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A Young Man Enlists in the Great Adventure

C H A P T E R 22The Great War

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On April 7, 1917, the day after the United States officially declared war on Germany,Edmund P.Arpin, Jr., a young man of 22 from Grand Rapids,Wisconsin, decided to en-list in the army.The war seemed to provide a solution for his aimless drifting. It wasnot patriotism that led him to join the army but his craving for adventure and excite-

American Stories

Harvey Dunn, Prisoners and Wounded, 1918 This 1918 painting of German and Americanwounded and exhausted soldiers after the Meuse-Argonne offensive captures some of the horrorand pathos of war. How does this image contrast with the war memorials? Where are the heroes?(Harvey Dunn, Prisoners and Wounded, 1918. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)

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ment.A month later, he was at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, along with hundreds of other ea-ger young men, preparing to become an army officer. He felt a certain pride and senseof purpose, and especially a feeling of comradeship with the other men, but the warwas a long way off.

Arpin finally arrived with his unit in Liverpool on December 23, 1917, aboard theLeviathan, a German luxury liner that the United States had interned when war was de-clared and then pressed into service as a troop transport. In England, he discovered thatAmerican troops were not greeted as saviors. Hostility against the Americans simmeredpartly because of the previous unit’s drunken brawls. Despite the efforts of the U.S. gov-ernment to protect its soldiers from the sins of Europe, drinking seems to have been apreoccupation of the soldiers in Arpin’s outfit. Arpin also learned something aboutFrench wine and women, but he spent most of the endless waiting time learning to playcontract bridge.

Arpin saw some of the horror of war when he went to the front with a French regi-ment as an observer,but his own unit did not engage in combat until October 1918,whenthe war was almost over. He took part in the bloody Meuse-Argonne offensive, whichhelped end the war. But he discovered that war was not the heroic struggle of carefullyplanned campaigns that newspapers and books described.War was filled with misfiredweapons, mix-ups, and erroneous attacks. Wounded in the leg in an assault on an un-named hill and awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his bravery,Arpin later learnedthat the order to attack had been recalled, but word had not reached him in time.

When the armistice came, Arpin was recovering in a field hospital. He was disap-pointed that the war had ended so soon, but he was well enough to go to Paris to takepart in the victory celebration and to explore some of the famous Paris restaurants andnightclubs. In many ways, the highlight of his war experiences was not a battle or hismedal but his adventure after the war was over.With a friend, he went absent withoutleave and set out to explore Germany.They avoided the military police, traveled on atrain illegally, and had many narrow escapes, but they made it back to the hospital with-out being arrested.

Edmund Arpin was in the army for two years. He was one of 4,791,172 Americanswho served in the army, navy, and marines. He was one of the 2 million who went over-seas and one of the 230,074 who were wounded. Some of his friends were among the48,909 who were killed.When he was mustered out of the army in March 1919, he feltlost and confused. Being a civilian was not nearly as exciting as being in the army and vis-iting new and exotic places.

In time,Arpin settled down.He became a successful businessman,married, and raiseda family. A member of the American Legion, he periodically went to conventions andreminisced with men from his division about their escapades in France. Although thewar changed their lives in many ways, most would never again feel the same sense ofcommon purpose and adventure.“I don’t suppose any of us felt, before or since, so nec-essary to God and man,” one veteran recalled.

For Edmund P. Arpin, Jr., the Great War was the most important event of

a lifetime. Just as war changed his life, so, too, did it alter the lives of most

Americans. Trends begun during the progressive era accelerated. The power

and influence of the federal government increased. Not only did the war

promote woman suffrage, prohibition, and public housing, but it also helped

create an administrative bureaucracy that blurred the lines between public

and private, between government and business—a trend that would continue

into the twenty-first century.

In this chapter, we examine the complicated circumstances that led the

United States into the war and share the wartime experiences of American men

and women overseas and at home. We will study not only military actions but

CHAPTER OUTLINE

The Early War YearsThe Causes of WarAmerican ReactionsThe New Military TechnologyDifficulties of NeutralityWorld Trade and Neutrality RightsIntervening in Mexico and Central

America

The United States Enters theWarThe Election of 1916Deciding for WarA Patriotic CrusadeRaising an Army

The Military ExperienceThe American SoldierThe Black SoldierOver ThereA Global Pandemic

Domestic Impact of the WarFinancing the WarIncreasing Federal PowerWar WorkersThe Climax of ProgressivismSuffrage for Women

Planning for PeaceThe Versailles Peace ConferenceWilson’s Failed Dream

Conclusion:The DividedLegacy of the Great War

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722 PART 5 A Modernizing People, 1900–1945

also the impact of the war on domestic policies and

on the lives of ordinary Americans, including the mi-

gration of African Americans into northern cities. The

war cut off immigration from Europe and led to a pol-

icy of immigrant restriction in the next decade. The

war left a legacy of prejudice and hate and raised the

basic question, could the tenets of American democ-

racy, such as freedom of speech, survive participation

in a major war? The chapter concludes with a look at

the idealistic efforts to promote peace at the end of

the war and the disillusion that followed. Woodrow

Wilson’s foreign policy, which sought to make the

world safe for democracy, marked a watershed in the

relationship of the United States to the world. The

Great War was global war in every sense, and it thrust

the United States into the role of leadership on the

world scene as an interventionist savior of democra-

tic values, but many Americans were reluctant to ac-

cept that role. But whether they liked it or not, the

world was a different place in 1919 than it had been

in 1914 and that would have a profound influence on

American lives.




THE EARLY WAR YEARSFew Americans expected the Great War that eruptedin Europe in the summer of 1914 to affect their livesor alter their comfortable world. When a Serbianstudent terrorist assassinated Archduke Franz Fer-dinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo, the capitalof the province of Bosnia, a place most Americanshad never heard of, the act precipitated a series ofevents leading to the most destructive war theworld had ever known.

The Causes of WarThe Great War, as everyone called it at the time,seemed to begin accidentally, but its root causesreached back many years and involved intense ri-valry over trade, empire, and military strength. TheGreat War, which would cost at least 10 million livesand have a profound influence on every aspect ofculture and society, did not seem inevitable in1914. There had been wars throughout the nine-teenth century, including the Boer War, the Franco-Prussian War, and the American Civil War, but thesewars, though bloody, were mostly local. There hadnot been a major global conflict since the end ofthe Napoleonic Wars in 1815. In fact, there weremany signs of international cooperation, withagreements on telegraphs in 1865, postage in 1875,and copyright in 1880. Most nations in the worldhad even agreed on international time zones by the1890s. An international conference at The Hague inthe Netherlands in 1899 had set up a World Court tosettle disputes before they led to war. Peace advo-cates and politicians alike promoted disarmamentconferences and predicted that better technologyand improved communication would lead to per-manent peace. “It looks as though we are going tobe the age of treaties rather than the age of wars,the century of reason rather than the century of

force,” a leader of the American peace movementannounced.

However, the same forces of improved technol-ogy and communication that seemed to be bringingnations closer together also helped create a risingtide of nationalism—a pride in being French or Eng-lish or German. There was also a growing Europeanrivalry over trade, colonies, and spheres of influencein Africa and Asia. Theodore Roosevelt had tried toarbitrate differences between Germany, France, andGreat Britain over trade at a conference in Moroccoin 1905 and 1906, but the tension and disagree-ments remained. At the same time, Austria and Rus-sia clashed over territory and influence in theBalkans, where there was a rising sense of Slavic na-tionalism. Modern Germany, which was createdfrom a number of small states in 1871, emerged as apowerful industrial giant. About 1900, Germany be-gan to build a navy large enough to compete withthe British fleet, the most powerful in the world.Great Britain, in turn, built even more battleships.As European nations armed, they drew up a com-plex series of treaties. Austria-Hungary and Ger-many (the Central Powers) became military allies,and Britain, France, and Russia (the Allied Powers)agreed to assist one another in case of attack. De-spite peace conferences and international agree-ments, many promoted by the United States, theEuropean balance of power rested precariously onlayers of treaties that barely obscured years of jeal-ousy and distrust.

The incident in Sarajevo destroyed that balance.The leaders of Austria-Hungary were determined topunish Serbia for the assassination. Russia mobi-lized to aid Serbia. Germany, supporting Austria-Hungary, declared war on Russia and France.Britain hesitated, but when Germany invaded Bel-gium to attack France, Britain declared war on Ger-many. Within a few months, the Ottoman Empire(Turkey) and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers.



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Anticolonial revolts

European Empires in 1914

In 1914, European countries had colonies or “spheres of influence” in all parts of the world.Although the United States got intothe imperialism game late, it also had an empire and an interest in global trade. European imperialism and competition over tradewas very much a factor in the origins of World War I. The war would alter the economic and political map of the world.Reflecting on the PastWhich European nations were most powerful in Asia and Africa in 1914? How has this map changed to-day?

Italy joined the Allies after being secretly promisedadditional territory after the war. Japan declaredwar on Germany not because of an interest in theEuropean struggle but in order to acquire Germanrights in China’s Shantung province and a numberof Pacific Islands. Spain, Switzerland, the Nether-lands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and initially theUnited States, remained neutral. In August 1914, asEurope rushed toward war, British foreign secretarySir Edward Grey remarked: “The lamps are goingout all over Europe. We shall not see them lit againin our lifetime.” His prediction proved to be deadlyaccurate.

When news of the German invasion of Belgiumand reports of the first bloody battles began to reachthe United States in late summer, most Americansbelieved that madness had replaced reason. Euro-peans “have reverted to the condition of savage tribesroaming the forests and falling upon each other in afury of blood and carnage,” the New York Times an-nounced. The American sense that the nation wouldnever succumb to the barbarism of war, combinedwith the knowledge that the Atlantic Ocean separatedEurope from the United States, contributed to a greatsense of relief after the first shock of the war began towear off. Woodrow Wilson’s official proclamation of




neutrality on August 4, 1914, reinforced the beliefthat the United States had no major stake in the out-come of the war. The president was preoccupiedwith his own personal tragedy. His wife, Ellen AxsonWilson, died of Bright’s disease the day after hisproclamation. Two weeks later, still engulfed by hisown grief, he urged all Americans to “be neutral infact as well as in name, . . . impartial in thought aswell as in action.” The United States, he argued,must preserve itself “fit and free” to do what “is hon-est and disinterested . . . for the peace of the world.”But remaining uninvolved, at least emotionally, wasgoing to be difficult.

American ReactionsMany social reformers despaired when they heardthe news from Europe. Even during its first months,the war seemed to deflect energy away from reform.“We are three thousand miles away from the smokeand flames of combat, and have not a single regi-ment or battleship involved,” remarked JohnHaynes Holmes, a liberal New York minister. “Yet

who in the United States is thinking ofrecreation centers, improved housing orthe minimum wage?” Settlement workerLillian Wald responded to the threat ofwar by helping lead 1,500 women in a“woman’s peace” parade down New York’sFifth Avenue. Jane Addams of Hull Househelped organize the American Woman’sPeace party. Drawing on traditional con-ceptions of female character, she argued

that women had a special responsibility to work forpeace and to speak out against the blasphemy ofwar because women and children suffered most inany war, especially in a modern war in which civil-ians as well as soldiers became targets.

Although many people worked to promote an in-ternational plan to end the war through mediation,others could hardly wait to take part in the great ad-venture. Hundreds of young American men, most ofthem students or recent college graduates, volun-teered to join ambulance units in order to take part inthe war effort without actually fighting. Among thesemen were Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, andE. E. Cummings, who later turned their wartime ad-ventures into literary masterpieces. Others volun-teered for service with the French Foreign Legion orjoined the Lafayette Escadrille, a unit of pilots madeup of well-to-do American volunteers attached to theFrench army. Many of these young men were in-spired by an older generation who pictured war as aromantic and manly adventure. One college presi-dent talked of the chastening and purifying effect of

armed conflict, and Theodore Roosevelt projected animage of war that was something like a football gamein which red-blooded American men could test theiridealism and manhood.

Alan Seeger, a 1910 graduate of Harvard, was oneof those who believed in the romantic and noblepurpose of the war. He had been living in Paris since1912, and when the war broke out, he quickly joinedthe French Foreign Legion. For the next two years,he wrote sentimental poetry, articles, and letters de-scribing his adventures. “You have no idea howbeautiful it is to see the troops undulating along theroad . . . with the captains and lieutenants on horseback at the head of the companies,” he wrote hismother. When Seeger was killed in 1916, he becamean instant hero. Some called him “America’s RupertBrooke,” after the gallant British poet who died earlyin the war.

Many Americans visualized war as a romanticstruggle for honor and glory because the only con-flict they remembered was the “splendid little war”of 1898. For them, war meant Theodore Rooseveltleading the charge in Cuba and Commodore Deweydestroying the Spanish fleet in Manila harbor with-out the loss of an American life. Many older Ameri-cans recalled the Civil War, but the horrors of thoseyears had faded, leaving only the memory of heroictriumphs. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, the SupremeCourt justice who had been wounded in the CivilWar, remarked, “War, when you are at it, is horribleand dull. It is only when time has passed that yousee that its message was divine.”

The reports from the battlefields, even during thefirst months of the war, should have indicated thatthe message was anything but divine. This would bea modern war in which men died by the thousands,cut down by an improved and efficient technologyof killing.

