Why Study the Great War? Well, Why Study History? — A Roads Classic

This is the best argument yet that I've read for studying history including the "horrors and monstrosities" of the Great War. It's from the acceptance speech by the recipient of the first Kluge Prize of the Library of Congress,  (1927–2009).

We must defend and support traditional research methods, elaborated over centuries, to establish the factual course of history and separate it from fantasies, however nourishing those fantasies might be. . . And we must preserve our traditional belief that the history of mankind, the history of things that really happened, woven of innumerable unique accidents, is the history of each of us, human subjects; whereas the belief in historical laws is a figment of the imagination. Historical knowledge is crucial to each of us: to schoolchildren and students, to young and old. We must absorb history as our own, with all its horrors and monstrosities, as well as its beauty and splendor, its cruelties and persecutions as well as all the magnificent works of the human mind and hand; we must do this if we are to know our proper place in the universe, to know who we are and how we should act. . . It is important to keep on repeating [these points] again and again, because. . . if we forget them, and they fall into oblivion, we will be condemning our culture, that is to say ourselves, to ultimate and irrevocable ruin.

Professor Leszek Kolakowski

Some Background from a contemporary news account:

Leszek Kolakowski, an anti-communist Polish philosopher at Oxford University in England, will receive the first $1 million John W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities. Kolakowski, a former professor at the University of Chicago and adviser to Poland's Solidarity movement, was awarded the prize for making clear "the intellectual bankruptcy of the Marxist ideology and the necessity of freedom, tolerance, and diversity," said James Billington, the librarian of Congress, in announcing the award.

The prize was established by Kluge, founding chairman of the library's private sector advisory body, the James Madison Council, to reward achievement in anthropology, history, philosophy, and religion for which no Nobel prizes are given.

Source: Chicago Tribune, 5 November 2003

Sources of Frontline Intelligence: Aerial Observation from Balloons

 

Camera-Equipped German Observation Balloon

By Terrence J. Finnegan

With stationary warfare came an immediate requirement for continual observation from the high ground. In this case, the high ground was a man-made captive balloon. Those areas not visually accessible by balloons were covered by airplane. The balloon had an advantage over the airplane with instant telephone connection to the artillery unit or Post of Command (PC). Real-time communication greatly aided rapid targeting response. Balloon observation was dependent on the altitude of the balloon, the range, the atmospheric conditions and the terrain. Balloons were the prized resource for artillery, providing artillery-spotting precision fire against targets out of the limits of ground observation.

Balloons were assigned to support army down to divisional information level requirements. A German balloon detachment was tactically under the command of every division on the fighting front. French and British aligned their balloons units to the army echelon requiring support. American balloons assigned at the army echelon were attached to a "Balloon Group," which reallocated observation to the lower echelons. Balloons supporting divisions helped regulate divisional artillery fire as well as provide surveillance and liaison for the infantry divisions. Balloon reporting covered those targets within the visual range of the platform, to include enemy infantry and artillery activity, enemy aeronautical activity, movements on road and rail and sightings of explosions. 

The Germans created topographical sections [Kartenstelle] to complete observations of the artillery survey sections and evaluate the topographical implications of reconnaissance information from airplanes and balloons.

Source: Over the Top, February 2009

Breaking News: Local Historians Discover WWI Tunnel with 270 German Corpses

Editor's Note:  This site is on the Chemin des Dames just north of the ruins of Craonne.  The story of its discovery is fascinating.  See the link to the BBC article below the photo of the wartime tunnel entrance.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56370510

Map Series #18: Gallipoli Landings

 

I led two tours to Gallipoli, and I wish I had this one. It has more information in a concise and well-designed scheme than anything I had discovered up to that point.  I wouldn't try to read it, as it is displayed at 580x580 pixels. Just click on it, and you will get the 2400x2400 format.  Also see our 2013 article "Visualizing Gallipoli" to get a feel for the scale of the battlefield.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica Website

The Centralia, WA, Armistice Day Tragedy

 

