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Army General Matthew Ridgway’s actions throughout his career provide a valuable example of the appropriate time and place for serious dissent by military leaders. Ridgway demonstrated the importance of selectively and pragmatically expressing open disagreement in response to operational decisions a military leader deems unnecessarily risk American lives and economic resource

Crane, Conrad C.

English

Matthew Ridgway and the Value of Persistent Dissent

Press, USAWC

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 
Volume 47 
Number 4 Parameters WInter 2017 Article 16 
Winter 11-17-2021 
Article Index 
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Bateman, Robert L. “Commanding Military Power.” [Review Essay] 
Parameters 47, no. 4 (Winter 2017–18): 119–20.
Beehner, Lionel M., Benedetta Berti, and Michael T. Jackson. “The 
Strategic Logic of Sieges in Counterinsurgencies.” Parameters 47, 
no. 2 (Summer 2017): 77–86.
Blatt, Charlotte F. “Operational Success, Strategic Failure: 
Assessing the 2007 Iraq Troop Surge.” Parameters 47, no. 1 (Spring 
2017): 43–56.
Brands, Hal, and Peter D. Feaver. “What Are America’s Alliances 
Good For?” Parameters 47, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 15–30.
Bridges, Olen Chad, and Andrée Navarro. “Mobilizing for Major 
War.” Parameters 47, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 87–94.
Cantey, Seth, and Ricardo Correa. “Making Peace: Next Steps in 
Colombia.” Parameters 47, no. 4 (Winter 2017–18): 85–96.
Chapin, John, Marissa Mendoza-Burcham, and Mari Pierce. “Third-
Force Influences: Hollywood’s War Films.” Parameters 47, no. 3 
(Autumn 2017): 79–88.
Coletta, Damon V. “Navigating the Third Offset Strategy.” Parameters 
47, no. 4 (Winter 2017–18): 47–62.
Freeman, Lawrence. “Beyond Surprise Attack.” [Special Commentary] 
Parameters 47, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 7–14.
Gilliam, Ken S., and Barrett K. Parker. “Mobilization: The State of the 
Field.” Parameters 47, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 95–102.
Glenn, Russell W. “Mission Command in the Australian Army: A 
Contrast in Detail.” Parameters 47, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 21–30.
Hazelton, Jacqueline L. “Insurgent Defectors in Counterinsurgencies.” 
Parameters 47, no. 3 (Autumn 2017): 25–38.
Hémez, Rémy. “The French Army at a Crossroads.” Parameters 47, no. 1 
(Spring 2017): 103–12.
Hoffman, F. G. “Will War’s Nature Change in the Seventh Military 
Revolution?” Parameters 47, no. 4 (Winter 2017–18): 19–32.
Iasiello, Emilio J. “Russia’s Improved Information Operations: From 
Georgia to Crimea.” Parameters 47, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 51–64.
Katz, David J. “Waging Financial Warfare: Why and How.” Parameters 
47, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 41–50.
Keravuori, Rose P. “Expansibility and Army Intelligence.” Parameters 
47, no. 4 (Winter 2017–18): 97–106.
Article Index, Volume 47, 2017
160        Parameters 47(4) Winter 2017–18
King, Anthony C. “Mission Command 2.0: From an Individualist to a 