The New Military TechnologyMilitary planners had not anticipated the stalematethat quickly developed. The German Schlieffen plancalled for a rapid strike through Belgium to attackParis and the French army from the rear. However,the French stopped the German advance at the Bat-tle of the Marne in September 1914, and the fightingsoon bogged down in a costly and bloody routine.Soldiers on both sides dug miles of trenches andstrung out barbed wire to protect them. Thousandsdied in battles that gained only a few yards or noth-ing at all. At the Battle of the Somme in the summerof 1916, the German casualties were 600,000 menkilled or wounded. The British lost 419,000 and theFrench 194,000, and the battle did not change the

Leaders ofWomen’s

InternationalLeague forPeace andFreedom



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course of the war. Rapid-firing rifles, improved ex-plosives, incendiary shells, and tracer bullets alladded to the destruction. Most devastating of all,however, was the improved artillery, sometimesmounted on trucks and directed by spotters usingwireless radios, that could fire over the horizon andhit targets many miles behind the lines. The tech-nology of defense, especially the machine gun, neu-tralized the frontal assault, the most popular mili-tary tactic since the American Civil War. As onewriter explained: “Three men and a machine guncan stop a battalion of heroes.” But the generals onboth sides continued to order their men to charge totheir almost certain deaths.

The war was both a traditional and a revolution-ary struggle. It was the last war in which cavalry wasused and the first to employ a new generation ofmilitary technologies. By 1918, airplanes, initiallyused only for observation, were creating terror be-low with their bombs. Tanks made their first appear-ance in 1916, but it was not until the last days of thewar that this new offensive weapon began to neu-tralize the machine gun. Trucks hauled men andequipment, but hundreds of thousands of horseswere also used on the battlefields; for some soldiers,the sight of great numbers of dead horses on thebattlefields was more depressing than the presence

of dead men. Wireless radio and the telephone wereindispensable, but carrier pigeons sometimes pro-vided the only link between the front line and thecommand post in the rear. In the spring of 1915, theGermans introduced a terrible new weapon—poi-son gas. Chlorine gas blinded its victims, causedacid burns on the skin, and consumed the lungs.Gas masks provided some protection but werenever entirely effective. Poison gas attacks, used byboth sides after 1915, were one of the most terrify-ing aspects of trench warfare.

For most Americans, the western front, whichstretched from Belgium through France, was themost important battleground of the war. But alongthe eastern front, Russian troops engaged Germanand Austrian armies in bitter fighting. After Italyjoined the conflict in 1915, a third front developedalong the northern Italian and Austrian border,while submarines and battleships carried the fightaround the world.

The Great War was truly a global struggle. Soldiersfrom the British Empire, New Zealand, Australia,Canada, and India fought on the western front along-side French-speaking black Africans. The British andthe French battled in Africa to capture Germany’sAfrican colonies, and the struggle continued until1918, especially in East Africa. The British, who ini-

tially thought they were only go-ing to support the French on thewestern front, found themselvesin the Middle East, inMesopotamia (Iraq), and fightingTurks in the Dardanelles be-tween the Aegean and the BlackSea. In one of the great disastersof the war, the British attackedGallipoli, first with battleshipsand then with hundreds of thou-sands of men. After losing one-third of their fleet and more thana quarter of a million men, manyof them Australians and NewZealanders, the British withdrew.Reports of carnage, on and offthe battlefield, poured in. Afterthey entered the war, the Turkssystematically massacred an esti-mated 800,000 Armenians in oneof the worst acts of genocide inthe world’s history. Yet the UnitedStates and the European coun-tries stood by and did nothing.

Some Americans could hardlywait to join the fighting. TheodoreRoosevelt and his friend Leonard

A War Victim The Great War, despite the new technology of trucks, tanks, and air-planes, was also a war that used hundreds of thousands of horses to drag and carry men andequipment. Many horses were killed and many more got stuck in the mud. This photo shows aBritish unit with one horse stuck so badly that it was probably shot rather than rescued. InWorld War I soldiers like these spent more time waiting than they did fighting and every breakmeant time for a smoke. What else can you learn about the military experience during WorldWar I by studying this photo? (The Art Archive/Imperial War Museum)

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The Great War in Europe and the Middle East

The Great War had an impact not only on Europe but also on North Africa and the Middle East. Even the countries that remainedneutral felt the influence of global war. Reflecting on the Past For most Americans, the war was in France on the westernfront.Where else were major battles fought?

Wood, the army chief of staff, led a movement to pre-pare American men for war. In 1913, Wood estab-lished a camp for college men at Plattsburgh, NewYork, to give them some experience with military life,order, discipline, and command. By 1915, thousandshad crowded into the camp; even the mayor of NewYork enrolled. The young men learned to shoot riflesand to endure long marches and field exercises. Butmost of all, they associated with one another. Gath-ered around the campfire at night, they heard Woodand other veterans tell of winning glory and honor on

the battlefield. In their minds at least, they were al-ready leading a bayonet charge against the enemy,and the enemy was Germany.

Difficulties of NeutralityNot all Americans were so eager to enter the fray,but many sympathized with one side or the other.Some Americans favored the Central Powers. About8 million Austrian Americans and German Ameri-cans lived in the United States. Some supported




their homeland. They viewed Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Ger-many as a progressive parliamentary democracy. Theanti-British sentiment of some Irish Americans ledthem to take sides not so much for Germany asagainst England. A few Swedish Americans distrustedRussia so vehemently that they had difficulty sup-porting the Allies. A number of American scholars,physicians, and intellectuals fondly rememberedstudying in Germany. To them, Germany meant greatuniversities and cathedrals, music, and culture. Italso represented social planning, health insurance,unemployment compensation, and many programsfor which the progressives had been fighting.

Despite Wilson’s efforts to promote neutrality, formost Americans, the ties of language and culturetipped the balance toward the Allies. After all, did notthe English-speaking people of the world have spe-cial bonds and special responsibilities to promotecivilization and ensure justice in the world? Ameri-can connections with the French were not so close,but they were even more sentimental. The French,everyone remembered, had supported the AmericanRevolution, and the French people had given theStatue of Liberty, the very symbol of American op-portunity and democracy, to the United States.

Other reasons made real neutrality nearly impos-sible. The fact that export and import trade with theAllies was much more important than with the Cen-tral Powers favored the Allies. Wilson’s advisers, es-pecially Robert Lansing and Edward House, openlysupported the French and the British. Most newspa-per owners and editors had close ethnic, cultural,and sometimes economic ties to the British and theFrench. The newspapers were quick to picture theGermans as barbaric Huns and to accept and em-bellish the atrocity stories that came from the front,some of them planted by British propaganda ex-perts. Gradually for Wilson, and probably for mostAmericans, the perception that England and Francewere fighting to preserve civilization from the forcesof Prussian evil replaced the idea that all Europeanswere barbaric and decadent. But the American peo-ple were not yet willing to go to war to save civiliza-tion. Let France and England do that.

Woodrow Wilson also sympathized with the Al-lies for practical and idealistic reasons. He wantedto keep the United States out of the war, but he didnot object to using force to promote diplomaticends. He believed that by keeping the United Statesout of the war, he might control the peace. The war,he hoped, would show the futility of imperialismand would usher in a world of free trade in productsand ideas. Remaining neutral while maintainingtrade with the belligerents became increasingly dif-ficult. Remaining neutral while speaking out about

the peace eventually became impossible. The needto trade and the desire to control the peace finallyled the United States into the Great War.

World Trade and Neutrality RightsThe United States was part of an international eco-nomic community in 1914 and the outbreak of war inthe summer of 1914 caused an immediate economicpanic. On July 31, 1914, the Wilson administrationclosed the stock exchange to prevent the unloadingof European securities and panic selling. It alsoadopted a policy discouraging loans by Americanbanks to belligerent nations. Most difficult was thematter of neutral trade. Wilson insisted on the rightsof Americans to trade with both the Allies and theCentral Powers, but Great Britain instituted an illegalnaval blockade, mined the North Sea, and beganseizing American ships, even those carrying food andraw materials to Italy, the Netherlands, and otherneutral nations. The first crisis that Wilson faced waswhether to accept the illicit British blockade. To do sowould be to surrender one of the rights he supportedmost ardently, the right of free trade.

Wilson eventually backed down and acceptedBritish control of the sea. His conviction that thedestinies of the United States and Great Britain wereintertwined outweighed his idealistic belief in freetrade and caused him to react more harshly to Ger-man violations of international law than he did toBritish violators. Consequently, American tradewith the Central Powers declined between 1914 and1916 from $169 million to just over $1 million,whereas trade with the Allies increased during thesame period from $825 million to more than $3 bil-lion. At the same time, the U.S. government easedrestrictions on private loans to belligerents. InMarch 1915, the House of Morgan loaned theFrench government $50 million, and in the fall of1915, the French and British obtained an unsecuredloan of $500 million from American banks. Withdollars as well as sentiments, the United Statesgradually ceased to be neutral.

Germany retaliated against British control of theseas with submarine warfare, using its new weapon,the U-boat (Unterseeboot). International law requireda belligerent warship to warn a passenger or mer-chant ship before attacking, but a U-boatrising to the surface to issue a warningwould have meant being blown out of thewater by an armed merchant ship. On Feb-ruary 4, 1915, Germany announced a sub-marine blockade of the British Isles. UntilBritain gave up its campaign to starve theGerman population, the Germans would

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Boat 202(1919)





sink even neutral ships. Wilson warned Germany thatit would be held to “strict accountability” for illegaldestruction of American ships or lives.

In March 1915, a German U-boat sank a Britishliner en route to Africa, killing 103 people, includingone American. How should the United States re-spond? Wilson’s advisers could not agree. RobertLansing, a legal counsel at the State Department,urged the president to issue a strong protest, charg-ing a breach of international law. William JenningsBryan, the secretary of state, argued that an Ameri-can traveling on a British ship was guilty of “contrib-utory negligence” and urged Wilson to prohibitAmericans from traveling on belligerent ships in thewar zone. Wilson never did settle the dispute, for onMay 7, 1915, a greater crisis erupted. A German U-boat torpedoed the British luxury liner Lusitania offthe Irish coast. The liner, which was not armed butwas carrying war supplies, sank in 18 minutes.Nearly 1,200 people, including many women andchildren, drowned. Among the dead were 128 Amer-icans. Suddenly Americans confronted the horror oftotal war fought with modern weapons, a war thatkilled civilians, including women and children, justas easily as it killed soldiers.

The tragedy horrified most Americans. Despiteearlier warnings by the Germans in American news-papers that it was dangerous to travel in war zones,the same newspapers denounced the act as “massmurder.” Some called for a declaration of war. Wilson

and most Americans had no idea of going to war inthe spring of 1915, but the president refused to takeBryan’s advice and prevent further loss of Americanlives by simply prohibiting all Americans from travel-ing on belligerent ships. Instead, he sent aseries of protest notes demanding repara-tion for the loss of American lives and apledge from Germany that it would ceaseattacking ocean liners without warning.

Bryan resigned as secretary of state overthe tone of the notes and charged that theUnited States was not being truly neutral.Some denounced Bryan as a traitor, but otherscharged that if the United States really wanted tostay out of the war, Bryan’s position was more logi-cal, consistent, and humane than Wilson’s. Thepresident replaced Bryan with Robert Lansing, whowas much more eager than Bryan to oppose Ger-many, even at the risk of war.

The tense situation eased late in 1915. After aGerman U-boat sank the British steamer Arabic,which claimed two American lives, the Germanambassador promised that Germany would not at-tack ocean liners without warning (the Arabicpledge). But the Lusitania crisis caused an out-pouring of books and articles urging the nation toprepare for war. The National Security League, themost effective of the preparedness groups, calledfor a bigger army and navy, a system of universalmilitary training, and “patriotic education and

Unterseeboot A Ger-man U-boat sinking a fishingship somewhere in the At-lantic. The German subma-rine revolutionized the warat sea, and the sinking of theBritish ocean liner Lusitaniaand various American shipsled directly to the UnitedStates entering the war. Atfirst the submarines had theadvantage, but by 1918, anti-submarine technology hadbeen developed to enablethe United States and GreatBritain to win the battle ofthe Atlantic. Germany lost178 submarines with 5,400men. How did the submarinechange the nature of the warat sea? (Erich Lessing/Art Re-source, NY)

Sinking of theLusitania—New

York Tribune





national sentiment and service among the peopleof the United States.”

Organizing on the other side was a group of pro-gressive reformers who formed the American UnionAgainst Militarism. They feared that those urgingpreparedness were deliberately setting out to de-stroy liberal social reform at home and to promoteimperialism abroad.

Wilson sympathized with the preparednessgroups to the extent of asking Congress on November4, 1915, for an enlarged and reorganized army. Thebill met with great opposition, especially from south-ern and western congressmen, but the Army Reorga-nization Bill that Wilson signed in June 1916 in-creased the regular army to just over 200,000 andintegrated the National Guard into the defense struc-ture. Few Americans, however, expected those youngmen to go to war. Even before American soldiers ar-rived in France, however, Wilson used the army andthe marines in Mexico and Central America.

