The Emergency National Defense Organization

Abstract

A GREAT national defense program, such as this country is now undertaking, requires adequate and effective organization, not only for the conduct of military enterprise, but also for the mobilization of every part of our national economy, including government itself. The organization for over-all management and direction, with which this article is concerned, is of tremendous importance to the successful prosecution of the program. Modern warfare is not conducted by small professional armies alone; it commands the energies of the entire population. When a nation engages in war today, all other business and interests are subordinated to the one supreme end of winning the war. While this country is not at war, the administrative problems of a large defense program are similar to those of actual war, and in a defense program it is essential to build an organization which, with modifications, will meet wartime needs. During the World War a considerable number of emergency agencies were created to perform wartime activities, particularly those relating to the supply of materiel for the conduct of the war. Several major changes in the governmental organization for the prosecution of the war were proposed and discussed, such as the creation of a special war cabinet like that set up by Lloyd George in Great Britain, the formation of a special department of munitions, and the establishment of a special department of aviation, but none of them was actually made. The Congress granted to the President, by the Overman Act of May 18, 1918, the authority to make changes in the internal organization of the government for the purpose of successfully prosecuting the war. This authority, granted more than a year after our entry into the war, was used to make a number of important changes in the orga ization of the agencies directly concerned with war activities. It should be noted, however, that the most important emergency agencies were already in existence, most of them growing out of the committees of the National Defense Council, in some instances without specific statutory authority. The principal wartime agencies included the Council of National Defense, the Advisory Commission to the Council, the War Industries Board (which after March, 1918, played a key role in the procurement of materials and munitions, taking over the functions of the General Munitions Board), the Capital Issues Committee, the War Finance Corporation, the Shipping Board and the Emergency Fleet Corporation, the War Trade Board, the War Labor Administration, the Fuel Administration, the Food Administration, the Railroad Administration, and the Committee on Public Information. The heads of most of these agencies reported directly to the President.