For Eisenhower and Clay, their service in the Canal Zone turned out to be life changing because each found in Panama a mentor who finally gave him the intellectual challenge he had missed at West Point. For Eisenhower, this man was General Fox Conner, who had already concluded in the early 1920s that a second world war lay near on the horizon. On his own, Conner decided to mentor the younger generation of officers to face the next world war, focusing on three in particular: George Marshall, George Patton, and Eisenhower.63 “In the last war we fought for an ideal.… This time we shall be fighting for our very lives,” he told Eisenhower. “I believe that Germany and Japan will combine against us, and Russia may be with them.” The Allies would include “an ebbing empire [Britain] and a republic in the last stages of a mortal illness [France].”64 By virtue of his position on General Pershing’s general staff in World War I, Conner could observe the dysfunctional command that existed between the French, British, and Americans. “When we go into [the next] war it will be in company with allies,” yet Conner stressed that there must be an “individual and single responsibility” at the top.65
Conner had an extensive library, and Eisenhower read his way through it, covering the works of Shakespeare, Plato, Nietzsche, and (most important) the brilliant military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. Eisenhower and Conner then talked over the meaning of these works as they spent hours on horseback mapping the terrain, hacking through the jungle, or cutting roads. In retrospect, Eisenhower called it his “graduate school” in “military affairs and the humanities.”66
Clay’s experience in Panama was equally influential. “I really found myself in Panama,” he later recalled. “[It] was an important assignment and you worked at being a soldier.” He served under an engineer named “Goff” Caples, who (like Fox Conner) was well-read and liked talking. “He was truly an independent thinker,” said Clay, particularly on questions having to do with “ethnic and political movements … a special tutor.”67 Clay obtained his first command in Panama, a group of soldiers he rated as the best in his military career.68
Clay and Eisenhower worked to do many of the same things in Panama that MacArthur did in the Philippines. They surveyed jungle, built barracks, cut roads, trained junior officers, and generally did the things that today might be called “development.” They also showed the kind of skill and intelligence that allowed them to quickly climb the army’s ranks.
In December of 1927, MacArthur learned that Henry Stimson, the former secretary of war, would replace Leonard Wood as governor-general of the Philippines. Stimson had returned to private life when Woodrow Wilson became president in 1912. When the U.S. entered World War I, he hoped for a military appointment based on his prior service. Wilson refused. So Stimson enlisted, quickly rising to the rank of colonel in the artillery. After the war he again returned to practicing law. But the decline of Leonard Wood’s health in 1927 led President Calvin Coolidge to seek a replacement and he asked Stimson to accept the governor-generalship. Stimson had just turned sixty, but decided to accept despite his age.69
Unlike Wood, Stimson harbored fewer racial judgments about the Filipinos. He felt that they deserved independence. But in a hostile world, surrounded by hungry empires, they could not survive long if that independence came too soon. “The Philippines are protected from foreign submersion,” Stimson wrote, “solely by … [the] military power of the United States.” For a lasting independence, the Filipinos needed a national military capable of defending that independence, and institutionally speaking, this seemed far away. Japan, in particular, seemed eager to gobble up the islands.70
More worrisome, the long-term success of the Philippines depended on the development of the internal institutions necessary to maintain democracy. Here, the islands seemed quite unprepared to stand on their own. The country needed a strong press, civic organizations, and established political parties. The national legislature had the form of democracy, but none of the social or civil infrastructure that would help it flourish.
In a move that characterized military government in the future, Stimson saw the solution to all problems in economic development. “There has been very little accumulation of capital [in the islands],” complained Stimson, “One result of this is that the revenues possible from taxation at present are quite insufficient … for military and diplomatic purposes.” More to the point, the lack of industrialization meant “no middle class or bourgeoisie between the educated ilustrado and the ignorant tao … which might serve, as it does in other countries, as the backbone of self-government.” In short, entrepreneurial capitalism would foster not only national independence but also civic virtue.71
During his stay in the Philippines, Stimson became familiar with MacArthur. But their time together (at least in Manila) proved short lived. In March 1929, newly elected President Herbert Hoover asked Stimson to come back to Washington to serve as secretary of state. Then, in August 1930, Hoover asked MacArthur to return as the chief of staff of the army. MacArthur hesitated. He enjoyed life in the Philippines, and leading the American army from Washington seemed like more headache than opportunity. So he deliberated—until his mother learned of his hesitation. She cabled him right away: “Your father would be ashamed of your timidity.”
“That settled it,” MacArthur said, and he quickly sent Hoover his acceptance.72
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It is hard to imagine how the 1920s could have done more to prepare Dwight Eisenhower for his future. He had instinctively understood the weaponry and tactics of the next war. Moreover, he had found a mentor in Fox Conner who would guide his career thereafter. Conner had a plan for Eisenhower. The first part of the plan sent Eisenhower to the Command and General Staff College (which served to prepare mid-level officers for future command). Eisenhower flourished there, finishing at the top of his class. After this, Conner arranged for Eisenhower to become a part of the American Battle Monuments Commission directed by General Pershing. Eisenhower had the task of writing a handbook that explained the events commemorated by the war’s monuments and cemeteries. Ostensibly a guide for tourists, in reality it became a battle-by-battle summary of the war. More important, it gave Eisenhower a firsthand opportunity to walk the fields of France. By the time he had finished, Eisenhower had as clear an understanding of tactics in World War I as anyone. He also had a clear sense of the terrain Americans would travel in the next war.73
In 1927, Eisenhower entered the Army War College, where he studied industrial conversion. His thesis took up “the administrative and economic War Powers of the President,” including the changes necessary to move the normally free economy toward a controlled war economy.74 He considered everything from a command economy’s constitutionality to the nitty-gritty of administrative coordination, and recommended that “an agency … be set up … with a man at its head in whom is centralized full responsibility and adequate authority” to direct the economy.75 His work helped open a new door to his career when Fox Conner managed to get Eisenhower a position with Brigadier General George Van Horn Moseley within the army’s planning division in Washington. The National Defense Act of 1920 instructed the army to develop an industrial conversion plan, but by the late 1920s, it remained to be written. Because of Eisenhower’s work at the Army War College, Moseley wanted him to write the report.
In working through the many issues involved in that report, Eisenhower decided upon an approach that became a hallmark of his management style thereafter. He spoke with everyone who had played a hand in the last effort to create a wartime economy. While most saw the project as pointless—they would never “again [be] called on to arm and equip a mass army”—“some manufacturers … [were] ready to cooperate.” Most important, he discovered Bernard Baruch.76
Baruch eagerly talked with Eisenhower, explaining all the policies and powers he wished he had had. He also took to Eisenhower, and afterwards became a mentor along the lines of Conner. “He was ready to talk to me at any time,” Eisenhower noted.77 In time of war, Baruch explained, the government needed the power to set price controls, provide central administration and public education, and hold