Intervening in Mexico and Central AmericaWilson envisioned a world purged of imperialism, aworld of free trade, but a world where Americanideas and products would find their way. Combin-ing the zeal of a Christian missionary with the con-viction of a college professor, he spoke of “releasingthe intelligence of America for the service ofmankind.” Although Wilson denounced the “bigstick” and “dollar diplomacy” of the Roosevelt andTaft years, Wilson’s administration used force moresystematically than did his predecessors. Therhetoric was different, yet just as much as Roosevelt,Wilson tried to maintain stability in the countries tothe south in order to promote American economicand strategic interests.

At first, Wilson’s foreign policy seemed to reversesome of the most callous aspects of dollar diplo-macy in Central America. Secretary of State Bryansigned a treaty with Colombia in 1913 in which theUnited States agreed to pay $5 million for the loss ofPanama and virtually apologized for the Rooseveltadministration’s treatment of Colombia. The Senate,not so willing to admit that the United States hadbeen wrong, refused to ratify the treaty.

The change in spirit proved illusory. After a disas-trous civil war in the Dominican Republic, theUnited States offered in 1915 to take over the coun-try’s finances and police force. When the Dominicanleaders rejected a treaty making their country virtu-ally a protectorate of the United States, Wilson or-dered in the marines. They took control of the gov-ernment in May 1916. Although Americans built

roads, schools, and hospitals, people resented theirpresence. The United States intervened in Haiti withsimilar results. In Nicaragua, the Wilson administra-tion kept the marines sent by Taft in 1912 to prop upa pro-American regime and acquired the right,through treaty, to intervene at any time to preserveorder and protect American property. Except for abrief period in the mid-1920s, the marines re-mained until 1933.

Wilson’s policy of intervention ran into the great-est difficulty in Mexico, a country that had beenruled by dictator Porfirio Díaz, who had long wel-comed American investors. By 1910, more than40,000 American citizens lived in Mexico, and morethan $1 billion of American money was investedthere. In 1911, however, Francisco Madero, a re-former who wanted to destroy the privileges of theupper classes, overthrew Díaz. Two years later,Madero was deposed and murdered by order of Vic-toriano Huerta, the head of the army.

Wilson refused to recognize the Huerta govern-ment. Everyone admitted that Huerta was a ruthlessdictator, but diplomatic recognition, the exchangeof ambassadors, and the regulation of trade andcommunication had never meant approval. In theworld of business and diplomacy, it merely meantthat a particular government was in power. But Wil-son set out to remove what he called a “governmentof butchers.”

At first, Wilson applied diplomatic pressure.Then, using a minor incident as an excuse, he askedCongress for power to involve American troops ifnecessary. Few Mexicans liked Huerta, but theyliked the idea of North American interference evenless, and they rallied around the dictator. TheUnited States landed troops at Veracruz, Mexico.Wilson’s action outraged many Europeans and LatinAmericans as well as Americans.

Wilson’s military intervention drove Huerta outof office, but a civil war between forces led byVenustiano Carranza and those led by General Fran-cisco “Pancho” Villa ensued. The United States sentarms to Carranza, who was considered less radicalthan Villa, and Carranza’s soldiers defeated Villa’s.When an angry Villa led what was left of his army ina raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916,Wilson sent an expedition commanded by BrigadierGeneral John Pershing to track down Villa and hismen. The strange and comic scene developed of anAmerican army charging 300 miles into Mexico un-able to catch the retreating villain. The Mexicansfeared that Pershing’s army was planning to occupynorthern Mexico. Carranza shot off a bitter note toWilson, accusing him of threatening war, but Wilsonrefused to withdraw the troops. Tensions rose. An




Pancho Villa This pho-tograph shows Pancho Villaon horseback leading therebel Mexican army thatclashed with the Americanarmy in Mexico in 1916.President Wilson sent Amer-ican forces more than 300miles into Mexico to arrestVilla, who allegedly had mur-dered a number of Ameri-cans, but they were not ableto catch him. What impactdo you think the Americaninvasion of Mexico had onAmerica’s relation with Mex-ico and Latin America?(Brown Brothers)

American patrol attacked a Mexican garrison, withloss of life on both sides. In January 1917, just as warseemed inevitable, Wilson agreed to recall thetroops and to recognize the Carranza government.Had it not been for the growing crisis in Europe, it islikely that war with Mexico would have resulted.




THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WARA significant minority of Americans opposed joiningthe European war in 1917, and that decision wouldremain controversial when it was re-examined inthe 1930s. But once involved, the government andthe American people made the war into a patrioticcrusade that influenced all aspects of American life.

The Election of 1916American political campaigns do not stop even intimes of international crisis. As 1915 turned to 1916,Wilson had to think of re-election as well as of pre-paredness, submarine warfare, and the Mexicancampaign. At first glance, the president’s chances ofre-election seemed poor. He had won in 1912 onlybecause Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressiveparty had split the Republican vote. If supporters ofthe Progressives in 1912 returned to the Republicanfold, Wilson’s chances were slim indeed. Becausethe Progressive party had done very badly in the1914 congressional elections, Roosevelt seemedready to seek the Republican nomination.

Wilson was aware that he had to win over voterswho had favored Roosevelt in 1912. In January 1916,he appointed Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme

Court. The first Jew ever to sit on the Court, Bran-deis was confirmed over the strong opposition ofmany legal organizations. His appointment pleasedthe social justice progressives because he had al-ways championed reform causes. They made it clearto Wilson that the real test for them was whether hesupported the anti–child labor and workers’ com-pensation bills pending in Congress.

In August, Wilson put heavy pressure on Congressand obtained passage of the Worker’s CompensationBill, which gave some protection to federal employ-ees, and the Keatings–Owen Child Labor Bill, whichprohibited the shipment in interstate commerce ofgoods produced by children under age 14 and insome cases under 16. This bill, later declared uncon-stitutional, was a far-reaching proposal that for thefirst time used federal control over interstate com-merce to dictate the conditions under which busi-nesspeople could manufacture products.

To attract farm support, Wilson pushed for pas-sage of the Federal Farm Loan Act, which created 12Federal Farm Loan banks to extend long-term creditto farmers. Urged on by organized labor as well asby many progressives, he supported the AdamsonAct, which established an eight-hour workday for allinterstate railway workers. Within a few months,Wilson reversed the New Freedom doctrines he hadearlier supported and brought the force of the fed-eral government into play on the side of reform. Theflurry of legislation early in 1916 provided one tri-umph for the progressive movement. The strategyseemed to work, for progressives of all kinds enthu-siastically endorsed the president.

The election of 1916, however, turned as muchon foreign affairs as on domestic policy. The Repub-licans ignored Theodore Roosevelt and nominated




instead the staid and respectable Charles EvansHughes, a former governor of New York and future

Supreme Court justice. Their platformcalled for “straight and honest neutrality”and “adequate preparedness.” In a bittercampaign, Hughes attacked Wilson fornot promoting American rights in Mexicomore vigorously and for giving in to theunreasonable demands of labor. Wilson,on his part, implied that electing Hugheswould guarantee war with both Mexico

and Germany and that his opponents were some-how not “100 percent Americans.” As the campaignprogressed, the peace issue became more and moreimportant, and the cry “He kept us out of war”echoed through every Democratic rally. It was a slo-gan that would soon seem strangely ironic.

The election was extremely close. In fact, Wilsonwent to bed on election night thinking he had lostthe presidency. The election was not finally decideduntil the Democrats carried California (by fewerthan 4,000 votes). Wilson won by carrying the Westas well as the South.

Deciding for WarWilson’s victory in 1916 seemed to be a mandate forstaying out of the European war. Those who sup-ported Wilson as a peace candidate applauded inJanuary 1917 when he went before the Senate toclarify the American position on a negotiated settle-ment of the war. The German government had ear-lier indicated that it might be willing to go to theconference table. Wilson outlined a plan for a nego-tiated settlement before either side had achievedvictory. It would be a peace among equals, “a peacewithout victory,” a peace without indemnities andannexations. The agreement Wilson outlined con-tained his idealistic vision of the postwar world asan open marketplace, and it could have worked onlyif Germany and the Allies were willing to settle for adraw. But neither side was interested in such a con-clusion after years of bitter and costly conflict.

The German government refused to accept apeace without victory, probably because early in

1917, the German leaders thought theycould win. On January 31, 1917, the Ger-mans announced that they would sinkon sight any ship, belligerent or neutral,sailing toward England or France. A fewdays later, in retaliation, the UnitedStates broke diplomatic relations withGermany. But Wilson—and probably

most Americans—still hoped to avert war withoutshutting off American trade. As goods began to pile

up in warehouses and American ships stayed idlyin port, however, pressure mounted to arm Ameri-can merchant ships. An intercepted telegram fromthe German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmer-mann, to the German minister in Mexico increasedanti-German feeling. If war broke out, the Germanminister was to offer Mexico the territory it hadlost in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in 1848. Inreturn, Mexico would join Germany in a waragainst the United States. When the Zimmermannnote was released to the press on March 1, 1917,many Americans demanded war against Germany.Wilson still hesitated.

As the country waited on the brink of war, newsof revolution in Russia reached Washington. Thatevent would prove as important as the war itself.The March 1917 revolution in Russia was a sponta-neous uprising of workers, housewives, and soldiersagainst the government of Czar Nicholas II and itsconduct of the war. The army had suffered stagger-ing losses at the front. The civilian population wasin desperate condition. Food was scarce, and therailroads and industry had nearly collapsed. At first,Wilson and other Americans were enthusiasticabout the new republic led by Alexander Kerensky.The overthrow of the feudal aristocracy seemed inthe spirit of the American Revolution. Kerenskypromised to continue the struggle against Germany.But on November 6, 1917, the revolution took amore extreme turn. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, knownas Lenin, returned from exile in Switzerland and ledthe radical Bolsheviks to victory over the Kerenskyregime. He immediately signed an armistice withGermany that released thousands of Germantroops, who had been fighting the Russians, to jointhe battle against the Allies on the western front.

Lenin, a brilliant lawyer and revolutionary tacti-cian, was a follower of Karl Marx (1818–1883). Marxwas a German intellectual and radical philosopherwho had described the alienation of the workingclass under capitalism and predicted a growing splitbetween the proletariat (the unpropertied workers)and the capitalists. Lenin extended Marx’s ideas andargued that capitalist nations eventually would beforced to go to war over raw materials and markets.Believing that capitalism and imperialism wenthand in hand, Lenin argued that the only way to endimperialism was to end capitalism. Communism,Lenin predicted, would eventually dominate theglobe, and the new Soviet Union, not the UnitedStates, would be the model for the rest of the worldto follow. The Russian Revolution threatened Wil-son’s vision of the world and his plan to bring theUnited States into the war “to make the world safefor democracy.”

Charles E.Hughes 1916PresidentialCampaignSpeech

TheZimmermann

Telegram(1917)






More disturbing than the revolution in Russia,however, was the situation in the North Atlantic,

where German U-boats sank five Ameri-can ships between March 12 and March21, 1917. Wilson no longer hesitated. OnApril 2, he urged Congress to declare war.His words conveyed a sense of missionabout the country’s entry into the war,but Wilson’s voice was low and somber. “Itis a fearful thing,” he concluded, “to lead

this great, peaceful people into war, into the mostterrible and disastrous of all wars.” The war resolu-tion swept the Senate 82 to 6 and the House of Rep-resentatives 373 to 50.

Once war was declared, most Americans forgottheir doubts. Young men rushed to enlist; womenvolunteered to become nurses or to serve in otherways. Towns were united by patriotism.

A Patriotic CrusadeNot all Americans applauded the declaration of war.Some pacifists and socialists and a few others op-posed America’s entry into the war. “To whom doeswar bring prosperity?” Senator George Norris of Ne-braska asked on the Senate floor. “Not to the soldier,. . . not to the broken hearted widow, . . . not to themother who weeps at the death of her brave boy. . . .I feel that we are about to put the dollar sign on theAmerican flag.”

For most Americans in the spring of 1917, the warseemed remote. A few days after war was declared, aSenate committee listened to a member of the WarDepartment staff list the vast quantities of materialsneeded to supply an American army in France. Oneof the senators, jolted awake, exclaimed, “Good Lord!You’re not going to send soldiers over there, are you?”

To convince senators and citizens alike that thewar was real and that American participation wasjust, Wilson appointed a Committee on Public In-

formation, headed by George Creel, amuckraking journalist from Denver. TheCreel Committee launched a giganticpropaganda campaign to persuade theAmerican public that the United Stateshad gone to war to promote the cause offreedom and democracy and to preventthe barbarous hordes from overrunning

Europe and eventually the Western Hemisphere.The patriotic crusade soon became stridently

anti-German and anti-immigrant. Most school dis-tricts banned the teaching of German. Sauerkrautwas renamed “liberty cabbage,” and Germanmeasles became “liberty measles.” Many familiesAmericanized their German surnames. Several

cities banned music by German composers fromsymphony concerts. South Dakota prohibited theuse of German on the telephone, and inIowa, a state official announced, “If theirlanguage is disloyal, they should be im-prisoned. If their acts are disloyal, theyshould be shot.” Occasionally, the patri-otic fever led to violence. The most noto-rious incident occurred in East St. Louis,Illinois, which had a large German popu-lation. A mob seized Robert Prager, a young GermanAmerican, in April 1918, stripped off his clothes,dressed him in an American flag, marched himthrough the streets, and lynched him. The eventualtrial led to the acquittal of the ringleaders on thegrounds that the lynching was a “patriotic murder.”

