United States Army

The United States Army is presented less as a single institution than as a force encountered through paperwork, rank, transport, and the demands of wartime service. Its presence links civilian draft enforcement at home with commissions and deployments abroad, while the novel also depicts the risks of military authority in occupied territory. These episodes distinguish the Army itself from the police and federal officials who administer or enforce related wartime policies.

Drafting and Civilian Life

The draft enters Joe Williams’s story through civilian policing. After returning to New York, he is stopped by a police officer who asks for his registration card. Joe explains that he is a merchant seaman, has only just returned from a voyage, and believes himself exempt; the officer nevertheless takes him into custody to face a judge. On Broadway, bystanders jeer at the group being marched along, turning the enforcement of registration into a public spectacle. At the Custom House, an inspector tells Joe and another detained seaman that they must register even if exempt. These scenes show the Army’s manpower needs reaching civilians through a registration system, but they do not depict Army personnel making the arrest.

A more direct link between civilian prosecution and military service appears in Ben Compton’s case. After he speaks at a meeting, police arrest him and hold him while detectives question him. His lawyer later reports that the charges can be quashed if Ben agrees to report for military training, since his draft number has been called. The episode connects political speech and arrest to the obligation to serve, while keeping the roles distinct: the arrest and questioning are carried out by civilian authorities, and the proposed military training is the condition attached to resolving the charges.

Commissions and Overseas Service

For Richard Ellsworth Savage, the Army offers a route from wartime experience into formal rank. Hiram Halsey Cooper, now a major in the Ordnance Department’s purchasing service, tells him that General Sykes is interested in his experience on two fronts and his knowledge of languages. Cooper expects that a commission can be arranged promptly. A week later, Richard receives orders to report to Camp Merritt, New Jersey, within twenty-four hours, as a second lieutenant in the Ordnance Department.

At Camp Merritt, Richard takes charge of a company of casuals and depends on the sergeant’s practical guidance. Service becomes more familiar once the group boards the Leviathan. His experience at the front gives him an advantage over the other junior officers and a major sharing the former first-class cabin. Seeing Sandy Hook recede restores some of his sense of himself. The sequence presents the Army as both a hierarchy of commissions and an organization that moves personnel overseas by large transports.

A separate passage records a speaker’s discharge from the Medical Corps. The discharge papers mark a formal end to service; the speaker changes into borrowed civilian clothes and leaves the military setting as a private rather than a uniformed serviceman. The passage gives the Army’s authority a material form in the signed discharge and the uniform that can be left behind, without identifying the speaker more specifically.

Overseas Operations and Discipline

The novel also places American troops in the unsettled aftermath of the war. During a train journey, Ed Schuyler argues that revolutions are spreading across Europe and reports that American troops sent against the Russians in Archangel have mutinied. This is presented as part of Ed’s account of the political crisis, not as an independently narrated scene of the mutiny. Richard rejects Ed’s hope that revolution will end war, arguing that violence against opponents simply continues it in another form. The reported mutiny thus enters a debate about whether military force can bring the postwar conflicts to a close.

In Paris, a Red Cross worker asks William Delaney Trent to intervene on behalf of Don Stevens, a journalist arrested by the Army of Occupation on suspicion of Bolshevik propaganda. Stevens has been court-martialed, and his friends fear he may be executed. The episode shows military authority extending into the policing of political expression during occupation. The passage calls the body the Army of Occupation but does not specify its national affiliation, so it does not establish that the arrest was carried out by the United States Army.

Institutional Reach and Limits

Across these episodes, the Army’s influence is not confined to combat. Registration determines who can be treated as a draft evader; a commission converts prior experience into rank; transports carry personnel abroad; and military jurisdiction can threaten severe consequences for a journalist accused of propaganda. The novel repeatedly makes the boundaries between these powers visible: police enforce registration, federal officials handle Ben Compton’s case, and the Army of Occupation conducts the proceedings against Don Stevens. That distinction matters. The Army is a central instrument of wartime mobilization and authority, but the surrounding machinery of government, policing, and occupation is not portrayed as a single undifferentiated body.