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And General Marshall has a tremendous amount of work to do before 3 p.m.—usually more than he can get through by bedtime. For the U. S. may well be marching to the greatest defense crisis in its history, and men like George Marshall, working to meet it, do not yet know its scope, do not know where the blow must be parried, nor when—or whether—it will be struck. Thus the Army plans, trains and equips for an invasion it may have to meet before its long-range defense objectives have been reached.
In such days there are no idle moments for the hundreds of officers of the General Staff Corps, the arms and the services who sweat in shirt-sleeves in the rabbit warrens of the Munitions Building. Far more complicated, far graver are the responsibilities of the man sitting at Phil Sheridan's desk. While his Army is reaching its first objective—16 divisions of well-armed troops —the crisis may be upon him. Soldiers have said, and soldiers still say that there is not another like George Marshall, but the Chief of Staff, a humble man, reddens at such talk. Uncomplaining—because he is a thoroughgoing democrat himself—about the strange uses of U. S. democracy where its Army is concerned, he is in a spot where history may well judge how well he serves. No one knows that better than George Marshall himself.