The Wilson administration did not condone do-mestic violence and murder, but heated patriotismled to irrational hatreds and fears. Suspect were not

Pershing’s Crusaders This official 1917 U.S. governmentpublication compares American soldiers to medieval knights. It makesexplicit the American belief that by entering World War I they werejoining not only a war but also a crusade to make the world safe fordemocracy. They were not just supporting the Allied cause, but theyhad a special mission to rescue the old world and to spread theAmerican way of life. How do you suppose Europeans reacted to thisAmerican sense of mission and superiority? (Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-1539)

PresidentWilson’s War

Message(1917)

“Boy ScoutsSupport theWar Effort”

(1917)

Immigrantsand the Great

War







only German Americans but also radicals, pacifists,and anyone who raised doubts about the American

war efforts or the government’s policies.The Los Angeles police ignored com-plaints that Mexicans were being ha-rassed, because after learning of the Zim-mermann telegram they believed that allMexicans were pro-German. In Wiscon-sin, Senator Robert La Follette, who hadvoted against the war resolution, wasburned in effigy and censured by the fac-ulty of the University of Wisconsin. At a

number of universities, professors were dismissed,sometimes for as little as questioning the morality orthe necessity of America’s participation in the war.

On June 15, 1917, Congress, at Wilson’s behest,passed the Espionage Act, which provided impris-onment of up to 20 years or a fine of up to $10,000,

or both, for people who aided the enemyor who “willfully cause . . . insubordina-tion, disloyalty, mutiny or refusal of dutyin the military . . . forces of the UnitedStates.” The act also authorized the post-master general to prohibit from the mailsany matter he thought advocated treason

or forcible resistance to U.S. laws. The act was usedto stamp out dissent, even to discipline anyone whoquestioned the administration’s policies. Using theact, Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson bannedthe magazines American Socialist and The Massesfrom the mails.

Congress later added the Trading with the EnemyAct and a Sedition Act. The latter prohibited dis-loyal, profane, scurrilous, and abusive remarks

about the form of government, flag, oruniform of the United States. It even pro-hibited citizens from opposing the pur-chase of war bonds. For delivering aspeech denouncing capitalism and thewar, Socialist party leader Eugene Debswas convicted of violating the SeditionAct and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In 1919, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction,even though Debs had not explicitly urged violationof the draft laws. Not all Americans agreed with thedecision, for while still in prison, Debs polled closeto 1 million votes in the presidential election of1920. Ultimately, the government prosecuted 2,168people under the Espionage and Sedition Acts andconvicted about half of them. But these figures donot include the thousands who were informally per-secuted and deprived of their liberties and theirright of free speech.

One woman was sentenced to prison for writing,“I am for the people and the government is for the

profiteers.” Ricardo Flores Magon, a leading MexicanAmerican labor organizer and radical in the South-west, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for criticiz-ing Wilson’s Mexican policy and violatingthe Neutrality Acts. In Cincinnati, a pacifistminister, Herbert S. Bigelow, was draggedfrom the stage where he was about to givea speech, taken to a wooded area by amob, bound and gagged, and whipped. InBisbee, Arizona, where wartime demandfor copper had increased the population to 20,000,the miners went on strike in June 1917 to protest lowwages and unsafe conditions in the mines. The own-ers blamed the strike on the IWW, which theyclaimed was controlled by the Germans. The IWWhad little to do with the strike, but the local sheriff leda posse of men into the miners’ homes, where theyrounded up 1,200 “undesirables” and shipped themin boxcars into Mexico. The mine owners thenquickly hired strikebreakers so the production ofcopper to support the war effort could continue.

Espionage Act(1917)

Newton D.Baker,

Treatment ofGerman

Americans(1918)

“The SpeechThat Sent Debs

to Jail”

Abrams v.United States

(1919)

“At Last a Perfect Soldier” This antiwar, antimilitary car-toon appeared in the American radical magazine The Masses in July1916. The Masses was an irreverent journal that for a few years pub-lished important articles and illustrations by leading artists. It was shutdown as subversive during the war by the U.S. government. Howdoes this image contrast to the usual depiction of the soldier as hero?Do you agree with this image of the soldier today? (The Masses, 8, July1916, [back cover]/The Tamiment Institute Library, New York University)








The Civil Liberties Bureau, an outgrowth of theAmerican Union Against Militarism, protested theblatant abridgment of freedom of speech during thewar, but the protests fell on deaf ears at the JusticeDepartment and in the White House. Rights andfreedoms have been reduced or suspended duringall wars, but the massive disregard for basic rightswas greater during World War I than during the CivilWar. This was ironic because Wilson had often writ-ten and spoken of the need to preserve freedom ofspeech and civil liberties. During the war, however,he tolerated the vigilante tactics of his own JusticeDepartment, offering no more than feeble protest.Wilson was so convinced his cause was just that heignored the rights of those who opposed him.

Raising an ArmyDebate over a volunteer army versus the draft hadbeen going on for several years before the UnitedStates entered the war. People who favored someform of universal military service argued that col-lege graduates, farmers, and young men from theslums of eastern cities could learn from one anotheras they trained together. Opponents of a draftpointed out that people making such claims weremost often the college graduates, who assumed theywould command the boys from the slums. The draftwas not democratic, they argued, but the tool of animperialist power bent on ending dissent. “Back ofthe cry that America must have compulsory serviceor perish,” one opponent charged, “is a clearlythought out and heavily backed project to mold theUnited States into an efficient, orderly nation, eco-nomically and politically controlled by those whoknow what is good for the people.” Memories ofmassive draft riots during the Civil War also ledsome to fear a draft.

Wilson and his secretary of war, Newton Baker,both initially opposed the draft. In the end, both con-cluded that it was the most efficient way to organizemilitary personnel. Ironically, it was Theodore Roo-

sevelt who tipped Wilson in favor of thedraft. Even though his health was failingand he was blind in one eye, the old RoughRider was determined to recruit a volun-teer division and lead it personally againstthe Germans. The thought of his old en-emy Theodore Roosevelt blustering aboutEurope so frightened Wilson that he sup-

ported the Selective Service Act in part, at least, toprevent such volunteer outfits as Roosevelt planned.Congress argued over the bill, the House insistingthat the minimum age for draftees should be 21, not18. On June 5, 1917, some 9.5 million men between

ages 21 and 31 registered, with little protest. In Au-gust 1918, Congress extended the act to men be-tween ages 18 and 45. In all, more than 24 millionmen registered and more than 2.8 million were in-ducted, making up more than 75 percent of soldierswho served in the war.

The draft worked well, but it was not quite theperfect system that Wilson claimed. Draft protestserupted in a few places, the largest in Oklahoma,where a group of tenant farmers planned a marchon Washington to take over the government andend the “rich man’s war.” But the Green Corn Rebel-lion, as it came to be called, died before it gotstarted. A local posse arrested about 900 rebels andtook them off to jail.

Some men escaped the draft. Some were deferredbecause of war-related jobs, and others resisted byclaiming exemption for reasons of conscience. TheSelective Service Act did exempt men who belongedto religious groups that forbade members from en-gaging in war, but religious motivation was often dif-ficult to define, and nonreligious conscientious ob-jection was even more complicated. Thousands ofconscientious objectors were inducted. Some servedin noncombat positions; others went to prison.

THE MILITARY EXPERIENCEFamily albums in millions of American homes con-tain photographs of those who were drafted or vol-unteered: young men in uniform, some of them stiffand formal, some of them candid shots of soldierson leave in Paris or Washington or Chicago. Thesephotographs testify to the importance of the war toa generation of Americans. For years afterward, themen and women who lived through the war sang“Tipperary,” “There’s a Long, Long Trail,” and “PackUp Your Troubles” and remembered rather senti-mentally what the war had meant to them. Forsome, the war was a tragic event, as they saw thehorrors of the battlefield firsthand. For others, it wasa liberating experience and the most exciting periodof their lives.

The American SoldierThe typical soldier, according to the U.S. Medical De-partment, stood 5 feet 71/2 inches tall, weighed 1411/2

pounds, and was 22 years old. He took a physicalexam, an intelligence test, and a psychological test,and he probably watched a movie called Fit to Fight,which warned him about the dangers of venereal dis-ease. The majority of American soldiers had not at-tended high school. The median level of education

RecruitingPoster for the

Marines





for native whites was 6.9 years, 4.7 yearsfor immigrants, and just 2.6 years forsouthern blacks. As many as 31 percent ofthe recruits were declared illiterate, but theintelligence tests were so primitive thatthey probably tested social class morethan anything else. More than half the re-

cent immigrants from eastern Europe ranked in the“inferior” category. Fully 29 percent of the recruitswere rejected as physically unfit for service, a findingthat shocked health experts.

Most World War I soldiers were ill-educated andunsophisticated young men from farms, smalltowns, and urban neighborhoods. They came fromall social classes and ethnic groups, yet most weretransformed into soldiers. The military experience

changed the lives and often the attitudesof many young men and some women.Women contributed to the war effort astelephone operators and clerk typists inthe navy and the marines. Some wentoverseas as army and navy nurses. Othersvolunteered for a tour of duty with the

Red Cross, the Salvation Army, or the YMCA. Yet themilitary experience in World War I was predomi-nantly male. Even going to training camp was a newand often frightening experience. A leave in Paris orLondon, or even in New York or New Orleans, wasan adventure to remember for a lifetime. Even those

who never got overseas or who never saw a battleexperienced subtle changes. Many soldiers sawtheir first movie in the army or had their first con-tact with trucks and cars. Military service changedthe shaving habits of a generation because the newsafety razor was standard issue. The war also led tothe growing popularity of the cigarette rather thanthe pipe or cigar because a pack of cigarettes fitcomfortably into a shirt pocket and a cigarette couldbe smoked during a short break. The war experiencealso caused many men to abandon the pocketwatch for the more convenient wristwatch, whichhad been considered effeminate before the war.

The Black SoldierBlacks had served in all American wars, and manyfought valiantly in the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. Yet black soldiers had most oftenperformed menial work and belonged to segregatedunits. Most black leaders supported American par-ticipation in the war. An exception was Boston jour-nalist William Monroe Trotter, who argued that Ger-man atrocities were no worse than the lynching ofblack men in America. Instead of making the worldsafe for democracy, he suggested, the governmentshould make “the South safe for Negroes.” But W. E.B. Du Bois, the editor of The Crisis, urged blacks toclose ranks and support the war. He predicted that

“FemininePatriotism”

Soldiers Takingan IQ Test

During WWI

Entertaining Black Service-men Assigned to segregated units, blacksoldiers were also excluded from whiterecreation facilities. Here black womenfrom Newark, New Jersey, aided by whitesocial workers, entertain black servicemen.How do you think black men felt aboutfighting for freedom in a segregated army?(National Archives)





All governments produce propaganda. Especially intime of war, governments try to convince their citizensthat the cause is important and worthwhile even if itmeans sacrifice. Before the United States entered theWorld War I, both Great Britain and Germany pre-sented their side of the conflict through storiesplanted in newspapers, photographs, and other devices.Some historians argue that the British propaganda de-picting the Germans as barbaric Huns who killed littleboys and Catholic nuns played a large role in convinc-ing Americans of the righteousness of the Allied cause.

When the United States entered the war, a specialcommittee under the direction of George Creel did itsbest to persuade Americans that the war was a crusade

against evil. The committee organized a na-tional network of “four-minute men,” localcitizens with the proper political views whocould be used to whip up a crowd into a pa-triotic frenzy.These local rallies, enlivened bybands and parades, urged people of all agesto support the war effort and buy warbonds.The Creel Committee also produced

literature for the schools,much of it prepared by collegeprofessors who volunteered their services. One pam-phlet, titled Why America Fights Germany, described inlurid detail a possible German invasion of the UnitedStates.The committee also used the new technology ofmotion pictures, which proved to be the most effectivepropaganda device of all.

There is a narrow line between education and pro-paganda.As early as 1910,Thomas Edison made filmsinstructing the public about the dangers of tuberculo-sis, and others produced movies that demonstratedhow to avoid everything from typhoid to tooth decay.However, during the war, the government quickly real-ized the power of the new medium and adopted it totrain soldiers, instill patriotism, and help the troopsavoid the temptations of alcohol and sex.

After the United States entered World War I, theCommission of Training Camp Activities made a filmcalled Fit to Fight that was shown to almost all male ser-vicemen. It was an hour-long drama following the ca-reers of five young recruits. Four of them, by associatingwith the wrong people and through lack of willpower,caught venereal disease.The film interspersed a simplis-tic plot with grotesque shots of men with various kindsof venereal disease. The film also glorified athletics,

especially football and boxing, as a substitute for sex. Itemphasized the importance of patriotism and purity forAmerica’s fighting force. In one scene, Bill Hale, the onlysoldier in the film to remain pure, breaks up a peacerally and beats up the speaker.“It serves you right,” thepacifist’s sister remarks,“I’m glad Billy punched you.”

