The Nation at War

Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc, 1932. Limited numbered edition of 350, preceding First Trade Edition. Hardcover. Good. viii, [2], 407, [1] pages. Frontis illustration. Illustrations. Index. Stain on rear board, inscription on flyleaf, signed by author, no. 175 of limited edition of 350 copies. Peyton Conway March (December 27, 1864 - April 13, 1955) was a United States Army officer who served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1918 until 1921. He is largely responsible for designing the powerful role of the Chief of Staff in the 20th century. March was assigned as the aide to Major General Arthur MacArthur, Jr. during the Philippine-American War. He participated as part of General Wheaton's expedition in battles at San Fabian, Buntayan Bridge and San Jacinto. He commanded the U.S. forces in the Battle of Tirad Pass, 2 December 1899, where General Gregorio del Pilar was killed, and received the surrender of General Venacio Concepción, Chief of Staff to Philippine President Aguinaldo, 5 December 1899. In March 1918, he became acting Army Chief of Staff and was made Army Chief of Staff on May 20, 1918. As Chief of Staff he reorganized the Army structure, and abolished the distinctions between the Regular Army, the Army Reserves, and the Army National Guard during wartime. He created new technical branches in the service including the United States Army Air Corps, Chemical Warfare Service, Transportation Corps, and Tank Corps. He also centralized control over supply. He supervised the demobilization of the Army. March was a highly efficient and capable administrator who did much to modernize the American Army and prepare it for combat in the First World War. In his funeral marched "the escort commander and his staff; the United States Army Band; one battalion of cadets from the US Military Academy; one company of infantry; one battery of field artillery; one company of armor; the U.S. Marine Band; one company of Marines; one company of bluejackets; one squadron of airmen; and one composite company of servicewomen." The estimated total strength of the military escort was 1,200 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. General March wrote in his Preface ...And I have not trusted my own memory completely in an important particular, but quote exactly from the file of the War Department in such cases. In March 1931, I was travelling from New York to Washington to deliver a lecture before the Army War College, giving some of my recollections of the war, and had as a companion on the train as far as Philadelphia the late Senator Dwight Morrow. ... and the Senator said: "What we want from army officers in responsible positions is a 'meticulously accurate' statement of the things they themselves know abut, not guesses or surmises about other things for which they were not responsible. Then, when all these meticulously accurate accounts are joined together, we will obtain the real history of the war." I was especially interested in this statement, because my mind had always run in the same channel, and I had dwelt in my lecture before the Wear College, the previous year, on the fundamental necessity of officers who attempted to write, to give "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" about things they knew. And I have done that in this book."