Thus,
the men who remain to till the soil and man the factories are no
less a part of the army that is in France than the men beneath the
battle flags. It must be so with us. It is not an army that we must
shape and train for war--it is a Nation. To this end our people must
draw close in one compact front against a common foe. But this
cannot be if each man pursues a private purpose. All must pursue one
purpose. The Nation needs all men, but it needs each man, not in the
field that will most pleasure him, but in the endeavor that will
best serve the common good. Thus, though a sharpshooter pleases to
operate a trip-hammer for the forging of great guns, and an expert
machinist desires to march with the flag, the Nation is being served
only when the sharpshooter marches and the machinist remains at his
levers. The whole Nation must be a team, in which each man shall
play the part for which he is best fitted.

If President Wilson deserves severe criticism for his failure to endorse
adequate plans of preparation for war while his country was at peace, he
should be given due credit for his appreciation that the home front must
be organized if the fighting front was to be victorious. He perceived
clearly that it was necessary to carry into the industrial life of the
nation that centralizing process which characterized his military policy.
That the nation at home was made to feel itself part of the fighting
forces and cooeperated enthusiastically and effectively in the organization
of the national resources was not the least of the triumphs of the United
States. Such organization demanded great sacrifice, not merely of luxuries
or comforts, but of settled habits, which are difficult to break. It must
necessarily be of an emergency character, for the United States possessed
no bureaucratic system like that which obtains on the continent of Europe
for the centralization of trade, manufactures, food production, and the
thousand activities that form part of economic life. But the event proved
that both the spirit and the brains of the American people were equal to
the crisis.

The problem of cooerdinating the national industries for the supply of the
army was complicated by the military decentralization described in the
preceding chapter, which President Wilson was not able to remedy before
the final months of the war. The army did not form or state its
requirements as on