Fit to Fight was so successful that the governmentcommissioned another film, The End of the Road, to beshown to women who lived near military bases.The filmis the story of Vera and Mary. Although still reflectingprogressive attitudes, the film’s message is somewhatdifferent from that of Fit to Fight. Vera’s strict mothertells her daughter that sex is dirty, leaving Vera to pickup “distorted and obscene” information about sex onthe street. She falls victim to the first man who comes

RECOVERING THE PAST

Government Propaganda

736

Liberty Bond propaganda. (The Granger Collection, New York)

Visual of theEnemy, ca.1917–1918




737

REFLECTING ON THE PAST What do the anti-VD filmstell us about the attitudes, ideas, and prejudices of theWorld War I period? What images do they projectabout men, women, and gender roles? Would you findthe same kind of moralism, patriotism, and fear of VDtoday? How have attitudes toward sex changed? Wereyou shown sex education films in school? Were theylike these? Who sponsored them? What can historianslearn from such films? Does the government producepropaganda today?

along and contracts a venereal disease. Mary, in con-trast, has an enlightened mother who explains wherebabies come from. When Mary grows up, she rejectsmarriage and becomes a professional woman, a nurse. Inthe end, she falls in love with a doctor and gets married.The End of the Road has a number of subplots and manyfrightening shots of syphilitic sores. Several illustrationsshow the dangers of indiscriminate sex. Among otherthings, the film preached the importance of science andsex education and the need for self-control.

Scene from Fit to Fight. (War Department, Commission on Training Camps)

Anti-VD poster issued by the U.S. Commission on TrainingCamp Activities. (Army Educational Commission)




the war experience would cause the “walls of preju-dice” to crumble gradually before the “onslaught ofcommon sense.” But the walls did not crumble, andthe black soldier never received equal or fair treat-ment during the war.

The Selective Service Act made no mention ofrace, and African Americans in most cases registered

without protest. Many whites, especiallyin the South, feared having too manyblacks trained in the use of arms. In someareas, draft boards exempted single whitemen but drafted black fathers. The mostnotorious situation existed in Atlanta,where one draft board inducted 97 per-cent of the African Americans registeredbut exempted 85 percent of the whites.

Still, most southern whites found it difficult to imag-ine a black man in the uniform of the U.S. Army.

White attitudes toward African Americans some-times led to conflict. In August 1917, violenceerupted in Houston, Texas, involving soldiers fromthe regular army’s all-black Twenty-Fourth InfantryDivision. Harassed by the Jim Crow laws, which hadbeen tightened for their benefit, a group of soldierswent on a rampage, killing 17 white civilians. Morethan 100 soldiers were court-martialed; 13 werecondemned to death. Those convicted were hangedthree days later before any appeals could be filed.

This violence, coming only a month after the raceriot in East St. Louis, Illinois, brought on in part bythe migration of southern blacks to the area, causedgreat concern about the handling of African Ameri-can soldiers. Secretary of War Baker made it clearthat the army had no intention of upsetting the sta-tus quo. The basic government policy was completesegregation and careful distribution of black unitsthroughout the country.

African Americans were prohibited from joiningthe marines and restricted to menial jobs in thenavy. A great many black nurses volunteered to go

to France, but only six actually went—and they were assigned to black units. In1918, official policy and American preju-dice would not allow black women tocare for white men. While some AfricanAmericans were trained as junior officersin the army, they were assigned to the all-black Ninety-Second Division, where thehigh-ranking officers were white. But fewblack officers or enlisted men would see

action. A staff report decided that “the mass of col-ored drafted men cannot be used for combatanttroops.” Most of the black soldiers, including about80 percent of those sent to France, worked as steve-dores and common laborers under the supervision

of white, noncommissioned officers. “Everyone whohas handled colored labor knows that the gangbosses must be white if any work is to be done,” re-marked Lieutenant Colonel U. S. Grant, the grand-son of the Civil War general. Other black soldiersacted as servants, drivers, and porters for the whiteofficers. It was a demeaning and ironic policy for agovernment that advertised itself as standing forjustice, honor, and democracy.

Over ThereThe conflict that Wilson called the war “to make theworld safe for democracy” had become a contest ofstalemate and slaughter. To this ghastly war, Ameri-cans made important contributions. In fact, with-out their help, the Allies might have lost. But theAmerican contribution was most significant only inthe war’s final months. When the United States en-tered the conflict in the spring of 1917, the fightinghad dragged on for nearly three years. After a fewrapid advances and retreats, the war in western Eu-rope had settled down to a tactical andbloody stalemate. The human costs oftrench warfare were horrifying. In onebattle in 1916, a total of 60,000 Britishsoldiers were killed or wounded in a sin-gle day, yet the battle lines did not movean inch. By the spring of 1917, the British andFrench armies were down to their last reserves.Italy’s army had nearly collapsed. In the East, theRussians were engaged in a bitter internal struggle,and in November, the Bolshevik Revolution wouldcause them to sue for a separate peace, freeing theGerman divisions on the eastern front to join inone final assault in the West. The Allies desperatelyneeded fresh American troops, but those troopshad to be trained, equipped, and transported to thefront. That took time.

A few token American regiments arrived in Francein the summer of 1917 under the command of Gen-eral John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, a tall, serious, Mis-souri-born graduate of West Point. He had fought inthe Spanish-American War and led the expedition totrack down Pancho Villa in Mexico in 1916. When thefirst troops marched in a parade in Paris on July 4,1917, the emotional French crowd shouted, “Vive lesAméricains” and showered them with flowers, hugs,and kisses. But the American commanders worriedthat many of their soldiers were so inexperiencedthey did not even know how to march, let alone fight.The first Americans saw action near Verdun in Octo-ber 1917. By March 1918, more than 300,000 Ameri-can soldiers had reached France, and by November1918, more than 2 million.

AfricanAmericanRecruiting

Poster

Statement toFrench

AuthoritiesConcerning

Black AmericanTroops (1918)

Over There







One reason that the U.S. forces wereslow to see actual combat was Pershing’sinsistence that they be kept separate fromthe French and British divisions. An ex-ception was made for four regiments ofblack soldiers who were assigned to theFrench army. Despite the American warn-ing to the French not to “spoil the Ne-groes” by allowing them to mix with the

French civilian population, these soldiers fought sowell that the French later awarded three of the regi-ments the Croix de Guerre, their highest unit citation.

In the spring of 1918, with Russia out of the warand the British blockade becoming more and moreeffective, the Germans launched an all-out, desper-ate offensive to win the war before full American mil-itary and industrial power became a factor in thecontest. By late May, the Germans had pushed towithin 50 miles of Paris. American troops werethrown into the line and helped stem the German ad-vance at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, andCantigny, place names that proud survivors wouldlater endow with almost sacred significance. Ameri-cans also took part in the Allied offensive led by Gen-eral Ferdinand Foch of France in the summer of 1918.

In September, more than half a million Americantroops fought near St. Mihiel; this was the first battle

in which large numbers of Americans were pressedinto action. One enlisted man remembered that he“saw a sight which I shall never forget. Itwas zero hour and in one instant the en-tire front as far as the eye could reach ineither direction was a sheet of flame,while the heavy artillery made the earthquake.” The Americans suffered morethan 7,000 casualties, but they capturedmore than 16,000 German soldiers. Thevictory, even if it came against exhaustedand retreating German troops, seemed tovindicate Pershing’s insistence on a separate Ameri-can army. British and French commanders werecritical of what they considered the disorganized,inexperienced, and ill-equipped American forces.

In the fall of 1918, the combined British, French,and American armies drove the Germans back.Faced with low morale among the German soldiers,the mutiny of the German fleet, and the surrender ofAustria, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on November 8,and the armistice was signed on November 11. Morethan 1 million American soldiers took part in the fi-nal Allied offensive near the Meuse River and the Ar-gonne forest. It was in this battle that Edmund Arpinwas wounded. Many of the men were inexperienced,and some, who had been rushed through training as

“90-day wonders,” had neverhandled a rifle before arrivingin France. There were manydisastrous mistakes and bun-gled situations. The most fa-mous blunder was the “lostbattalion.” An American unitadvanced beyond its supportand was cut off and sur-rounded. The battalion suf-fered 70 percent casualties be-fore being rescued.

The performance of the all-black Ninety-Second Divisionwas also controversial. TheNinety-Second had been de-liberately dispersed aroundthe United States and hadnever trained as a unit. Itshigher officers were white, andthey repeatedly asked to betransferred. Many of its menwere only partly trained andpoorly equipped, and theywere continually being calledaway from their military dutiesto work as stevedores andcommon laborers. At the last

Deadly Weapons of the Great War New technology made the Great War morehorrible in some ways than past wars. British soldiers wearing primitive gas masks operate a Vick-ers machine gun. The machine gun effectively neutralized the tactic of massive infantry charges,while poison gas attacks increased the number of soldiers with “shell shock” or mental illness.How has war changed since 1918? Is mental illness still a factor among soldiers in time of war?(Imperial War Museum, London)

AfricanAmerican

Soldiers UnderFrench

CommandEugene

Kennedy, A“Doughboy”

Describes theFighting Front

(1918)





740

AMERICAN VOICESPrivate John Figarovsky,American Soldiers Get a Warm Welcome in France

The United States entered the war late, but when Americansoldiers finally arrived in France they were greeted withenthusiasm by French soldiers and civilians who were tiredof the terrible war. The American soldiers thought of thewar as a great adventure.

When we landed, one of the first things we didwas to parade through the town of St. Nazaire.The French people were just delirious with joy, be-cause in the Americans they saw hope for the fu-ture. As we marched through town, the sidewalksand even the gutters on both sides were full ofpeople and we felt so proud and important thatsuch a fuss was being made over us. The mayoreven proclaimed a holiday.

Most of us were young fellows, and we musthave made a good impression because the Frenchgirls would jump in the ranks and throw flowers atus and scream and even kiss some of the soldiers.But we kept on, you know, with army discipline, wetried not to notice too much of that. It was such awonderful reception, we never imagined anythinglike that would happen, that we’d be welcomed so

warmly. They must have admired us a lot, and ofcourse we were looking forward to the great ad-venture ahead of us.We were looking forward tothe fight—we didn’t know how serious it was be-cause we’d never been to war before. But we did-n’t stay in St. Nazaire for long, we were marchedabout three miles out of town where they hadsome cantonments.

When we trained with the French troops theywere very cooperative. Most of them were short,and it seemed they’d had their clothes on for ayear—they hardly ever changed their clothes. Butthey were very nonchalant about everything. Iguess they were tired after four years of warfare.And they were surprised to see that we were soeager to get into the fight.

■ How long do you suppose the Americans’ eagerness toget into the fight lasted?

■ Have the French always seen Americans as the hope ofthe future?

minute during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, theNinety-Second was assigned to a particularly diffi-cult position on the line. They had no maps and nowire-cutting equipment. Battalion commanderslost contact with their men, and on several occa-sions, the men broke and ran in the face of enemyfire. The division was withdrawn in disgrace, and foryears politicians and military leaders used this inci-dent to point out that black soldiers would nevermake good fighting men, ignoring the difficultiesunder which the Ninety-Second fought and thevalor shown by black troops assigned to the Frencharmy.

The war produced a few American heroes. JosephOklahombie, a Choctaw, overran several Germanmachine gun nests and captured more than 100German soldiers. Sergeant Alvin York, a former con-scientious objector from Tennessee, single-hand-edly killed or captured 160 Germans using only hisrifle and pistol. The press made him a celebrity, buthis heroics were not typical. Artillery, machine guns,and, near the end, tanks, trucks, and airplanes wonthe war. “To be shelled when you are in the open isone of the most terrible of human experiences,” one

American soldier wrote. “You hear this rushing,tearing sound as the thing comes toward you, andthen the huge explosion as it strikes, and infinitelyworse, you see its hideous work as men stagger, fall,struggle, or lie quiet and unrecognizable.”

With few exceptions, the Americans fought hardand well. Although the French and British criticizedAmerican inexperience and disarray, they admiredtheir exuberance, their “pep,” and theirability to move large numbers of men andequipment efficiently. Sometimes itseemed that Americans simply over-whelmed the enemy with their numbers.They suffered more than 120,000 casual-ties in the Meuse-Argonne campaignalone. One officer estimated that he lost 10soldiers for every German his men killed in the finaloffensive.

The United States entered the war late but stilllost more than 48,000 service personnel and hadmany more wounded. Disease claimed 15 of every1,000 soldiers each year (compared with 65 per1,000 in the Civil War). But American losses weretiny compared to those suffered by the European

French CoupleWelcomes TwoU.S. Soldiers





armies. The British lost 900,000 men, the French 1.4million, and the Russians 1.7 million. Nor was the fi-nancial burden as costly for the United States as forits Allies. American units fired French artillerypieces; American soldiers were usually transportedin British ships and wore helmets and other equip-ment modeled after the British. The United States

purchased clothing and blankets, evenhorses, in Europe. American fliers, includ-ing heroes such as Eddie Rickenbacker,flew French and British planes. TheUnited States contributed huge amountsof men and supplies in the last months ofthe war, and that finally tipped the bal-ance. But it had entered late and sacrificed littlecompared with France and England. That would in-fluence the peace settlement.

