<P> Garrison's plan unleashed the fiercest battle in peacetime history over the relationship of military planning to national goals . In peacetime, War Department arsenals and Navy yards manufactured nearly all munitions that lacked civilian uses, including warships, artillery, naval guns, and shells . Items available on the civilian market, such as food, horses, saddles, wagons, and uniforms were always purchased from civilian contractors . Armor plate (and after 1918, airplanes) were exceptions that have caused unremitting controversy for a century . After World War II, the arsenals and Navy yards were much less important than giant civilian aircraft and electronic firms, which became the second half of the "military - industrial complex" Peace leaders like Jane Addams of Hull House and David Starr Jordan of Stanford redoubled their efforts, and now turned their voices against the President because he was "sowing the seeds of militarism, raising up a military and naval caste". Many ministers, professors, farm spokesmen and labor union leaders joined in, with powerful support from a band of four dozen southern Democrats in Congress who took control of the House Military Affairs Committee . Wilson, in deep trouble, took his cause to the people in a major speaking tour in early 1916, a warmup for his reelection campaign that fall . Wilson seems to have won over the middle classes, but had little impact on the largely ethnic working classes and the deeply isolationist farmers . Congress still refused to budge, so Wilson replaced Garrison as Secretary of War with Newton Baker, the Democratic mayor of Cleveland and an outspoken opponent of preparedness . (Garrison's kept quiet, but felt Wilson was "a man of high ideals but no principles".) The upshot was a compromise passed in May 1916, as the war raged on and Berlin was debating whether America was so weak it could be ignored . The Army was to double in size to 11,300 officers and 208,000 men, with no reserves, and a National Guard that would be enlarged in five years to 440,000 men . Summer camps on the Plattsburg model were authorized for new officers, and the government was given $20 million to build a nitrate plant of its own . Preparedness supporters were downcast, the antiwar people were jubilant . America would now be too weak to go to war . Colonel Robert L. Bullard privately complained that "Both sides (Britain and Germany) treat us with scorn and contempt; our fool, smug conceit of superiority has been exploded in our faces and deservedly ." The House gutted the naval plans as well, defeating a "big navy" plan by 189 to 183, and scuttling the battleships . The battle of Jutland (May 31 / June 1, 1916) was used by the navalists to argue for the primacy of seapower; they then took control in the Senate, broke the House coalition, and authorized a rapid three - year buildup of all classes of warships . A new weapons system, naval aviation, received $3.5 million, and the government was authorized to build its own armor - plate factory . The very weakness of American military power encouraged Berlin to start its unrestricted submarine attacks in 1917 . It knew this meant war with America, but it could discount the immediate risk because the U.S. Army was negligible and the new warships would not be at sea until 1919 by which time the war would be over, with Germany victorious . The notion that armaments led to war was turned on its head: refusal to arm in 1916 led to war in 1917 . </P> <P> Americans felt an increasing need for a military that could command respect; as one editor put it, "The best thing about a large army and a strong navy is that they make it so much easier to say just what we want to say in our diplomatic correspondence ." Berlin thus far had backed down and apologized when Washington was angry, thus boosting American self - confidence . America's rights and America's honor increasingly came into focus . The slogan "Peace" gave way to "Peace with Honor". The Army remained unpopular, however . A recruiter in Indianapolis noted that, "The people here do not take the right attitude towards army life as a career, and if a man joins from here he often tries to go out on the quiet". The Preparedness movement used its easy access to the mass media to demonstrate that the War Department had no plans, no equipment, little training, no reserves, a laughable National Guard, and a wholly inadequate organization for war . Motion pictures like The Battle Cry of Peace (1915) depicted invasions of the American homeland that demanded action . </P> <P> The readiness and capability of the U.S. Navy was a matter of controversy . The press at the time reported that the only thing the military was ready for was an enemy fleet attempting to seize New York harbor--at a time when the German battle fleet was penned up by the Royal Navy . The Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels was a journalist with pacifist leanings . He had built up the educational resources of the Navy and made its Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island an essential experience for would - be admirals . However, he alienated the officer corps with his moralistic reforms, including no wine in the officers' mess, no hazing at the Naval Academy, and more chaplains and YMCAs . Daniels, as a newspaperman, knew the value of publicity . In 1915 he set up the Naval Consulting Board headed by Thomas Edison to obtain the advice and expertise of leading scientists, engineers, and industrialists . It popularized technology, naval expansion, and military preparedness, and was well covered in the media . But according to Coletta he ignored the nation's strategic needs, and disdaining the advice of its experts, Daniels suspended meetings of the Joint Army and Navy Board for two years because it was giving unwelcome advice, chopped in half the General Board's recommendations for new ships, reduced the authority of officers in the Navy yards where ships were built and repaired, and ignored the administrative chaos in his department . Bradley Fiske, one of the most innovative admirals in American naval history, in 1914 was Daniels' top aide; he recommended a reorganization that would prepare for war, but Daniels refused . Instead he replaced Fiske in 1915 and brought in for the new post of Chief of Naval Operations an unknown captain, William Benson . Chosen for his compliance, Benson proved a wily bureaucrat who was more interested in preparing for an eventual showdown with Britain than an immediate one with Germany . Benson told Sims he "would as soon fight the British as the Germans". Proposals to send observers to Europe were blocked, leaving the Navy in the dark about the success of the German submarine campaign . Admiral William Sims charged after the war that in April 1917, only ten percent of the Navy's warships were fully manned; the rest lacked 43% of their seamen . Light antisubmarine ships were few in number, as if Daniels had been unaware of the German submarine menace that had been the focus of foreign policy for two years . The Navy's only warfighting plan, the "Black Plan" assumed the Royal Navy did not exist and that German battleships were moving freely about the Atlantic and the Caribbean and threatening the Panama Canal . Daniels' tenure would have been even less successful save for the energetic efforts of Assistant Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt, who effectively ran the Department . His most recent biographer concludes that, "it is true that Daniels had not prepared the navy for the war it would have to fight ." </P> <P> By 1916 a new factor was emerging--a sense of national self - interest and American nationalism . The unbelievable casualty figures in Europe were sobering--two vast battles caused over one million casualties each . Clearly this war would be a decisive episode in the history of the world . Every American effort to find a peaceful solution was frustrated . </P>

American neutrality in response to the world war 1 was never a real possibility because