The Best Team Over There: The Untold Story of Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Great War

by Jim Leeke

University of Nebraska Press, 2021

Peter L. Belmonte, Reviewer

Before the War: Pete Alexander in His Prime

During World War I many professional baseball players served in the United States military. These men ranged from obscure players who had only a “cup of coffee” in the big leagues to well-known stars such as Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, and, the subject of this book, Grover Cleveland Alexander. Author Jim Leeke has several books about baseball and World War I to his credit. This book isn’t a biography of Alexander; rather, it is an account of his time in the U.S. Army during the war, preceded by background information and followed by an overview of his postwar life. Throughout, Leeke treats his subject with fairness, sympathy, and respect.

Due to the proactive efforts of Major Malcolm P. Andruss, one of the battalion commanders, the regiment eventually had a world-class baseball team. Andruss set out to assemble a regimental baseball team composed of top-notch players; he wanted to “organize an outfit the equal of which the Army had never known” (p. 20). In the end, the regimental team had five current major leaguers: Alexander (Cubs), Otis Lambeth (Indians), Clarence Mitchell (Dodgers), Win Noyes (Athletics), and Chuck Wood (Dodgers). In addition, there were men who later joined the major leagues and men who had been college stars.

A Break in Training at Camp Funston: Alexander
Visited by His Wife, Amy, (R) and Her Friend

Although the regiment played comparatively few baseball games after Alexander joined it, there’s no question that it must indeed have been one of the best teams “over there.” Alexander had minimal time to train as a soldier and artilleryman, let alone play baseball, before he and his regiment departed for France on 26 June.

After spending two months in training in France, Alexander and his regiment moved to the St. Mihiel sector, arriving on 19 September, just three days after the offensive came to an end. The regiment remained in the same general area for the rest of the war, firing their 155mm howitzers in support of their own division and others, including the 28th and 37th Divisions. During more than 50 days in combat, the regiment was shelled and attacked by air. Alexander did well and was promoted to sergeant in October. After the Armistice, he marched into Germany with the 89th Division as part of the Army of Occupation. He returned to the United States and was discharged in April 1919; he resumed pitching for the Chicago Cubs the next month.

After the war, Alexander played well in some years but struggled on and off the field in others. He was just one of thousands (no one really knows how many) of men who returned from the war physically sound but emotionally injured. An occasional drinker before the war, Alexander increased his intake in the years after his return. Although he won a World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1926, he was never the same man. One can feel the sadness in his statement years after the war: “The Great War put an end to my daydreaming of various records” (p. 188).

He was hospitalized several times due to various illnesses and injuries. On one occasion in 1941, a sportswriter poignantly wrote:

Today [Alexander] figured that the shell shock was more valuable than the fame which attended his best performances in baseball. Fame got him nothing. Shell shock got him a bed in a hospital ward and food [p. 197].

Alcoholism also cost him his marriage to Amy Marie Arrant (aka Aimee Alexander); the two were married and divorced twice, and Aimee always cared for the struggling ballplayer. Alexander died alone in his hometown of St. Paul, Nebraska, on 4 November 1950. In later years, Aimee gave him a fine compliment: “His hat never got too small and he was always especially nice to me. He was a very fine gentleman” (p. 203).

After the War: Sgt.  Alexander Looking a Little Fatigued

Twenty-nine photographs and illustrations and two maps enhance the text. Two appendices, one of which lists athletes in the regiment, plus endnotes and a fine bibliography, complete the book. This is a wonderful addition to Leeke’s work, and highly recommended to anyone interested in baseball and the Great War.

Peter L. Belmonte

Hearts of the World Was Filmed on the Western Front

 

Hearts of the World (also known as Love's Struggle) is a preposterous, but memorable, 1918 American silent World War I propaganda film written, produced, and directed by D. W. Griffith. In an effort to change the American public's neutral stance regarding the war, the British government contacted Griffith due to his stature and reputation for dramatic filmmaking.  Hearts of the World begins with a brief prologue that includes scenes of the director collecting footage on the Western Front and standing outside No. 10 Downing Street shaking the hand of British prime minister David Lloyd George.