A Global PandemicThe end of the Great War brought relief and joy tomany, but in the fall of 1918 an influenza pandemicswept around the world, killing an estimated 50 mil-lion people, with 675,000 deaths in the United Statesin a little more than a year. The Spanish Flu, as it wascalled (although there is no evidence that it origi-nated in Spain), seems to have started at about thesame time in Europe, Asia, America, and even in re-mote Eskimo villages. Only a small percentage ofthose who caught the disease died from it, but unlikemost epidemics, it hit hardest among young adults.More than 43,000 American servicemen died from

GERMANY

FRANCE

GREATBRITAIN

NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM

LUXEMBOURGCantignyMAY 1918

BelleauWoodJUNE 1918

Meuse-ArgonneOffensiveSEPT.–NOV.1918

St. MihielSEPTEMBER 1918

SeichepreyAPRIL 1918

North Sea

English Channel

Rh

ine

River

Ois

e Ri v erMarne River

Chateau-Thieery

Ypres

Paris

Soissons

London

Antwerp

Brussels

Sedan

Ostend

Ghent

Amiens

RheimsVerdun

Dover

Moselle

Riv

er

SeineRiver

M

uesseR

iver

Major battlesFarthest Germanadvance in 1918

American offensivesAreas gained byAmerican troops

Armistice line,November 1918

Western Front of the Great War, 1918

For more than three years, the war settled down to a bloody stalemate on the western front. But in 1918,American sol-diers played important roles in the Allied offensive that finally ended the war. Reflecting on the Past What can youlearn about tactics and strategy during the Great War from studying this map?

TemporaryShelter for U.S.

Wounded

World War I Losses

The total cost of the war was estimated at more than $330billion.The cost in human life was even more horrible.Thenumber of known dead was placed at about 10 million menand the wounded at about 20 million, distributed amongchief combatants as follows (round numbers). Reflectingon the Past Which countries bore the brunt of dead andwounded? How did this influence the peace settlement?

Dead Wounded Prisoner

Great Britain 947,000 2,122,000 192,000France 1,385,000 3,044,000 446,000Russia 1,700,000 4,950,000 500,000Italy 460,000 947,000 530,000United States 115,000 206,000 4,500Germany 1,808,000 4,247,000 618,000Austria-Hungary 1,200,000 3,620,000 200,000Turkey 325,000 400,000 —





the flu (almost as many as died on the battlefield).Early in the epidemic, rumors blamed German germwarfare for the disease, but the German army was in-fected as well. No antibiotics or shots could preventor cure the disease, and the surgical masks requiredin some cities did no good. Even President Wilsoncame near death from the disease in the spring of1919. The flu of 1918–1919 killed more people in ashort time than any event in human history, perhaps20 million worldwide. The speed with which the dis-ease spread around the world was another reminderof how the modern world was interconnected andisolation was impossible. The virus that caused theoutbreak has never been identified.

A Warning about the Influenza Pandemic Thisposter was distributed in 1918 to movie theaters in Chicago by theCommissioner of Health. The language of the poster reveals the fearand near panic that many Americans felt in the face of the deadly flu epi-demic. Do posters like this do any good? (National Library of Medicine)




DOMESTIC IMPACT OF THE WARFor at least 30 years before the United States enteredthe Great War, a debate raged over the proper role of

the federal government in regulating industry andprotecting people who could not protect them-selves. Controversy also centered on the question ofhow much power the federal government shouldhave to tax and control individuals and corpora-tions and the proper relation of the federal govern-ment to state and local governments. The war andthe problems it raised increased the power of thefederal government in a variety of ways. Thewartime experience did not end the debate, but theUnited States emerged from the war a more modernnation, with more power residing in Washington. Atthe same time, the federal government with its hugeexpenditures provided immense economic advan-tage to businesses engaged in war production andto the cities where those businesses were located.

Financing the WarThe war, by one calculation, cost the United Statesmore than $33 billion. Interest and veterans’ bene-fits bring the total to nearly $112 billion. Early on,when an economist suggested that the war mightcost the United States $10 billion, everyone laughed.Yet many in the Wilson administration knew the warwas going to be expensive, and they set out to raisethe money by borrowing and by increasing taxes.

Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo was incharge of financing the war. Studying the policiesthat treasury secretary Salmon Chase hadfollowed during the Civil War, he decidedthat Chase had made a mistake in not ap-pealing to the emotions of the people. Awar must be a “kind of crusade,” he re-marked. He also learned from the British,French, and German propaganda cam-paigns. McAdoo’s campaign to sell liberty bonds toordinary American citizens at a very low interestrate appealed to American loyalty. “Lick a Stampand Lick the Kaiser,” one poster urged. Celebritiessuch as film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fair-banks promoted the bonds, and McAdoo employedthe Boy Scouts to sell them. “Every Scout to Save aSoldier” was the slogan. He even implied that peo-ple who did not buy bonds were traitors. “A manwho can’t lend his government $1.25 per week at therate of 4% interest is not entitled to be an Americancitizen,” he announced. A banner flew over themain street in Gary, Indiana, that made the point ofthe campaign clear: “ARE YOU WORTHY TO BEFOUGHT AND DIED FOR? BUY LIBERTY BONDS.”

The public responded enthusiastically, but theydiscovered after the war that their bonds haddropped to about 80 percent of face value. Becausethe interest on the bonds was tax exempt, well-to-do

“Buy WarBonds” Poster





citizens profited more from buying the bonds thandid ordinary men, women, and children. But the

wealthy were not as pleased withMcAdoo’s other plan to finance the war:raising taxes. The War Revenue Act of 1917boosted the tax rate sharply, levied a tax onexcess profits, and increased estate taxes.The next year, another bill raised the taxon the largest incomes to 77 percent. Thewealthy protested, but a number of pro-gressives were just as unhappy with the

bill, for they wanted to confiscate all income over$100,000 a year. Despite taxes and liberty bonds,however, World War I, like the Civil War, was financedin large part by inflation. Food prices, for example,nearly doubled between 1917 and 1919.

Increasing Federal PowerThe major wars of the twentieth century made hugedemands on the nations that fought them andhelped transform their governments. The UnitedStates was no exception. At first, Wilson tried towork through a variety of state agencies to mobilizethe nation’s resources. The need for more central-ized control and authority soon led Wilson to createa series of federal agencies to deal with the waremergency. The first crisis was food. Poor graincrops for two years and an increasing demand forAmerican food in Europe caused shortages. Wilsonappointed Herbert Hoover, a young engineer whohad won great prestige as head of the Commissionfor Relief of Belgium, to direct the Food Administra-tion. Hoover instituted a series of “wheatless” and“meatless” days and urged housewives to cooperate.Women emerged during the war as the most impor-tant group of consumers. The government urgedthem to save, just as later it would urge them to buy.

The Wilson administration used the authority ofthe federal government to organize resources for the

war effort. The National Research Counciland the National Advisory Committee onAeronautics helped mobilize scientists inindustry and the universities to producestrategic materials formerly importedfrom Germany, especially optical glass andchemicals to combat poison-gas warfare.American companies also tried to repro-

duce German color lithography, which had domi-nated the market for postcards, posters, and maga-zine illustrations before the war. Perhaps mostvaluable were the efforts of scientists in industry toimprove radio, airplanes, and instruments to predictthe weather and detect submarines. The war stimu-lated research and development and made the

United States less dependent on European scienceand technology.

The War Industries Board, led by Bernard Baruch,a shrewd Wall Street broker, used the power of thegovernment to control scarce materials and, on oc-casion, to set prices and priorities. Cooperationamong government, business, and university scien-tists to promote research and develop new productswas one legacy of the war. The government itselfwent into the shipbuilding business. The largestshipyard, at Hog Island near Philadelphia, em-ployed as many as 35,000 workers but did notlaunch its first ship until the late summer of 1918.San Francisco and Seattle also became major ship-building centers, while San Diego owed its rapidgrowth to the presence of a major naval base.

The government also got into the business of run-ning the railroads. When a severe winter and a lack ofcoordination brought the rail system near collapse inDecember 1917, Wilson put all the nation’s railroadsunder the control of the United Railway Administra-tion. The government spent more than $500 millionto improve the rails and equipment, and in 1918, therailroads did run more efficiently than they had un-der private control. Some businessmen complainedof “war socialism” and of increased rules and regula-tions. Like it or not, the war increased the influenceof the federal government.

War WorkersThe Wilson administration sought to protect andextend the rights of organized labor during thewar, while mobilizing the workers necessary tokeep the factories running. The National War LaborBoard insisted on adequate wages and reducedhours, and it tried to prevent exploitation ofwomen and children working under governmentcontracts. On one occasion, when a munitionsplant refused to accept the War Labor Board’s deci-sion, the government simply took over the factory.When workers threatened to strike for better wagesor hours or for greater control over the workplace,the board often ruled that they either work or bedrafted into the army.

The Wilson administration favored the conserva-tive labor movement of Samuel Gompers and theAFL, and the Justice Department put the radical In-dustrial Workers of the World “out of business.” Be-ginning in September 1917, federal agents con-ducted massive raids on IWW offices and arrestedmost of its leaders.

Samuel Gompers took advantage of the crisis tostrengthen the AFL’s position to speak for labor. Hesupported the administration policies by making it

Mrs. HearstReviews a

Liberty LoanParade

“Join a SheepClub” Poster,

ca. 1917–1919






clear that he opposed the IWW as well as socialistsand communists. Convincing Wilson that it was im-portant to protect the rights of organized labor duringwartime, he announced that “no other policy is com-patible with the spirit and methods of democracy.” Asthe AFL won a voice in home-front policy, its mem-bership increased from 2.7 million in 1916 to morethan 4 million in 1917. Organized labor’s wartimegains, however, would prove only temporary.

The war opened up industrial employment op-portunities for black men. With 4 million men in thearmed forces and the flow of immigrants inter-rupted by the war, American manufacturers for the

first time hired African Americans in largenumbers. In Chicago before the war, only3,000 black men held factory jobs; in1920, more than 15,000 did.

Northern labor agents and the railroadsactively recruited southern blacks, but thenews of jobs in northern cities spread byword of mouth as well. By 1920, more than300,000 blacks had joined the “great

migration” north. This massive movementof people, which continued into the 1920s,had a permanent impact on the South aswell as on the northern cities. Like AfricanAmericans, thousands of Mexicansheaded north into the United States, asimmigration officials relaxed the regula-tions because of the need for labor in thefarms and factories of the Southwest.

The war also created new employment opportuni-ties for women. Posters and patriotic speeches urgedwomen to do their duty for the war effort. One postershowed a woman at her typewriter, the shadow of asoldier in the background, with the message:“STENOGRAPHERS, WASHINGTON NEEDS YOU.”Women responded to these appeals out ofpatriotism, as well as out of a need to in-crease their earnings and to make up forinflation, which diminished real wages.Women went into every kind of industry.They labored in brickyards and in heavy in-dustry, became conductors on the railroad,

CALIFORNIA

NEVADA

UTAH

ARIZONANEW

MEXICO

COLORADO

WYOMING

IDAHO

WASHINGTON

OREGON

MONTANA NORTH DAKOTA

MINN.

SOUTH DAKOTA

NEBRASKA

KANSAS

IOWA

MISSOURI

WISCONSIN

IND.+39,270

OHIO+95,465

W. VA.

PENN.+153,407

NEW YORK+83,334

GEORGIA–121,576

ALA.–134,344

MISS.–139,178

ARK.+106,639

OKLAHOMA+69,994

TEXASLA

–52,784FLORIDA+62,653

S.C.–152,423

N.C.–113,716

VIRGINIA–195,515KY

–68,432

TENN.–63,557

MAINE

VTN.H.

MASS.

CONN.

N.J.+59,923DEL.

MD.–20,915

R.I.

ILL.+116,476

MICH.+42,374

MEXICO

CANADA

ATLANTICOCEAN

PA

CIF

ICO

CE

AN

Gu l f o f Mex i coStates with greatest increase in population

States with the greatest decrease in population

African American Migration, 1910–1920

This map illustrates the massive migration of African Americans from the South to the North during the Great War. Mostmoved to find better jobs, but in the process they changed the dynamics of race relations in the country. Reflecting onthe Past What other changes resulted from this migration?

AfricanAmerican

Population,1910 and

1950

AfricanAmericanWomenWorkers

Letters fromthe GreatMigration






745

and turned out shells in munitions plants. They evenorganized the Woman’s Land Army to mobilize femalelabor for the farms. They demonstrated that womencould do any kind of job, whatever the physical or in-tellectual demands. Black women left domestic ser-vice for jobs in textile mills, even in the stockyards.However, racial discrimination, even in the North,prevented them from moving too far up the occupa-tional ladder.

Even though women demonstrated that they couldtake over jobs once thought suitable only for men,their progress during the war proved temporary. Onlyabout 5 percent of the women employed during thewar were new to the workforce, and almost all of themwere unmarried. For most, it meant a shift of occupa-tions or a move up to a better-paying position. More-over, the war accelerated trends already underway. Itincreased the need for telephone operators, sales per-sonnel, secretaries, and other white-collar workers,and in these occupations, women soon became a ma-jority. Telephone operator, for example, became an al-most exclusively female job. By 1917, women repre-sented 99 percent of all operators as the telephonenetwork spanned the nation.

In the end, the war did provide limited opportu-nities for some women, but it did not change thedominant perception that a woman’s place was inthe home. After the war was over, the men returned,and the gains made by women almost disappeared.There were 8 million women in the workforce in1910 but only 8.5 million in 1920.

AMERICAN VOICESAn African American Woman Decides to Move North

Many African Americans wrote to the Chicago Defender,an African American newspaper, during the war seekinginformation about transportation to the North.