Collectivist Model.” Parameters 47, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 7–20.
Klein, Ellen “Elle.” “Immunity in Contingency Operations: 
A Proposal for US Contractors.” Parameters 47, no. 1 (Spring 
2017): 71–82.
Langford, Ian. “Australia’s Offset and A2/AD Strategies.” Parameters 
47, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 93–102.
Lanoszka, Alexander. “The Belarus Factor in European Security.” 
Parameters 47, no. 4 (Winter 2017–18): 75–84.
MacDougall, James C. “Destined for War: Can America and China 
Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” [Review Essay] Parameters 47, no. 2 
(Summer 2017): 113–16.
Matheny, Michael R. “Employing Military Force in the 21st Century.” 
Parameters 47, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 31–40.
Metz, Steven. “Abandoning Counterinsurgency: Reviving 
Antiterrorism Strategy.” Parameters 47, no. 3 (Autumn 2017): 13–24.
Metzel, Matthew N., and John M. Lorenzen. “Military Force and Mass 
Migration in Europe.” Parameters 47, no. 3 (Autumn 2017): 51–64.
Miller, Larry D. “Torture and the Human Mind.” [Review Essay] 
Parameters 47, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 113–20.
Mitchell, Robb C. “Rapid Expansion and the Army’s Matériel: Is 
There Enough?” Parameters 47, no. 3 (Autumn 2017): 101–110.
Owen, Robert C. “US Air Force Airlift and the Army’s Relevance.” 
Parameters 47, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 103–12.
Pitts, Esli T. “Expanding Brigade Combat Teams: Is the Training Base 
Adequate?” Parameters 47, no. 3 (Autumn 2017): 89–100.
Proctor, Pat. “Lessons Unlearned: Army Transformation and Low-
Intensity Conflict.” Parameters 47, no. 4 (Winter 2017–18): 33–46.
Ross, Tommy. “Deterrence & Security Assistance: The South China 
Sea.” Parameters 47, no. 4 (Winter 2017–18): 63–74.
Rynning, Sten. “Rethinking NATO Policy on the Protection of 
Civilians.” Parameters 47, no. 3 (Autumn 2017): 39–50.
Shields, Patricia M. “Limits of Negative Peace, Faces of Positive 
Peace.” [Special Commentary] Parameters 47, no. 3 (Autumn 
2017): 5–12.
Shields, Patricia M., and Donald S. Travis. “Achieving Organizational 
Flexibility through Ambidexterity.” Parameters 47, no. 2 (Summer 
2017): 65–76.
Article Index, Volume 47, 2017       161
Shwedo, Eric P. “Expansibility and Army Special Operations Forces.” 
Parameters 47, no. 4 (Winter 2017–18): 107–118. 
Simpson, Emile. “Clausewitz’s Theory of War and Victory in 
Contemporary Conflict.” Parameters 47, no. 4 (Winter 2017–18): 7–18.
Sims, Douglas A., II, and Amy B. Adler. “Enhancing Resilience in an 
Operational Unit.” Parameters 47, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 83–92.
Tripodi, Paolo G., and David M. Todd. “Casualties of Their Own 
Success: The 2011 Urination Incident in Afghanistan.” Parameters 47, 
no. 3 (Autumn 2017): 65–78.
Wiechnik, Stanley J. “Tracking Democratization: Insights for 
Planners.” Parameters 47, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 57–70.
Young, Tomas-Durell. “Legacy Concepts: A Sociology of Command 
in Central and Eastern Europe.” Parameters 47, no. 1 (Spring 
2017): 31–42.