Hearts of the World stars Lillian and Dorothy Gish and Robert Harron. The film was produced by D.W. Griffith Productions, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and the War Office Committee was distributed by Paramount Pictures under the Artcraft Pictures Corporation banner.

D.W. Griffiths, Center in Brodie Helmet and Bow Tie
in a British Trench on the Western Front

The British Government gave D.W. Griffith unprecedented access to film in locations that were otherwise forbidden to journalists. Exterior shots were largely filmed throughout England from May to October 1917.  Griffith made two trips to France where he filmed footage of the trenches. In one instance Griffith and his film crew were forced to take cover when their location came under German artillery fire; he escaped unscathed. The film company returned to Los Angeles where British and Canadian troops recreated battle scenes and other interior scenes on a stage at Fine Arts Studio in Los Angeles from November to December 1917.  The scenes shot in Europe and Los Angeles were edited together with footage from stock newsreels.  

Hearts of the World can be viewed on your television if you have Amazon Prime and for free on your computer via YouTube.

Sources:  Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes

Franz Ferdinand's Last Banquet: 27 June 1914

As a part of their route to Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Countess Sophie Chotek arrived at Hotel Bosna on 25 June 1914, Countess Sophie in the morning, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the evening, respectively. The hotel was located in Banja Ilidža (Bad Ilidža), a tree-lined spa town at the source of the Bosna river. It was a fancy spa hotel with electric lighting, sulfur baths, Turkish baths, Roman ruins and mosaics, a carousel, three lawn tennis courts, a shooting gallery, bingo, billiards, a game room, rental horses with guides, fireworks, and carriage rides down a magnificent three-kilometer, tree-lined grand pathway to the pools of Vrelo Bosne.  The royal couple was ensconced in a suite of rooms especially furnished with luxurious Ottoman-style lamps, carpets, drapes, needlework, handicrafts, and furniture supplied by the prominent Sarajevo merchant Elias B. Kabiljo.

The archduke and countess hosted a gala dinner for the great and the good of Sarajevo at the hotel, on 27 June 1914. On the morning of 28 June, the couple breakfasted before retreating to the private chapel that had been specially created for them in their living quarters in the Hotel Bosna. After a prayer, a few minutes before 9:30 a.m., they set off for the Ilidža railway station, with Sarajevo their final destination.

The pre-assassination highlight of the royal couple's visit was, of course, the fabulous banquet they hosted the night before their departure. Scottish politician Struan Stevenson has published a fascinating work on momentous meals that helped shape the world, such as Bonnie Prince Charlie's feast for the highland chieftains on the eve of Culloden and the Beijing banquet for Richard Nixon, complete with historical background and the actual menus and recipes. It is titled The Course of History: Ten Meals That Changed the World and is a delight to read.

Hotel Bosna at the Turn of the Century

Stevenson's argument for including Franz and Sophie's sumptuous feast on this list of earthshaking meals runs something like this. Franz Ferdinand harbored deep concerns about visiting what he considered a hotbed of anti-Austrian feeling and was considering canceling his trip into Sarajevo the next day.  He did like a fine meal, however, and his local military staff and the local Imperial loyalists pulled out all the stops for the banquet.  All the attendees also made it clear they were really looking forward to his trip into the city the following day. So—against his better judgment and possibly partly to show his appreciation for the nine-course feast—he was off  on Sunday morning to Sarajevo for his visit.  We know what happened after that.

What is especially interesting in Stevenson's chapter on Sarajevo, though, is the menu for the evening. What a spread! When you read it, you can sympathize with the archduke, somewhat.  How could you possibly say no to the people who have put on an event like this for you?

