On July 19, 1941, when Gen. George Catlett Marshall, Army chief of staff, stepped before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, his gray civilian suit could not disguise the proud bearing of a soldier and commander of men. His shoulders squared, but not conspicuously so, his chin receding slightly, and thin lips compressed with resolution, his tall figure exuded dignity, authority, and singleness of purpose. He considered his mission that day as among the most vital of any during his distinguished 39-year career in uniform: to save the still anemic U.S. Army from emasculation.
“If the term of service of the National Guard and the selectees is not extended,” Marshall warned, “under existing limitations of the law, almost two-thirds of our enlisted men and three-fourths of our officer personnel will have to be released after completing 12 months of service.” Such a contraction would expose terrible vulnerabilities to one vital U.S. bastion in particular: “the great naval base of Pearl Harbor.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who keenly understood the dangers of not extending the draft, had carefully considered whom he would send to the Hill as point man. Often that task would fall to the secretary of war, but the 73-year-old Henry Stimson had angered many of his Republican colleagues the year before by joining FDR's Democratic administration. The president settled on the less politically divisive Marshall.
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