Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

104 The OrganizaTiOnal hisTOry Of field arTillery
School of Fire for Field Artillery, Fort Sill, Oklahoma
average of 3.16 guns per 1,000 rifles—a figure recommended by the Greble Board,
which was appointed in 1911 to survey the needs of the artillery. The Stimson Plan,
which constituted a whole program for mobilization, along with an expanded revision
prepared in 1915 entitled Statement of a Proper Military Policy for the United
States, later influenced Congress in framing the National Defense Act of 1916. 30
The plans anticipated a wartime force consisting largely of state troops rather
than regulars, and the Army took steps to reorganize the militia system that had
been in effect since 1792. Secretary of War Root in 1900 envisioned a wartime army
composed chiefly of volunteers, although he believed that the Regular Army should
be strengthened in the specialized arms, including artillery, because of their need
for a greater amount of time and money for training and equipment. He recognized
the existence of many admirable artillery units in the National Guard, but thought
their numbers too small to affect his conclusion that the “expenditure of time and
money necessary to acquire and maintain proficiency in artillery . . . [was] so great
that the numbers in whose [specialized] branches of the National Guard must necessarily
continue small.” 31
30 Annual Reports of the War Department, 1912, 1:106–07, 259–61; Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower,
pp. 31–34.
31 Annual Reports of the War Department, FY1900, 1:54–55 (quoted words); ibid., FY1902, 1:28.