Menu 

Potage Regence 

(White Soup with Chicken and Veal Broth)

Souffles Delicieux (Cheese Souffle)

Blanquettes de Truites a la Gelee 

(Jellied Trout in White Sauce)

Piece de Boeuf et Agneau 

(Roast Beef and Lamb)

Sour Cherry Lambic Sorbet  

(Fortified with Lambic Beer)

Poularde de Styrie, Salade, Compote 

(Spiced chicken salad with apple sauce)

Creme aux Anas en Surprise (Pineapple Cream)

Fromage (Assorted Cheeses)

Glaces Variées 

(Assorted Turkish Ice Creams and Sweets)

The courses were accompanied by seven wines, including Chateau Leoville, Pommery Greno sec Champagne, and a 1900 Chateau Margaux claret.

Finally, a little tourist information for you. Hotel Bosna, owned by a private hotel company today, is preserved but not operating, as restoration is under way. The the original ornamental wooden parts of the façade perished after the Second World War.

Sources of Frontline Intelligence: Flash Spotting

By Terrence J. Finnegan

Developed during the Great War, flash spotting [Licht-Messtellen] applied optical measurements to determine the location of enemy artillery where the guns could not be observed directly. The flashes could be observed at night as reflections from the sky. The purpose was then to call up friendly guns to destroy the enemy guns position. Theoretically this could be achieved by several observers spotting the flash from a particular gun and then plotting the intersection of the bearings.

This was extremely difficult with multiple guns firing since several observers could not be sure they were all looking at the same particular gun. The essential equipment for flash-spotting control at headquarters was the flash and buzzer board and the plotting board that synchronized the observations. 

A telephone switchboard provided connectivity to the posts. The plotting board employed a 1/10,000 map that traced each response from the posts. All calculations on identified artillery batteries were forwarded to artillery for counter-battery operations. The combination of sound ranging and flash spotting proved to be a vital part of the intelligence network in place to support targeting. Aerial reconnaissance complemented optical and acoustical sensor collection by confirming the locations through aerial photography.

Several sources cite the work of Canadian artillery officer and peace-time engineering professor, Alan McNaughton, for groundbreaking work on sound ranging and flash spotting in the Canadian Corps preparation for the 1917 assault on Vimy Ridge. Allied artillery effectively neutralized nearly all German artillery positions prior to the launch of the main assault on 9 April.

Supplemental information from Wikipedia and the Vimy Ridge Foundation

Photos of the British in Jerusalem, 1917–1920

I found these photos, a small 12-image selection from a set of 292, on the Library of Congress website.  All were new to me. They are arrayed in approximate chronological order. The entire set can be viewed HERE. The images  are displayed at 580 px width, but can viewed at 1000 px by clicking on them.

Jerusalem and the Sergeants Who Accepted the Flag of Surrender, 1917

Allenby Arriving in Jerusalem

Gen. Allenby's Proclamation of Martial Law in Jerusalem

Bodies of Turkish Soldiers Who Attempted to Retake Jerusalem
in December 1917

Muslim Indian Guard at the Mosque of Omar [Dome of the Rock]

Camel Caravan Approaching Jerusalem

Turkish Trenches on Shores of the Dead Sea

British Officials Visiting the Dome of the Rock

Gen. Allenby at the American Colony Reception,  4 July 1918

German Officers Heading Column of 600 Prisoners Captured
Near Jericho,  15 July 1918

Anti-Zionist Demonstration at Damascus Gate, 8 March 1920

Indian Soldier Searching a Greek Priest for Arms, 1920

Chicagoans in the Great War

Chicagoans of the 33rd Division Returning from France

From: The Chicago Tribune, 11 March 2018

By Ron Grossman  

A century ago, Lt. Arthur Keating, who hailed from Van Buren Street on Chicago’s West Side, led an infantry platoon in a raid on enemy-held trenches in northern France. 

“Hey, Arthur, don’t you know me?” one of the captured Germans said in the English of a Chicago street-corner boy. The two of them had been schoolmates at Austin High School.  When World War I began in 1914, Keating’s prisoner returned to his native Germany. Keating joined the U.S. Army. Military historians observe that all wars, whatever their scale, are essentially composed of myriad clashes between small units—like the one Keating described in a letter to his wife, written from a field hospital where he was recovering from his wounds, in November 1918.

