Excerpt from The Armies of Industry: Our Nation's Manufacture of Munitions for a World in Arms, 1917-1918

Therefore we find the actual period of hostilities - the period between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918 - devoted to building the foundations of a munitions industry that Should be big enough to accomplish this overwhelming result. We might have made a better showing with our finished war mate rials, we might have aimed at a quick victory - and we might have failed. We did not take this course. America demanded the insurance that existed in the complete utilization of all her resources; and in the progress of welding those resources into a single vast war machine, such munitions of the more difficult sort as were actually produced may almost be regarded as casual to the main enterprise - mere harbingers of the quantities to come.

The decision to prepare heavily for 1919 and 1920 and thus sacrifice in 1917 and 1918 the munitions which could have been produced at the cost of a less adequate fundamental prep aration, was based on sound strategical reasoning on the part of the Allies and ourselves. Looking back at the past, we find that on April 6, 1917, the United States scarcely realized the gravity of what she was undertaking to do. There was a general impression, reaching even into Government, that the Allies alone were competent to defeat the Central Powers in time, and that America's part would be largely one of moral support, with expanding preparation in the background as insurance against any unforeseen disasters. In conformity with this attitude we sent the first division of American troops to France, in the spring of 1917, to be our earnest to the gov ernments and peoples of the Allies that we were with them in the great Struggle. Not until after the departure of the various foreign missions which came to this country during that spring did America fully awake to the seriousness of the Situation.

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