Mobile,Ala.,April 25, 1917Sir: I was reading in that paper about the Col-

ored race and while reading it I seen in it wherecars [the railroad] would be here for the 15 ofMay which is one month from to day.Will you beso kind as to let me know where they are comingto and I will be glad to know because I am a poorwoman and have a husband and five children livingand three dead one single and two twin girls sixmonths old today and my husband only get $1.50 aday and the mother of 8 children 25 years old andI want to get out of this dog hold because I don’tknow what I am raising they up for in this place

and I want to get to Chicago where I know theywill be raised and my husband crazy to get therebecause he know he can get more to raise his chil-dren and will you please let me know where thecars is going to stop to so that he can come wherehe can take care of me and my children. He getthere a while and then he send for me. . . .

■ Why were African Americans so eager to move to theNorth during the war?

■ Did they find the promised land in Chicago, Detroit, NewYork, and Philadelphia?

Source: “Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916–1918,” Collected under thedirection of Emmett J. Scott, Journal of Negro History (July and October1919). Copyright The Association for the Study of Negro History and Life.

Icewomen Women proved during the war that they could do“men’s work.” These two young women deliver ice, a backbreakingtask, but one that was necessary in the days before electric refrigera-tors. Despite women like these, the war did not change the Americanideal that women’s proper place was in the home. Has that idealchanged since 1918? (National Archives)




The Climax of ProgressivismMany progressives, especially the social justice pro-gressives, opposed U.S. entry into the war until afew months before the nation declared war. But af-ter April 1917, many began to see the “social possi-bilities of war.” They deplored the death and de-struction, the abridgment of freedom of speech, andthe patriotic spirit that accompanied the war. Butthey praised the social planning the conflict stimu-lated. They approved of the Wilson administration’ssupport for collective bargaining, the eight-hourworkday, and protection for women and children inindustry. They applauded Secretary of War Bakerwhen he announced, “We cannot afford, when weare losing boys in France, to lose children in theUnited States at the same time.” They welcomed theexperiments with government-owned housing pro-jects, woman suffrage, and Prohibition. Many en-dorsed the government takeover of the railroadsand control of business during the war.

One of the best examples of the progressives’ in-fluence on wartime activities was the Commissionon Training Camp Activities, set up early in the warto solve the problem of mobilizing, entertaining,and protecting American servicemen at home andabroad. This experiment was a uniquely Americaneffort; no other country tried anything like it. Thechairman of the commission was Raymond Fosdick,a former settlement worker. He appointed a numberof experts from the Playground Association, theYMCA, and social work agencies. They set out to or-ganize community singing and baseball, establishpost exchanges and theaters, and even provide uni-versity extension lectures to educate the service-men. The overriding assumption was that the mili-tary experience would help produce better citizens,people who would be ready to vote for social reformonce they returned to civilian life.

The Commission on Training Camp Activitiesalso incorporated the progressive crusades againstalcohol and prostitution. The Military Draft Act pro-hibited the sale of liquor to men in uniform andgave the president power to establish zones aroundmilitary bases where prostitution and alcohol wouldbe prohibited. Some military commandersprotested, and at least one city official argued thatprostitutes were “God-provided means for the pre-vention of the violation of innocent girls, by menwho are exercising their ‘God-given passions.”’ Yetthe commission, with the full cooperation of theWilson administration, set out to wipe out sin, or atleast to put it out of the reach of servicemen. “Fit tofight” became the motto. “Men must live straight ifthey would shoot straight,” one official announced.

It was a typical progressive effort combining moralindignation with the use of the latest scientific pro-phylaxis. The commissioners prided themselves onhaving eliminated all the red-light districts near thetraining camps by 1918. When the boys go to France,the secretary of war remarked, “I want them to haveinvisible armour to take with them. I want them tohave armour made up of a set of social habits re-placing those of their homes and communities.”

France tested the “invisible armour.” The govern-ment, despite hundreds of letters of protest fromAmerican mothers, decided that it could not pre-vent the soldiers from drinking wine in France, butit could forbid them to buy or accept as gifts any-thing but light wine and beer. If Arpin’s outfit is typi-cal, the soldiers often ignored the rules.

Sex was even more difficult to regulate in Francethan liquor. Both the British and the French armieshad tried to solve the problem of venereal disease bylicensing and inspecting prostitutes. GeorgesClemenceau, the French premier, found the Ameri-can attitude toward prostitution difficult to compre-hend. On one occasion, he accused the Americansof spreading disease throughout the French civilianpopulation and graciously offered to provide theAmericans with licensed prostitutes. General Persh-ing considered the letter containing the offer “toohot to handle.” So he gave it to Fosdick, who showedit to Baker, who remarked, “For God’s sake, Ray-mond, don’t show this to the President or he’ll stopthe war.” The Americans never acceptedClemenceau’s offer, and he continued to be baffledby the American progressive mentality.

Suffrage for WomenIn the fall of 1918, while American soldiers were mo-bilizing for the final offensive in France and hun-dreds of thousands of women were working in fac-tories and serving as Red Cross and Salvation Armyvolunteers near the army bases, Woodrow Wilsonspoke before the Senate to ask its support for thevote for women. He argued that woman suffragewas “vital to the winning of the war.” Although Wil-son had earlier opposed the vote for women and hispositive statement at this late date was not neces-sary, his voice was a welcome addition to a risingchorus of support for an amendment to the Consti-tution that would permit the female half of the pop-ulation to vote.

Many still opposed woman suffrage. Some ar-gued that the vote would make women less femi-nine, more worldly, and less able to perform theirprimary tasks as wives and mothers. The NationalAssociation Opposed to Woman Suffrage protested




that only radicals wanted the vote and declared thatwoman suffrage, socialism, and feminism were“three branches of the same Social Revolution.”

Carrie Chapman Catt, an efficient administratorand tireless organizer, devised the strategy that fi-nally secured the vote for women. Catt, who grewup in Iowa, joined the Iowa Woman Suffrage Associ-ation at age 28 shortly after her first husband died.Before remarrying, she insisted on a legal agree-ment giving her four months a year away from herhusband to work for the suffrage cause. In 1915, shebecame president of the National American WomanSuffrage Association (NAWSA), the organizationfounded in 1890 and based in part on the society or-ganized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. An-thony in 1869.

Catt coordinated the state campaigns with the of-fice in Washington, directing a growing army of ded-icated workers. The Washington headquarters sentprecise information to the states on ways to pres-sure congressmen in local districts. In Washington,they maintained a file on each congressman andsenator. “There were facts supplied by our membersin the states about his personal, political, businessand religious affiliations; there were reports of inter-views; . . . there was everything that could be discov-ered about his stand on woman suffrage.”

The careful planning began to produce results,but a group of more militant reformers, impatientwith the slow progress, broke off from NAWSA toform the National Women’s Party (NWP) in 1916.This group was led by Alice Paul, a Quaker fromNew Jersey, who had participated in some of thesuffrage battles in England. Paul and her group, us-ing tactics borrowed from the militant British suf-fragettes, picketed the White House, chainedthemselves to the fence, and blocked the streets.They carried banners that asked, “MR. PRESI-DENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIB-ERTY?” In the summer of 1917, the government ar-rested more than 200 women and charged themwith “obstructing the sidewalk.” That was just thekind of publicity the militants sought, and theymade the most of it. Wilson, fearing even more em-barrassment, began to cooperate with the moremoderate reformers.

The careful organizing of NAWSA and the moremilitant tactics of the NWP both contributed to thefinal success of the woman suffrage crusade. The wardid not cause the passage of the Nineteenth Amend-ment, but it did accelerate the process. Fourteenstate legislatures petitioned Congress in 1917 and 26in 1919, urging the enactment of the amendment.Early in 1919, the House of Representatives passedthe suffrage amendment 304 to 90, and the Senate

approved by a vote of 56 to 25. Fourteen months later,the required 36 states had ratified the amendment,and women at last had the vote. “We are no longerpetitioners,” Catt announced in celebration. “We arenot wards of the nation, but free and equal citizens.”But the achievement of votes for women would notprove the triumph of feminism, nor the signal for thebeginning of a new reform movement that thewomen leaders expected to occur.


PLANNING FOR PEACEWoodrow Wilson turned U.S. participation in the warinto a religious crusade to change the nature of inter-national relations. It was a war to make theworld safe for democracy—and more. OnJanuary 8, 1918, in part to counteract theBolshevik charge that the war was merelya struggle among imperialist powers, heannounced his plan to organize the peace.Called the Fourteen Points, it argued for“open covenants of peace openly arrived at,” free-dom of the seas, equality of trade, and the self-deter-mination of all peoples. But his most importantpoint, the fourteenth, called for an international or-ganization, a “league of nations,” to preserve peace.The victorious Allies, who had suffered grievously inthe conflict, had less idealistic goals than did Wilsonfor peacemaking.

The Versailles Peace ConferenceLate in 1918, Wilson announced that he would headthe American delegation at Versailles, near Paris,symbolizing his belief that he alone could overcomethe forces of greed and imperialism in Europe andbring peace to the world. Wilson and his entourageof college professors, technical experts, and advisersset sail for Paris on the George Washington on De-cember 4, 1918. Secretary of State Lansing, EdwardHouse, and a number of other advisers were there;conspicuously missing, however, was Henry CabotLodge, chairman of the Senate Foreign RelationsCommittee and the most powerful man in the Sen-ate, or any other Republican senator.

Lodge’s absence would prove a serious blunder,for the Republican-controlled Senate would have toapprove any treaty negotiated in Paris. It is difficultto explain Wilson’s lack of political insight, exceptthat he disliked Lodge intensely and hated politicalbargaining and compromise. Preferring to an-nounce great principles, he had supreme confi-dence in his ability to persuade and to get his wayby appealing to the people.

PresidentWilson’s

Fourteen Points




Wilson’s self-confidence grewduring a triumphant tourthrough Europe before the con-ference. The ordinary peoplegreeted him as a savior who hadended the tragic war. But theAmerican president had greaterdifficulty convincing the politi-cal leaders at the peace confer-ence of his genius. In Paris, hefaced the reality of Europeanpower politics and ambitionsand the personalities of DavidLloyd George of Great Britain,Vittorio Orlando of Italy, andGeorges Clemenceau of France.

Though Wilson was morenaive and idealistic than his Eu-ropean counterparts, he was aclever negotiator who won manyconcessions at the peace table,sometimes by threatening to gohome if his counterparts wouldnot compromise. The Europeanleaders were determined to pun-ish Germany and enlarge their

empires. Wilson, how-ever, pressed for a newkind of internationalrelations based on hisFourteen Points. He achieved limited ac-ceptance of the idea of self-determina-tion, his dream that each national group

could have its own country and that the peopleshould decide in what country they wanted to live.

From what had been the Austro-Hungarian em-pire, the peacemakers carved the new countries ofAustria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. In addition, theycreated Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Estonia,Latvia, and Lithuania, in part to help contain thethreat of bolshevism in eastern Europe. France was tooccupy the industrial Saar region of Germany for 15years, after which a plebiscite would then determinewhether the people wanted to become a part of Ger-many or France. Italy gained the port city of Trieste,but not the neighboring city of Fiume, with its largelyItalian-speaking population. Dividing up the map ofEurope was difficult at best, but perhaps the biggestmistake that Wilson and other major leaders madewas to give the small nations little power at the nego-tiating table and to exclude Soviet Russia entirely.

While Wilson won some points at the peace ne-gotiations, he also had to make major concessions.He was forced to give in to the Allied demand thatGermany pay reparations (later set at $56 billion),

lose much of its oil- and coal-rich terri-tory, and admit to its war guilt. He ac-cepted a mandate system, to be super-vised by the League of Nations, thatallowed France and Britain to take overportions of the Middle East and Japan tooccupy Germany’s colonies in the Pacificas well as China’s Shantung province. And he acqui-esced when the Allies turned Germany’s Africancolonies into “mandate possessions” because theydid not want to allow self-determination of blacks inareas they had colonized.

Although Wilson yielded to the Allies on the fateof Germany’s former colonies in Africa, he did notenvision a reordering of global race relations. Heopposed and finally defeated a measure introducedby Japan to include a clause in the league covenantto support racial equality in all parts of the world. W.E. B. Du Bois, who was in Paris as part of the Ameri-can delegation at the first Pan-African Congress,supported the Japanese resolution for racial equal-ity. He also spoke against colonialism and criticized“white civilization” for subjugating blacks in variousparts of the world. He hoped that the Pan-Africanmovement would become a global effort to unite

Celebrating the Armistice Gaspard Maillol, a French artist, captures some of thejoy and celebration when the Great War finally came to an end on November 11, 1918. Thatdate, Armistice Day, became an important holiday in the United States, a time to honor thosewho had served and those who had died in World War I. Armistice Day has now been re-placed by Veterans Day and has lost some of its special meaning. This painting depicts the har-mony and happiness among the various Allies. Did that spirit last? Is it important to have holi-days to honor soldiers and their sacrifices? (Gaspard Maillol, Armistice Day in Paris, France,November 11, 1918. The Art Archive/Musée des 2 Guerres Mondiales Paris/Dagli Orti.)

BlowingBubbles, 1919

FranceDemands WarReparations—

Cartoon






people of color around the world. But Wilson andthe other leaders at Versailles ignored Du Bois.

