America goes to war

Few countries had been as well prepared to go to war as the United States in 1917. Not that the nation had made specific preparations to enter the European conflict on the side of Britain and its allies against Germany and other “central” powers. Officials in Washington as well as the American people would have welcomed a peace if it had been arranged by the combatants without their military intervention. Yet if intervention were to come, the United States was in an excellent position to make a decisive difference. It had strengthened itself economically and militarily during the years of neutrality, the people had had ample time to educate themselves about world affairs and their country’s potential role in them, and American foreign policy had been so conducted as to ensure the nation’s leadership position once it entered the war.

In the military sphere, President Woodrow Wilson had, in 1916, begun calling for preparedness – at first in order to keep the nation so prepared militarily that no power would dare challenge its security and interests. After 1917, of course, the purpose changed to creating a strong armed force to fight a war. The Selective Service Act of May 1917 established a system for registering Americans for military service, and within a year the army was able to send over two million “doughboys” to Europe. The navy would in the meantime be augmented, and the naval building program of 1918 envisaged making the U.S. Navy the most powerful in the world.