Keating’s wife passed his tale on to the Tribune, where it appeared among the daily dispatches chronicling the Great War, as it originally was known. After years of bloodshed and destruction, it seemed that the end of the war must be near. Yet it was far from certain which side would win.

Some Tribune stories of 1918 described the maneuvers of major formations, like the 8th Infantry Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, an all-black regiment from Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Others, like the picaresque adventures of another Chicagoan, Bronislav Platkowski, provided a human-scale view of a war with casualty lists beyond comprehension.

Just before World War I, Platkowski traveled from Chicago to a Polish-speaking district of the German empire. He’d gone to see his aging and ill father, but to the local authorities, he was cannon fodder. Impressed into the German army, he served for two years on the Russian front, the site of massive artillery duels. “I was buried by shells three times,” Platkowski told the Tribune. “Several times I was picked up unconscious on the field and taken to hospitals.” Surrendering to the Russians, he escaped a prisoner of war camp and slowly and surreptitiously made his way back to Chicago, he said, where his sweetheart, Rose Skeaja, was waiting for him. The thought of her kept him determined to survive the ordeal. “He expects to recuperate from the long warfare, marry Miss Rose, and settle down in a cottage in Chicago,” the Tribune reported on June 13, 1918. Platkowski’s soldiering days were over by the time the United States entered the war with Germany. 

Ernest Hemingway Was Chicago's Most Famous
Participant in the War

Initially, the U.S. struggled to stay out of the conflict, which pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey against England, France, Italy and Russia. But provoked by Germany’s submarines sinking ships with Americans onboard, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany on 2 April 1917.  “There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us,” Wilson told the senators and representatives. Four days later, Congress declared war. Indeed, it took some time just to form and train an expeditionary force, America not having much of a standing army.

Edgar Lee Masters, a Chicago lawyer and a noted poet, traveled to Camp Lee, VA, to report on the process for the Tribune. There he met a nurse who had experience in other wars and had volunteered to go to France with the troops. She didn’t think she would survive. Then, Masters asked her, why go?

You see. . . I have no relative, no one in the world, no home. I have never been married, and I feel towards these soldiers like a mother. They are my boys, all of them, and the war draws them so much closer to me.

Others felt a similar impulse. A Tribune report of Chicago-area casualties included: “Ernest Miller Hemingway (wounded and cited).” A recent graduate of Oak Park High School, he served as a Red Cross volunteer on the Italian front. Wounded by an Austrian shell while handing out chocolates to Italian soldiers, he recuperated in a hospital — an experience he drew upon for his novel A Farewell to Arms.

Chicago Doughboys of the Segregated 370th Infantry
That Served Under French Command

In the spring of 1918, Germany launched a last-ditch effort to win the war by breaking through the French lines. Caught in the middle of the battle was a group of volunteers from Smith College, a women’s college in Northampton, MA. One was Chicagoan Ruth Joslyn. As the Tribune explained in a story with a dateline indicating it was written “Somewhere in France,” Joslyn and her schoolmates “were sent by the alums to engage in the rehabilitation of the Somme district,” devastated by years of being fought over. The young women remained faithful to their mandate, even as they had to retreat from one town to the next, as the German army advanced. They set up a temporary children’s hospital in a Montdidier hotel, borrowed a big stove, and installed it in the court yard, cooking for and serving every hungry refugee and soldier who passed.

While casualties were high on both sides during the First Battle of the Somme, the toll proved fatal for the Germans. They were out of replacements, while French losses were offset by American troops, now arriving by the hundreds of thousands. Near Montdidier, where the Smith students set up a soup kitchen, the Tribune noted that 1,850 Germans were captured, including 52 officers, on 23 July.

By then, the Tribune was not just reporting the war but taking a bow for its participation. “This paper is unusual among newspapers in the fact that it has two editors, and may also be unique in that both are entering the war,” the Tribune noted. One of them, Maj. Robert R. McCormick, was fluent in French. So he initially served as translator for Gen. John Pershing, who commanded the American forces. Then he led an artillery unit during fighting near Cantigny, after which he would later name his Wheaton estate. At the Tribune, he was afterward referred to as “The Colonel,” his highest military rank.