The Versailles treaty did not represent “peacewithout victory.” The German people felt betrayed.Japan, which had expected to play a larger role inthe peace conference, felt slighted. The Italians wereangry because they received less territory than theyexpected. These resentments would later have graveconsequences. Wilson also did not win approval for

freedom of the seas or the abolition of trade barri-ers, but he did gain endorsement for the League ofNations, the organization he hoped would preventall future wars. The league consisted of a council ofthe five great powers, elected delegates from thesmaller countries, and a World Court to settle dis-putes. But the key to collective security was con-tained in Article 10 of the league covenant, whichpledged all members “to respect and preserve

Dublin

London

Christiania

Amsterdam

Brussels

Paris

Berne

Rome

Athens

Angora

BeirutDamascus

Jerusalem

Mosul

Tiflis

Tirana

Sofia

BucharestBelgrade

BudapestVienna

WarsawBrest-Litovsk

Kiev

Berlin

Kaunas

Riga

TallinnStockholm

Helsinki

Leningrad

MoscowSamara

Stalingrad

Copenhagen

Prague

IRISHFREESTATE

GREATBRITAIN

SPAIN

FRANCE

ALGERIA(Fr.) TUNISIA

(Fr.)

LIBYA(It.)

EGYPT(Br.) ARABIA

TRANSJORDANKUWAIT

SYRIA

IRAQ

PERSIA

PALESTINE

LEBANON

TURKEY

NORWAY

SWEDEN

FINLAND

ESTONIA

LATVIA

LITHUANIA

GERMANY POLAND

DENMARK

NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM

AUSTRIASWITZ.

ITALY

YUGOSLAVIA

HUNGARY

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

ROMANIA

BULGARIASERBIA

ALBANIA

GREECE

UNION OF SOVIETSOCIALIST REPUBLICS

ARMENIA

E. PRUSSIA(Gr.)

LUX.

Alsace-Lorraine

Balearic Is.(Sp.)

Corsica(Fr.)

Sardinia(It.)

Sicily(It.)

Crete(Gr.)

Malta(Br.)

Dodecanese Is.(It.)

Cyprus(Br.)

ATLANTICOCEAN

NorthSea

Mediterranean Sea

Black Sea

CaspianSea

To Great Britain

To France

To Belgium

To Denmark

To Romania

To Greece

To Italy

Became independent

New states as of 1921

Border of GermanEmpire in 1914Border of Austrian-Hungarian Empire in 1914Border of RussianEmpire in 1914Border of OttomanEmpire in 1914New boundaries as aresult of postwar treaties

Boundaries as of 1914

Europe and the Near East After World War I

Led in part by President Wilson’s goal to promote the self-determination of people and in part by a desire to block the ex-pansion of Germany and the Soviet Union, the diplomats meeting at Versailles reconfigured the map of Europe and theNear East. Redrawing the map, however, was easier than solving the problems of nationalism and ethnic conflict.Reflecting on the Past How has the map of Europe and the Middle East changed since 1919?




against external aggression the territorial integrity”of all other members.

Wilson’s Failed DreamWhile the statesmen met at Versailles to sign thepeace treaty hammered out in Paris and to divide upEurope, a group of prominent and successfulwomen—lawyers, physicians, administrators, andwriters from all over the world, including many fromthe Central Powers—met in Zurich, Switzerland. JaneAddams led the American delegation that includedJeannette Rankin, a congresswoman from Montana(one of the few states where women could vote). Theyformed the Women’s International League for Peaceand Freedom. Electing Addams president of the neworganization, they denounced the harsh peace terms,which called for disarmament of only one side andexacted great economic penalties against the CentralPowers. Prophetically, they predicted that the peacetreaty would result in the spread of hatred and anar-chy and “create all over Europe discords and animosi-ties which can only lead to future wars.”

Hate and intolerance were legacies of the war.They were present at the Versailles peace confer-ence, where Clemenceau especially wanted to hu-miliate Germany for the destruction of French livesand property. Also hanging over the conference wasthe Bolshevik success in Russia. Lenin’s vision of acommunist world order, led by workers, conflictedsharply with Wilson’s dream of an anti-imperialist,free-trade, capitalist world. The threat of revolutionseemed so great that Wilson and the Allies sentAmerican and Japanese troops into Siberia in 1919to attempt to defeat the Bolsheviks and create amoderate republic. But by 1920, the troops hadfailed in their mission. They withdrew, but the So-viet Union never forgot the American interventionand the threat of bolshevism remained.

Most Americans supported the concept of theLeague of Nations in the summer of 1919. A few,such as former senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana,an ardent nationalist, denounced the league as thework of “amiable old male grannies who, over theirafternoon tea, are planning to denationalize Amer-ica and denationalize the nation’s manhood.” But 33governors endorsed the plan. Yet in the end, theSenate refused to accept American membership inthe league. The League of Nations treaty, one com-mentator has suggested, was killed by its friendsand not by its enemies.

First there was Lodge, who had earlier endorsedthe idea of some kind of international peacekeepingorganization but who objected to Article 10, whichobligated all members to come to the defense of the

others in case of attack. He claimed that itwould force Americans to fight the wars offoreigners. Lodge, like Wilson, was a lawyerand a scholar as well as a politician. But inbackground and personality, he was verydifferent from Wilson. A Republican sena-tor since 1893, he had great faith in thepower and prestige of the Senate. He dis-liked all Democrats, especially Wilson, whose ideal-ism and missionary zeal infuriated him.

Then there was Wilson, whose only hope of pas-sage of the treaty in the Senate was a compromise tobring moderate senators to his side. But Wilson re-fused to compromise or to modify Article 10 to allowCongress the opportunity to decide whether theUnited States would support the league in time ofcrisis. Angry at his opponents, who were exploitingthe disagreement for political advantage, hestumped the country to convince the Americanpeople of the rightness of his plan. The people didnot need to be convinced. They greeted Wilsonmuch the way the people of France had. Travelingby train, he gave 37 speeches in 29 cities in the spaceof three weeks. When he described the graves ofAmerican soldiers in France and announced thatAmerican boys would never again die in a foreignwar, the people responded with applause.

After one dramatic speech in Pueblo, Colorado,Wilson collapsed. His health had been failing forsome months, and the strain of the trip was toomuch. He was rushed back to Washington, where afew days later he suffered a massive stroke. For thenext year and a half, the president was incapable ofrunning the government. Protected by his secondwife and his closest advisers, Wilson was partiallyparalyzed, depressed, and unable to lead a fight forthe league. For a year and a half, the country limpedalong without a president.

After many votes and much maneuvering, theSenate finally killed the league treaty in March 1920.Had the United States joined the League of Nations,it probably would have made little difference in theinternational events of the 1920s and 1930s. Norwould American participation in the league haveprevented World War II. The United States did notresign from the world of diplomacy or trade, nor didthe United States become isolated from the rest ofthe world by refusing to join the league. But the re-jection of the league treaty was symbolic of the re-fusal of many Americans to admit that the worldand America’s place in it had changed dramaticallysince 1914. The United States was now one of theworld’s most powerful countries, but the Americanpeople had not yet integrated that reality into theirsense of themselves as a people and a nation.

Henry CabotLodge’s

Objections toArticle 10(1919)





For Edmund Arpin and many of his friends, who leftsmall towns and urban neighborhoods to join themilitary forces, the war was a great adventure. Forthe next decades at American Legion conventionsand Armistice Day parades, they continued to cele-brate their days of glory. For others who served, thewar’s results were more tragic. Many died. Somecame home injured, disabled by poison gas, or un-able to cope with the complex world that hadopened up to them.

In a larger sense, the war was both a triumph anda tragedy for the American people. The war createdopportunities for blacks who migrated to the North,for women who found more rewarding jobs, and forfarmers who suddenly discovered a demand fortheir products. But much of the promise and thehope proved temporary.

The war provided a certain climax to the progres-sive movement. The passage of the woman suffrageamendment and the use of federal power in a vari-ety of ways to promote justice and order pleased re-formers, who had been working toward these endsfor many decades. But the results were often disap-pointing. Once the war ended, much federal legisla-tion was dismantled or reduced in effectiveness and

woman suffrage had little initial impact on sociallegislation. Yet the power of the federal governmentdid increase during the war in a variety of ways.From taking control of the railroads to buildingships and public housing, to regulating the econ-omy, the government took an active role. Much ofthat role would diminish in the next decade, but astrong, active government during the war would be-come a model during the 1930s for those who triedto solve the problem of a major depression.

The Great War marked the coming of age of theUnited States as a world power. At the end of the war,the United States had become the world’s largestcreditor and an important factor in internationaltrade and diplomacy. But the country seemed reluc-tant to accept the new responsibility. The war and thesettlement were at least in part responsible for theglobal depression of the 1930s, and the problems cre-ated by the war led directly to another global war,thus causing the next generation to label the conflictof 1914–1918 World War I. The war stimulated patrio-tism and pride in the country, but it also increased in-tolerance, cut off immigration from Europe, and ledto disillusionment. With this mixed legacy from thewar, the country entered the new era of the 1920s.

Zimmermann telegramRussian RevolutionUnited States declares war on GermanyWar Revenue ActEspionage ActCommittee on Public Information establishedTrading with the Enemy ActSelective Service ActWar Industries Board formed

1918 Sedition ActFlu epidemic sweeps nationWilson’s Fourteen PointsAmerican troops intervene in Russian Revolution

1919 Paris peace conferenceEighteenth Amendment prohibits alcoholic

beveragesSenate rejects Treaty of Versailles

1920 Nineteenth Amendment grants suffrage forwomen

T I M E L I N E

1914 Archduke Ferdinand assassinated; World War Ibegins

United States declares neutralityAmerican troops invade Mexico and occupy

Veracruz

1915 Germany announces submarine blockade of GreatBritain

Lusitania sunkArabic pledgeMarines land in Haiti

1916 Army Reorganization BillExpedition into MexicoWilson re-electedWorkmen’s Compensation BillKeatings–Owen Child Labor BillFederal Farm Loan ActNational Women’s Party (NWP) founded

1917 Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfareUnited States breaks relations with Germany

Conclusion

The Divided Legacy of the Great War




Erich Maria Remarque highlights the horror of thewar in his classic All Quiet on the Western Front(1929), which is told from the German point of view;John Dos Passos describes the war as a bitter experi-ence in Three Soldiers (1921); and Ernest Hemingwayportrays its futility in A Farewell to Arms (1929). AllQuiet on the Western Front was made into a powerfulmovie (1930) from Remarque’s novel. Told from theGerman point of view, it became an antiwar classic inthe 1930s. Reds (1981) is a Hollywood film about

socialists, feminists, and communists. It tells thestory of John Reed, Louise Bryant, and their radicalfriends in Greenwich Village before the war and theirsupport of the Russian Revolution after 1917.Lawrence of Arabia (1962) is the epic story of howBritish writer, soldier, and eccentric T. E. Lawrenceenlisted the desert tribes of Africa to fight against theTurks during World War I. Paths of Glory (1957), a fic-tionalized version of the Battle of Verdun, gives agood sense of the horrors of trench warfare.

1. Why did the United States, so determined to stay outof the Great War in 1914, join the Allied cause enthu-siastically in 1917?

2. Why did the war lead to hate, prejudice, and theabridgment of civil liberties?

Questions for Review and Reflection

3. How did the war affect women and minorities inAmerica?

4. Why did Wilson’s idealistic peace plan fail?

5. What were the long-range consequences of WorldWar I? For the United States? For the world?

Recommended ReadingRecommended Readings are posted on the Web site for this textbook. Visit www.ablongman.com/nash

Fiction and Film

Discovering U.S. History Online

The World War I Document Archivewww.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/This archive contains sources about World War I in gen-eral, not just America’s involvement.

Lusitania Onlinewww.lusitania.netThis site presents a background of the luxury liner, infor-mation about its crew and its passengers, and accounts ofits sinking by a German submarine.

Letters of World War Iwww.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/10/98/world_war_1/197437.stmA special collection of illustrated articles on World War I,including “The War to End All Wars,” “War Revolution inRussia,” “The Christmas Truce,” and many others. Severalcollections of letters home are included as well.

Great War Serieswww.wtj.com/wars/greatwarThis online journal has a collection of World War Iarchives and several World War I articles, including “TheWestern Front” and “The Eastern Front.”

The Balkan Causes of World War Iwww.firstworldwar.com/features/balkan_causes.htmThis illustrated essay on the role of the Balkan events inprecipitating World War I also includes links to a year-by-year timeline of the war.

World War I Trencheswww.worldwar1.comPresented and maintained by a WWI enthusiast, this siteprovides information on armory, war maps, photos, docu-ments, timelines, and other data concerning the prosecu-tion of the world’s first global war.




Election of 1916www.presidency.ucsb.edu/site/elections/1916.htmAlong with the official counts, this site has several sec-tions: “Mandates,” “president’s party in House elections,”“voter turnout,” “financing,” and “popularity.”

Influenza, 1918www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/amex/influenzaCompanion to the PBS film of the same title, this site re-veals the impact of the great flu epidemic of 1918.

Art of the First World Warwww.art-ww1.com/gb/index2.htmlA cooperative effort of major history museums, this sitepresents more than 100 paintings depicting scenes fromWorld War I.

Women’s Suffragewww.rochester.edu/SBA/history.htmlThis site includes a chronology, important texts relating towoman suffrage, and biographical information on SusanB. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

The Versailles Treatyhttp://history.acusd.edu/gen/text/versaillestreaty/vercontents.htmlThe complete treaty is presented on the site along withlinks to relevant maps, photos, and political cartoons.



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