THE GREAT WAR CRUCIBLE.

This article informs that marines were seemingly miscast in World War I, fighting alongside Army infantrymen in a European land war. The First World War has been so overshadowed by the Second that it seems largely for gotten. Arguably, however, it was the defining event of the 20th century. Certainly it was for the U.S. Marine Corps. Before the war, the Marines had been popularly regarded as a kind of coloniatera infantry, given over to exotic adventures in the Caribbean and Far East. The mobilization of American manpower and industry for war was remarkably rapid, achieving in days or weeks what today would require months or years.