Tribune Editor & Artilleryman
Capt. Joseph M. Patterson

In August 1918 in France, McCormick’s cousin and co-editor, Capt. Joseph Medill Patterson, had just dismounted his horse and was inspecting the artillery battery he commanded when a German airplane dropped a bomb. “An immense crater marked the spot where the animal had stood,” the Tribune reported. [The captain survived, however.]

Read the full article

HERE

The Rogers of Lowell: Supporting America's Veterans Through Three Wars

 

Disabled Sailor Carl Bronner Operating a Braille Machine

By Keith Muchowski

The USS J. Fred Talbott and the men aboard her were stationed in Trieste Italy in the months after the Armistice. One of the Talbott’s crewmen was Carl Bronner of Cincinnati. On 9 August 1919 he and over 40 other seamen attended a Y.M.C.A. function on land. Bronner and a friend were exploring the Italian seashore when the former saw something shiny on the ground and thinking he found a souvenir picked it up. It was an improvised explosive device. When the handmade grenade detonated in Bronner’s hands its blast killed his friend instantly; Bronner lost both of his hands and was rendered permanently blind. In the coming months the seaman had numerous surgeries at stateside naval hospitals; the day after his discharge in early June 1920 he began rehabilitation and training at the Red Cross Institute for the Blind in Baltimore. Known as Evergreen, the center offered medical services and vocational training to visually impaired American servicemen of the Great War. In that bucolic setting the physically and psychically scarred Carl Bronner learned braille and how to type on a special writing machine equipped with pedals and other attachments.

New Representative Edith Rogers Still in
Mourning After Her Husband's Death

 

Bronner became something of an inspiration to wounded Doughboys and others. In December 1921 he received a letter from President Warren G. Harding, who expressed his admiration for the young man still only in his early twenties. On 3 June 1926 Bronner and 1,000 other wounded veterans attended a White House garden fête hosted by President Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Grace Coolidge. Present too was Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, serving in her dual capacity as a Red Cross Gray Lady. That same day Bronner attended a session at the U.S. Capitol Building, where from the House floor Representative Rogers spoke and told the story of the young man listening from the gallery. Rogers’s presence at both events was not accidental. The congresswoman from Massachusetts had been active in Red Cross and veterans affairs for nearly a decade. Edith Nourse Rogers was the widow and political successor of Congressman John Jacob Rogers. Largely forgotten today, the two represented Massachusetts’s Fifth District for nearly half a century from 1913 to 1960 and in that span created some of the most consequential and lasting legislation in American history. 

Representative John Jacob Rogers (Right) Showing Support
for Naval Aviation

John J. Rogers was a Harvard-educated attorney who married and began law in Lowell in 1907. John and bride Edith resided in that mill town, and soon he entered local politics, eventually joining the U.S. House as a freshman congressmen in March 1913. When the European war came the following summer he followed events closely. On 23 April 1917, two and a half weeks after Congress declared war on Germany, Rogers introduced a bill that would have restored American citizenship to the 40,000-50,000 young men who had surrendered their U.S. nationality to fight in the uniforms of the Allied and Associated Powers. Representative and Mrs. Rogers traveled to Europe during the Great War, where he toured as part of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on a fact-finding mission and she worked for the Y.M.C.A. and Red Cross. Visiting field units on the Continent, Ms. Rogers was appalled by the squalor and deprivation she saw. Stateside, she worked as a nurse at Walter Reed Hospital. Meanwhile, while still a member of Congress, her spouse enlisted in the 29th Training Battery, 10th Training Battalion, Field Artillery on 12 September 1918. John J. Rogers, like many Doughboys in training, apparently did not make it overseas before the Armistice came. Private Rogers was honorably discharged on 29 November 1918.

