NOT READY IN 1932

Perhaps nothing is more illustrative of American provincialism four decades ago than a brief glance at the military establishment; it requires no more. The U.S. had the sixteenth largest army in the world, putting it behind, among others, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Spain, Romania, and Poland. When every $ 17.85-a-month private had suited up, there were 132,069 Americans in uniform. On paper they could have put up a stiff fight against Yugoslavia (138,934), but in reality they would have been torn to pieces, because most of MacArthur’s men were committed to desk work, patrolling the Mexican border, and protecting U.S. possessions overseas. The chief of staff was left with 30,000 troops—fewer than the force King George sent to tame his rebellious American colonies in 1776.

Moreover, the quality of the Army was appalling [1932]. It cost roughly a quarter of one percent of today’s military juggernaut, and looked it. Fortune called it the “worst equipped” of the world’s armed forces; no one disputed the judgment. In a crisis MacArthur could have fielded 1,000 tanks, all obsolete; 1,509 aircraft, the fastest of which could fly 234 mph; and a single mechanized regiment, which had been organized at Fort Knox that spring, and which was led by cavalrymen on horses which wore mustard-gas-proof boots. The United States Army, one writer reported, “forever walks the wide land in the image of a gaping-mouthed private with an ill-fitting uniform carrying an obsolete rifle at an ungraceful angle.”

MacArthur was the only four-star general in the country—and there were no three-star generals. As chief of staff he received $ 10,400 a year, a home at Fort Myer, and the exclusive use of the Army’s only limousine. To his aide he seemed to occupy a distant pinnacle. Major Eisenhower’s annual salary was $ 3,000. Because he doubled as the military’s congressional lobbyist, he frequently went up to Capitol Hill. But his employer never loaned him the limousine. Nor was the major given taxi fare; in all of official Washington, there was no such thing as a petty cash fund. Instead, as he liked to recall in later life, Eisenhower would walk down the hall and fill out a form, in exchange for which he received two streetcar tokens. Then he would stand outside on Pennsylvania Avenue and wait for a Mt. Pleasant trolley car.

It wasn’t a long wait. Washington was laced with trolley tracks; there were nearly seven hundred streetcars in service. Except in winter, when they were vulnerable to short-circuits, the cars were efficient, and traffic jams lay a generation away. If you drove to work (observing the 22 mph speed limit), you parked in front of your office. There was almost always room at the curb. There was also an extraordinary variety among the square-shouldered Packards, Studebakers, Grahams, Pierce Arrows, Terraplanes, and Stutzes, for the automobile business, by later corporate standards, was practically a cottage industry.

Manchester, William (2013-11-08).
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972
(6-7). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.