American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

When the National Defense Act was adopted in June 1920, the Regular Army contained about 200,000 soldiers, roughly two-thirds the maximum authorized strength. In January 1921 Congress directed a prompt reduction in enlisted strength to 175,000 and in June 1921 decreased that figure to 150,000. A year later Congress limited the Reg- ular Army to 12,000 commissioned officers and 125,000 enlisted men, not including the 7,000 or so in the Philippine Scouts; Army strength stabilized at about that level until 1936.

Appropriations for the military expenses of the War Department also stabilized after the early 1920s at roughly $300 million per year. This was about half the estimated cost of fully implementing the force structure authorized in the National Defense Act. During this period the United States spent less on its Army than on its Navy, in accor- dance with the national policy of depending on the Navy as the first line of defense. War Department officials, especially in the early 1920s, repeatedly expressed alarm over Congress' failure to fully fund the force structure described in the National Defense Act. They believed that U.S. strategy required a minimum Regular Army enlisted strength of 150,000, a figure that grew to 165,000 after the Air Corps Act of 1926. From his position as Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur pointed out that in 1933 the active strength of the Army ranked only seventeenth in the world.