Congressman Rogers had the foresight to see the changes coming to the postwar world. In November 1919 he was emphasizing the coming significance of cable and wireless communication. He was also quick to see the shift in power dynamics from one side of the Atlantic to the other as the United States emerged stronger than ever on the world stage. Thus, in 1919 he advocated for a streamlining and restructuring of the cumbersome and unwieldy American diplomatic corps, split at the time between the Diplomatic and Consular Services. It took half a decade of wrangling but the Foreign Service Act—the Rogers Act—finally passed when President Coolidge signed the bill into law on 24 May 1924. It is for this reason that some call John Jacob Rogers “the Father of the Foreign Service.” Less than a year later he died after complications from appendicitis surgery at just 43.

His widow ran for his seat in the runoff election of 30 June 1925 and took her place in the House on 7 December. There she would remain until her death in September 1960. Like her husband, Edith Rogers was a Republican, which put her in good stead in 1920s Washington. Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and eventually Hoover entrusted the passionate Rogers with touring military hospitals across the United States and reporting the shortcomings she witnessed. As a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee in March 1928 she submitted a bill providing $15,000,000 for additional hospitals and other services to the Veterans’ Bureau. In 1932, perhaps surprisingly, she sided with President Hoover and voted against early payment of funds to the Bonus Army veterans who were then encamped in Washington, D.C. Throughout that decade she watched world events with increasing concern with a special focus on the plight of refugees.

By the time the United States entered the Second World War, Edith Nourse Rogers was a seasoned legislator. Congresswoman Rogers sponsored the creation of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps putting women in military uniform. Many were skeptical. One congressman declared the WAAC bill “most ridiculous” while another scoffed that it was “the silliest piece of legislation I have ever seen come into this House.” The WAACs—or WACs as they were known by the war’s end—made considerable contributions to the Allied war effort. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt—who had graduated with her late husband in the Harvard Class of 1904—Edith Nourse Rogers understood the mistakes that Washington had made after the First World War. Carl Bronner had been one of the fortunate Great War veterans in terms of the medical care and vocational training he received upon his discharge. Knowing there would be many more Bronners in similar need after the current conflict, she drafted and helped pass the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944—the G.I. Bill.

Representative Edith Rogers in Her Nurses Uniform
Addressing a Group of WAACs in 1943 

 

Edith Nourse Rogers served in Congress until her death on 10 September 1960 in the waning months of the Eisenhower administration. She and John rest today in Lowell Cemetery.

Keith Muchowski, a librarian and professor at New York City College of Technology (CUNY) in Brooklyn, blogs at http://thestrawfoot.com. He is working on a history of Civil War Era New York City.

Crusader Nation: The United States in Peace and the Great War, 1898–1920

by David Traxel

Vintage Books, New York, 2007

Jim Gallen, Reviewer

American Progressivism on the March, 1912

When the United States entered the Great War it was in the midst of over a decade-long progressive crusade that changed America and that would have a great impact on its involvement in the war and the peace that followed. Crusader Nation is that story.

Author David Traxel begins by introducing the gigantic characters who would play their parts on America’s stage during those years: Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Supporting actors are numerous and varied, including William Jennings Bryan, Herbert Hoover, Wild Bill Donovan, Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, Bernard Baruch, and others.

The narrative continues with the sequence of events that guided the isolationist country to war. The sinking of the Lusitania aroused ire. Disruptions in Mexico that resulted in Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico, brought war home. The Zimmerman Telegram encouraging Mexico to make war against the United States and offering support during the war and the recovery of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona; the German campaign of terrorism that included a bombing of the U.S. Capitol; the stabbing of H. P. Morgan, Jr.; an explosion at Black Tom Island; and the German policy of unrestricted submarine warfare all drove President Woodrow Wilson (“Who kept you out of war”) to ask for a declaration that it existed. 