Article Index

Brooks, Risa

Beyond Huntington: US Military Professionalism Today

Evans, Carol V.

Providing Stability and Deterrence: The US Army in INDOPACOM

Kem, John S.

Breckenridge, James G.

Managerial Aspects of Command

Klug, Jonathan P.

The Joint Force and Lessons from 1971

Clark, J. P.

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 
Volume 51 
Number 1 Parameters 51(1) Spring 2021 Article 16 
Spring 3-2-2021 
US Army Reforms in the Progressive Era 
J. P. Clark 
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US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters by an authorized editor of USAWC Press. 
RetRospectives 1971: LeaRning fRom the past
US Army Reforms in the Progressive Era
J. P. Clark
©2021 J. P. Clark
Colonel Jason P. Clark, 
PhD, is a US Army 
strategist. He is the 
author of  Preparing for 
War: The Emergence of  
the Modern U.S. Army, 
1815–1917.
ABSTRACT: A look back at F. Gunther Eyck’s assessment of  
reforms enacted under US Secretary of  War Henry L. Stimson may 
reveal as much about the historiography of  the early 1970s as it does 
about Stimson’s reform efforts themselves. Eyck’s 1971 evaluation, 
among the first in a decade of  scholarship examining successes and 
failures of  Progressive Era Army reforms, raises important issues 
but avoids broader considerations of  the sociopolitical realities of  
the United States at the turn of  the twentieth century.
During the 1970–71 academic year at the US Army War College, Professor F. Gunther Eyck served as the Henry L. Stimson Chair of  Political Science. Presumably the connection with 
his position’s namesake led Eyck to write a short assessment of  Henry L. 
Stimson’s first tenure as US secretary of  war for the inaugural issue of  
Parameters. While these circumstances suggest Eyck might have come to 
his subject more by incident than by design, the article is worth revisiting. 
In fact, Eyck’s factually sound narrative of events is relevant to military 
professionals today. The article, however, can also be examined as a 
product of the early 1970s—a period of institutional tumult not unlike 
our own.
Scholars and professionals are inevitably products of their times; as 
such, interest in particular topics ebbs and flows. Eyck’s article presaged a 
wave of scholarship examining military developments and reform in the 
Progressive Era (1896–1916) that would last for about a decade and then 
recede, leaving the period largely neglected as a topic of research since.
The article is also emblematic of the extent to which authors depend 
on the availability of conceptual tools. As historian Daniel T. Rodgers 
observes, the majority of individuals are “users rather than shapers 
of ideas” and depend on “the constellation of live, accessible ways of 
looking at society within which they [work].”1 Eyck wrote his article just 
before the advent of the so-called new military history that emphasized 
the interchange between society and military institutions. Accordingly, 
even though the early 1970s was a period of intense civilian scrutiny of 
military affairs, the article’s analysis remained confined, in retrospect, to 
a surprisingly narrow technocratic focus.
Eyck concentrated on the three most important events related to 
the effectiveness and efficiency of the US Army during Stimson’s first 
tenure as secretary of war: the bureaucratic and legislative battle over 
the size and powers of the War Department General Staff (established 
1. Daniel T. Rodgers, “In Search of  Progressivism,” Reviews in American History 10, no. 4 
(December 1982): 127.
134 Parameters 51(1) Spring 2021
just a few years earlier in 1903), the creation of an Army Reserve, and 
the reorganization of the peacetime army from a system of regional 
administrative units into one of tactical divisions. The article concludes 
with a brief summation of several lesser reforms instituted by Stimson 
and his failure to create a cross-departmental body similar to our present 
National Security Council.
In its basic portrayal of events, Eyck’s analysis withstands the test of 
time. While subsequent scholarship has added some details to the events 
described—particularly the circumstances surrounding Stimson’s relief 
of the main opponent of a strong General Staff, Adjutant General 
Frederick Ainsworth—the basic narrative given in the Parameters article 
has remained largely unaltered.
Eyck’s interpretation of those events also still falls within the 
bounds of scholarly conventional wisdom, albeit toward a less popular 
margin of that band. Eyck concluded Stimson was an effective reformer 
who successfully continued the work of his friend, mentor, and law 
partner Elihu Root—a transformative secretary of war from 1899 to 
1903. Russell F. Weigley, a leading US Army historian, came to a similar 
conclusion in his magisterial institutional history first published in 
1967. Weigley deemed Stimson one of the greatest secretaries of war of 
all time.2
Other accounts, however, cast Stimson mainly as a supportive 
adjunct to then Chief of Staff of the US Army Leonard Wood rather 
than a major reformer in his own right.3 Some historians contend 
because Stimson lacked Root’s political savvy and willingness to 
compromise, he not only fell far short of his ambitions, he triggered 
a congressional backlash that set the Army back in some respects.4 
While these differences are not trivial, they are matters of emphasis and 
comfortably situate Stimson within a broader reform movement set in 
motion by Root after the Spanish-American War. Readers interested in 
the institutional history of the US Army or the topic of military reform 
would still profit from reading the article.
In retrospect, the timing of Eyck’s article might be more intriguing 
than his findings. As noted above, there was a surge of interest in the 
Progressive Era military throughout the 1970s.5 This trend does not 
seem to have been due to Eyck; a search of the most relevant works 
did not yield any citations of the article. Thus it appears Eyck was a 
2. Russell F. Weigley, History of  the United States Army, enl. ed. (Bloomington: University of  
