摘要：The 20th century gave us a long his-tory in which the resources needed tofight wars and maintain credible fight-ing forces during periods of peace var-ied from surfeit to meagerness, fromfeast to famine. The impact of each ofthese identifiable periods on the missioneffectiveness of the Army and on thelives o f so ldiers and their families isboth a lesson of history and, perhaps, aworrisome portent for the 21st century.Beginning arbitrarily in 1917, re-sponding with fervor and patriotismand following reports of the Germanatrocities of those years, the nation wentto war; and volunteer soldiers, partiallytrained and minimally equipped, earnedrespect and gratitude on the battlefieldsof Europe. The costs were almost ig-nored as the country made every effortto pro vide the tools and supplies thatwo uld create a modern Army. Almo stimmediately after the Armistice, how-ever, the Army of about 3.5 milliontroops began a reduction that left about200,000 soldiers in 1920, then 132,000 in1923. During that period, the antiwar,antimilitarists and those who believedin the League of Nations' ability to guar-antee the peace of the world demandedminimizing, if not eliminating, funds forthe Army and Navy. Until 1939, the sizeof the Army was always less than the240,000 authorized.The result of those two decades ofbudget famine is addressed in The U.S.Army in World War II, the Army's offi-cial history of that war: "That Americawas peace-minded for two decades ishardly worth the saying; what mattersis that because of this state of mind thenation's military strength was allowedto decrease and decay to the pointwhere it became tragically insufficientand ¡ incapable of restoration save af-ter the loss of many lives and the ex-penditure of other resourc es beyondcomprehension." Pearl Harbor, theBataan Death March, the loss of WakeIsland, Kasserine Pass and other de-feats stretching into 1943, and the in-ability to launch the decisi ve opera-tions to end the war until 1944, provethe validity of those observations.A feast period began in 1940 withthe draft and a burgeoning budget thatultimately built land, naval and airforces of incomparable power and ver-satility. It also built an industrial giantthat dominated the world economy forgenerations, guaranteeing the prosper-ity of the country for the entire century.Nevertheless, it had taken four years tobuild, equip and train the forces andanother year required to end that warsuccessfully
