed away in September 1912, his widow’s health began to decline rapidly, and Douglas asked for reassignment near his mother. Secretary of War Henry Stimson felt that, “In view of the distinguished service of General Arthur MacArthur, the Secretary of War would be pleased if an arrangement could be effected” that would keep Douglas close to his widowed mother in Washington. The best way to do this was to make Douglas an assistant within the office of the newly created chief of staff.45
He arrived in Washington just as the dust settled following an existential struggle between Major General Leonard Wood, the new chief of staff, and Adjutant General Frederick Crayton Ainsworth. Wood represented the progressive wing of the military: he wanted centralization, professionalization, and greater executive control over the military. As adjutant general, Ainsworth headed one of the army’s bureaus. He stood for the old model: independent bureaus, a more federalized organization, and congressional perks. As is often the case in institutional fights, the issue that sparked the showdown involved something minor: how to handle military paperwork more efficiently. Yet it quickly escalated to a fight over the army’s future: would it fashion itself after European armies (particularly Prussia)? Or would it resemble the nineteenth-century citizen-army of the American past?
Henry Stimson, who served as secretary of war during Wood and Ainsworth’s battle, ultimately favored the progressive wing of the army. An austere patrician from New York with a strong sense of duty and a clear sense of right and wrong, Stimson entered public service when President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1906. He quickly built a strong reputation as a capable antitrust champion, which led to his appointment in 1911 as secretary of war to William Howard Taft. In the fight between Wood and Ainsworth he favored Wood generally but not decisively, hoping the two could resolve their differences despite the fact that their exchanges grew terser through 1911 and into the next year. Stimson finally felt compelled to act when Ainsworth finally sent a message that suggested Wood, as well as War Secretary Stimson, could not comprehend the “evil effects” of their paperwork “plan.” Ainsworth had violated Stimson’s sense of decorum. Wood wanted Stimson to initiate a court martial. But Stimson settled on simply relieving Ainsworth. In February 1912, Ainsworth “retired,” indicating that the progressive wing of the military had become ascendant.
Congress, of course, did not go unaware of the bureaucratic battle. Many members understood that Ainsworth’s departure called in question the old arrangement of using army bureaus to funnel appropriations back to