Indiana Press, 1984), 333.
3. Daniel R. Beaver, Modernizing the American War Department: Change and Continuity in a Turbulent 
Era, 1885–1920 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006), 34.
4. Jack C. Lane, Armed Progressive: General Leonard Wood (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978), 
158, 171–75; and J. P. Clark, Preparing for War: The Emergence of  the Modern U.S. Army, 1815–1917 
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 246–48.
5. See also Lane, Armed Progressive; Allan R. Millett, The General: Robert L. Bullard and Officership in 
the United States Army, 1881–1925 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975); John Patrick Finnegan, 
Against the Specter of  a Dragon: The Campaign for American Military Preparedness, 1914-1917 (Westport, 
CT: Greenwood Press, 1974); and I. B. Holley Jr., General John M. Palmer, Citizen Soldiers, and the Army 
of  a Democracy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982).
RetRospectives 1971: LeaRning fRom the past Clark 135
bellwether rather than a trendsetter. Nonetheless the question remains: 
What drove this decade-long surge of interest in the Progressive Era 
Army before the subject once again fell into relative neglect?
A confluence of factors within the historical profession likely played 
some role. While Weigley’s institutional history of the Army surveyed 
the Progressive Era in just two of the volume’s 22 chapters, his brief 
summary might have been enough to expose the subject to a generation 
of graduate students selecting their dissertation topics. At the time, 
the field of military history was undergoing a shift away from battle 
and operational history to the new military history focus on war and 
society—on events and trends occurring outside of armed conflict, such 
as the efforts of Root and Stimson.
This explanation, however, does not account for the subsequent 
waning academic interest in Progressive Era research. The answer may 
lie in the identity of the historians taking up the subject. The topic 
of Progressive Era military reform was popular with military officers 
serving in the late stages and immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War.6
The same sense of looking to the past for answers to questions of 
how to improve an ailing organization might have motivated Eyck. He 
arrived at Carlisle just a few months after the US Army War College 
published a report on the state of the military profession, commissioned 
by Army Chief of Staff William Westmoreland, on the suspicion the 
war had eroded both the competence and the ethics of the officer corps. 
The study gave compelling evidence he was correct.7 Whether Eyck 
simply wanted to study the namesake of his position or was motivated 
by an interest in organizational renewal, it is nonetheless suggestive that 
the post–Vietnam War nadir coincided with an increase in the study of 
military reform.
If Eyck was motivated by the problems of his time, he was also 
limited by his contemporary intellectual tools. Though his study was 
factually sound, in retrospect it is striking just how narrowly Eyck 
focused on military factors. The feud with Ainsworth is described 
primarily as a disagreement over methods of military administration—
albeit one with wider implications for which offices would wield the 
most power within the War Department—that was ultimately resolved 
based on the merits of the case.
To be fair Eyck did note the complicating role of politics in that 
resolution. For instance, he described how the bitter internecine fight 
within the Republican Party between then President William Taft and 
6. James L. Abrahamson, America Arms for a New Century: The Making of  a Great Military Power 
(New York: Free Press, 1981); Vardell E. Nesmith Jr., “The Quiet Paradigm Change: The Evolution 
of  the Field Artillery Doctrine of  the United States Army, 1861–1905” (PhD diss., Duke University, 
1977); Charles D. McKenna, “The Forgotten Reform: Field Maneuvers in the Development of  the 
United States Army, 1902–1920” (PhD diss., Duke University, 1981); and Andrew J. Bacevich Jr., 
“Family Matters: American Civilian and Military Elites in the Progressive Era,” Armed Forces and 
Society 8, no. 3 (Spring 1982): 405–18.
7. US Army War College, Study on Military Professionalism (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 
1970).
136 Parameters 51(1) Spring 2021
Theodore Roosevelt—Taft’s predecessor and friend-turned-rival—was 
the source of Taft’s reluctance to expend political capital in support of 
Stimson and Wood against Ainsworth. Eyck also noted the manner 
in which congressional allies of Ainsworth were able to exact revenge 
through opposition to some of Stimson’s later initiatives.
Nonetheless Eyck made no attempt to place those intersections 
between the Army and the civilian sphere in a larger context. They are 
cast as discrete instances in which the internal battles of two distinct 
groups—the military and the political class—happen to interact because 
of the confluence of personalities with ties to both groups: Stimson 
as a political appointee at the head of the Army, Wood as a friend of 
Roosevelt, and Ainsworth as an officer with political connections due 
to the nature of his position.
In this respect, Eyck’s article is written in the spirit of Samuel P. 
Huntington’s influential The Soldier and the State, published in 1957, that 
viewed military professionalism as best when it was an isolated activity 
kept apart from civilian society. Indeed, Huntington hailed both Root 
and Stimson as unusually enlightened civilians who enabled military 
reform by a deferential shielding of military ideas from corrupting 
civilian society.8 Eyck’s article fits easily within this interpretive tradition.
In the five decades since Eyck’s article, the historical consensus 
regarding the source of Progressive Era military reform has markedly 
shifted. In the 1980s and 1990s historians conclusively demonstrated 
the state of military isolation portrayed by Huntington was factually 
incorrect. The evidence showed the military and American society 
