Herbert Hoover, The Ideology of Voluntarism and War Organization During the Great War

Abstract

T X-HE theme of voluntarism pervades the literature on national mobilization during the Great War. The Wilson administration, according to this canon, achieved planning without bureaucracy, regulation without coercion, cooperation without dictation. To be sure, state agencies had had to plan, administrators to coordinate, enlightened statesmen to lead. But their administration had rested less upon manipulation and dictation than upon education, cooperation among civilian volunteers, widespread consultation among private groups, and a general spirit of patriotism. In this way the United States avoided the degree of state intervention, centralized administration, and persistent postwar bureaucracy evident in England and the rest of Europe. The challenge of mobilization, in sum, simply proved once again the exceptional nature of American institutions. 1 There is some truth to this view. The structure of voluntarism as a system of thought reflects in fundamental ways the structure of American mobilization as a particular system of war organization. The