| Throughout their shared history, the relationship between the National Guard and the Regular Army has varied from hostility and mistrust to friendly, if cautious, cooperation. The period from 1915 to 1933 exhibits the full spectrum of this relationship, and spans the enactment of three major---and many minor---laws that transformed the Guard into a modern federal reserve force while maintaining its traditional role as the soldiery of the states.; With the passage of the National Defense Act (NDA) of 1916 Guardsmen demonstrated their ability to defeat legislative proposals which threatened their newfound federal reserve status. This success, however, required acceptance of even stronger federal controls in order to acquire significant increases in funding.; Service on the Mexican border in 1916 and in France in 1917--1918, however, left many Guardsmen dissatisfied with the treatment they received at the hands of Regulars. While demonstrating that there was no single "Guard" point of view regarding the proper solution of these issues, this dissertation shows that individual Guardsmen as well as the National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS) had significant influence on defense legislation after the war. Unlike the NDA of 1916, the NDA of 1920 represented a gain for the Guard without any attendant sacrifice of autonomy.; The period 1921--1933 is revealed as a time when NGAUS and the Militia Bureau fine-tuned the 1920 legislation, when the Guard grew professionally, and when Guard/Regular relations became cooperative. The most significant interwar legislation was the National Guard Status Act of 1933, which formalized the unique dual status of the Guard as both militia and federal reserve force.; In examining the debates that took place from 1915 to 1933, certain key points arise repeatedly: federal versus state control; Guard organization; appropriations; benefits; flexibility of regulations; autonomy of the Militia Bureau; and Guard input into policies. Cooperation between NGAUS and the Militia Bureau was not---as other scholars have asserted---entirely defensive in an effort to maintain federal funding for the Guard. Rather, their attempts to enact legislation and policies beneficial to the Guard made significant progress during a period of increasing fiscal austerity. |