engaged in considerable intellectual interaction in the decades leading 
up to the Root reforms Stimson reinforced.9
The documentation of those civil-military links led historians to a 
conclusion far more reasonable than that of Huntington: military reform 
was not an isolated development but was a product of engagement with 
civilian society. After all, the Progressive Era was arguably the most 
intense period of reform in American history. Huntington’s contention 
that military reform during that period had completely different origins 
than those of civilian society strains credulity. The aggressive drive for 
change in society influenced what occurred within the military realm.
Revisiting Eyck’s article with this insight in mind, it is clear he 
missed some opportunities to make connections among events linked 
by deeper forces. For instance, the Roosevelt-Taft rift in the Republican 
Party was not purely incidental to the struggles within the Army. Though 
personal ambitions and style played a role, the political struggle reflected 
a fundamental split between the progressive and conservative wings of 
8. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of  Civil-Military Relations 
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1957), 251–53, 326, 453.
9. John M. Gates, “The Alleged Isolation of  US Army Officers in the Late 19th Century,” 
Parameters 10, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 32–45; Bacevich, “Family Matters”; Edward M. Coffman, “The 
Long Shadow of  the Soldier and the State,” Journal of  Military History 55, no. 1 (January 1991): 69–82; 
and William B. Skelton, “Samuel P. Huntington and the Roots of  the American Military Tradition,” 
Journal of  Military History 60, no. 2 (April 1996): 325–38.
RetRospectives 1971: LeaRning fRom the past Clark 137
the party caused by the same tensions between change and status quo 
that underlay the Wood-Ainsworth feud. In the political battle, Root, 
Stimson, and Wood all were forced to choose whether they stood with 
the Roosevelt faction or the Taft faction.10
The existence of a similar divide within the Democratic Party is 
further evidence deeper tensions were straining both civilian and military 
institutions. Stimson’s tenure in the War Department would come to an 
end with the election of Woodrow Wilson, a progressive whose southern 
heritage made him acceptable enough to members of the party’s 
conservative wing, like Virginia’s James Hay, to win the nomination. 
Not coincidentally, Hay was Ainsworth’s primary congressional ally 
and a leading opponent of the General Staff. Conservative Democrats 
like Hay were ardent proponents of states’ rights, a stance that led to 
support for the National Guard, antipathy for the regular Army, and 
a desire for a divided War Department administration susceptible to 
political influence.11
Hay’s central role in supporting Ainsworth and in nearly fatally 
weakening Stimson’s reserve plan seems to lead naturally to a 
consideration of the National Guard and the long history of federal 
versus state power. Yet Eyck limited his discussion to the narrow 
question of length of enlistment as if this were the central issue rather 
than part of a larger question of whether the balance of power should 
reside in federal or state governments. The term of enlistment was 
simply the means by which Hay hoped to sabotage the larger plan, not 
because he had strong opinions about how long a soldier should serve as 
one might conclude from Eyck’s account.12
Ultimately our understanding of the past is a collective, cumulative 
process. Eyck did his part by writing a well-researched, reasonable 
interpretation of the past. The purpose of pointing out these missed 
analytical opportunities is not to criticize Eyck for failing to anticipate 
later scholarship but to remind readers of the extent to which we are 
all products of our contemporary milieu. For though Eyck might have 
lacked the conceptual resources to draw upon, the raw material for 
recognition of the interplay between the military and civilian spheres 
was all around him. He wrote just a few years after Secretary of Defense 
Robert S. McNamara, a former head of the Ford Motor Company, 
revolutionized Department of Defense policies with a set of reforms 
explicitly drawn from corporate practices.
More generally the country was debating questions such as who 
should serve and who was responsible for military accountability. Yet 
10. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of  National Administrative 
Capacities, 1877–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 223–25; and Ronald J. Barr, 
The Progressive Army: US Army Command and Administration, 1870–1914 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 
1998), 177–89.
11. George C. Herring Jr., “James Hay and the Preparedness Controversy, 1915-1916,” Journal 
of  Southern History 30, no. 4 (November 1964): 384–86.
12. Leonard Wood, diary, December 7, 8, 15, 17, and 19, 1911, box 6, Wood Papers, Manuscript 
Division, Library of  Congress.
138 Parameters 51(1) Spring 2021
Eyck chose to describe the military as a separate sphere. In doing so, 
perhaps he had a different contemporary problem in mind. Eyck’s article 
concluded with a passage reminiscent of Huntington’s famous epilogue 
contrasting West Point with the outlying town of Highland Falls but 
even more pointed within the context of 1971. For Eyck, Stimson’s tenure 
was notable for having “convincingly demonstrated in his conduct and 
actions alike that a man could be deeply rooted in a traditional value 
system yet not cut himself off from the winds of change and the light 
of progress.”


US Army Reforms in the Progressive Era

Book Reviews

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Samuel Huntington, Professionalism, and Self-Policing in the US Army Officer Corps

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Hawley, Leonard R.

Crisis Management Lessons from the Clinton Administration\u27s Implementation of Presidential Decision Directive 56

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