<P> Antimilitarists complained the plan would make America resemble Germany (which required two years' active duty). Advocates retorted that military "service" was an essential duty of citizenship, and that without the commonality provided by such service the nation would splinter into antagonistic ethnic groups . One spokesman promised that UMT would become "a real melting pot, under which the fire is hot enough to fuse the elements into one common mass of Americanism". Furthermore, they promised, the discipline and training would make for a better paid work force . Hostility to military service was strong at the time, and the program failed to win approval . In World War II, when Stimson as Secretary of War proposed a similar program of universal peacetime service, he was defeated . </P> <P> Underscoring its commitment, the Preparedness movement set up and funded its own summer training camps at Plattsburgh, New York, and other sites, where 40,000 college alumni became physically fit, learned to march and shoot, and ultimately provided the cadre of a wartime officer corps . Suggestions by labor unions that talented working - class youth be invited to Plattsburgh were ignored . The Preparedness movement was distant not only from the working classes but also from the middle - class leadership of most of small - town America . It had had little use for the National Guard, which it saw as politicized, localistic, poorly armed, ill trained, too inclined to idealistic crusading (as against Spain in 1898), and too lacking in understanding of world affairs . The National Guard on the other hand was securely rooted in state and local politics, with representation from a very broad cross section of American society . The Guard was one of the nation's few institutions that (in some northern states) accepted blacks on an equal footing . </P> <P> The Democratic party saw the Preparedness movement as a threat . Roosevelt, Root and Wood were prospective Republican presidential candidates . More subtly, the Democrats were rooted in localism that appreciated the National Guard, and the voters were hostile to the rich and powerful in the first place . Working with the Democrats who controlled Congress, Wilson was able to sidetrack the Preparedness forces . Army and Navy leaders were forced to testify before Congress to the effect that the nation's military was in excellent shape . </P> <P> In fact, neither the Army nor Navy was in shape for war . The Navy had fine ships but Wilson had been using them to threaten Mexico, and the fleet's readiness had suffered . The crews of the Texas and the New York, the two newest and largest battleships, had never fired a gun, and the morale of the sailors was low . In addition, it was outnumbered and outgunned by the British, German, French, and Italian navies . The Army and Navy air forces were tiny in size . Despite the flood of new weapons systems unveiled by the British, Germans, French, Austro - Hungarians, Italians, and others in the war in Europe, the Army was paying scant attention . For example, it was making no studies of trench warfare, poison gas, heavy artillery, or tanks and was utterly unfamiliar with the rapid evolution of Aerial warfare . The Democrats in Congress tried to cut the military budget in 1915 . The Preparedness movement effectively exploited the surge of outrage over the Lusitania in May 1915, forcing the Democrats to promise some improvements to the military and naval forces . Wilson, less fearful of the Navy, embraced a long - term building program designed to make the fleet the equal of the British Royal Navy by the mid-1920s, although this would not be achieved until World War II . "Realism" was at work here; the admirals were Mahanians and they therefore wanted a surface fleet of heavy battleships second to none--that is, equal to Britain . The facts of submarine warfare (which necessitated destroyers, not battleships) and the possibilities of imminent war with Germany (or with Britain, for that matter), were simply ignored . </P>

What was a major reason for united states entry into world war 1