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Meanwhile the Militia Bureau, formerly the Division of Militia Affairs, began work on new plans to organize Guard divisions. It scrapped the voluntary Stimson Plan and directed the organization of sixteen infantry and two cavalry divisions. Brig. Gen. William A. Mann, Chief of the Militia Bureau, sent the states advance copies of the new tables in January 1917 to acquaint them with the types of units they needed to maintain. Then on 5 May he forwarded the plan for organizing the divisions (Table 2), which gave the infantry divisions priority over the cavalry divisions. Because the Regular Army could more expeditiously organize new units for the existing emergency, Mann did not ask the states to raise any units at that time.

Between the War with Spain and the United States' intervention in World War I, the Army's principal mission was to defend the national territory and its insular possessions. During this period the Army tested and adopted the infantry division as its basic combined arms unit. The underlying planning assumption was that the infantry division would fight in the United States. This meant, in turn, that one of the principal determinants of a division's size was road-marching speed. The cav