1916 Presidential Election Cartoon

The anomaly of a nation heading to war with pacifists serving as Secretaries of State (William Jennings Bryan), War (Newton Baker), and Navy (Josephus Daniels) is consistent with its unpreparedness for war, dissent over mobilization, and failure to appreciate the implications of belligerency. A belief, even after the declaration of war, that financial loans may be sufficient contribution was so strong that testimony of an aide to the Secretary of War that “(W)e may have to have an army in France” unsettled the mind of Sen. Thomas Martin, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who exclaimed “Good Lord, You’re not going to send soldiers over there, are you?”

Crusader Nation focuses almost exclusively on the domestic American scene during the war, the “Over here,” rather than the “Over there.” It is a complex tale. Progressivism had been the dominant political movement through the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but it was a motley amalgamation of imperialists (TR, et al) and pacifists (Bryan, et al), moderate and socialist labor leaders, segregationists and advocates of civil rights for blacks, and Greenwich Village bohemians and suffragettes, miners and conservationists. The coalition would fracture over issues of war and peace. Bryan had earlier resigned, and when war was declared, the vote in favor was 82 to 6, with 8 abstentions in the Senate and 373 to 50 in the House. Labor unions would strike, while leftists, such as Soviets admirers Lincoln Steffens and John Reed, would encourage resistance to the draft, while denying their actions to avoid conviction for espionage or sedition.

The Great War experience is shown to have had an influence on persons and the nation. Liberty Bond rallies enhanced the public personas of actors such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin. Woodrow Wilson, who had a long history of being frail, sacrificed his health in the cause of the League of Nations. Later, as president, Franklin D. Roosevelt would justify the internment of Japanese Americans with the observation “We don’t want any more Black Toms.” [referring to the German sabotage of munitions at Black Tom Island, NY] The progressive energy would be spent as an exhausted nation turned to Warren Harding for a return to "normalcy."

Much, but not all, of the information contained in this work I already knew from other reading. The value of Crusader Nation is that it pulls the disparate elements together in a unified saga. More than others, author Traxel shows how war and peace in Europe, industry and America’s cities, were all intertwined strands in the American pageant rather than unrelated events that happened to overlap. I recommend this for readers seeking an understanding of the Great War in America, rather than America in the Great War.

Jim Gallen

Floyd Gibbons Interviews General James Harbord on the "Turning of the Tide"

This  ten-minute 1931 documentary has a hammy, melodramatic narration, but the film work and details about the fighting are quite good.  Also, the viewer is introduced to two memorable characters from the war, General James Harbord and correspondent Floyd Gibbons.

Source:  National World War I Museum

Thanks to Robin Clayton for Bringing This Video to Our Attention

Should America Enter the War? In 2014 New Republic Re-Debated Their 1917 Support

1917: Herbert Croly and Walter Lippmann

The first edition of the New Republic appeared on 7 November, 1914. Willard Straight supplied the money and Herbert Croly became its first editor. The magazine was run by a small editorial board of progressive intellectuals that included Croly's friend, Walter Lippmann. All outside contributions were submitted to the editorial board and had to be accepted by all members before it could appear in the magazine. Early contributors included Walter Weyl, Randolph Bourne, Charles Beard, Amy Lowell, Henry Brailsford and H. G. Wells.

Founded after the First World War had begun, one of the first tasks of the editors was to take a position on America's response to the hostilities. Editor Herbert Croly argued for American neutrality. The New Republic published articles by British critics of the war such as Norman Angell and Harold Laski. However, after the sinking of the Lusitania, Croly urged American entry into war. After Congress declared war on Germany, the magazine  gave Woodrow Wilson its full support. This upset those that still believed in neutrality and Max Eastman, editor of The Masses, complained that the New Republic had become a mouthpiece of President Wilson.

Interestingly, in 2014 the present-day editors of New Republic decided to re-debate the issue of America's entry into the war.  The two professors charged with making the Pro & Con case were highly informed on the topic and did–IMHO–a terrific job of making their cases.

2014: John Cooper and Michael Kazin

Yes!:

John Cooper, author of Woodrow Wilson: A Biography,  begins his YES! article:

Anti-interventionists used to deride World War I as “Mr. Wilson’s War.” They called it right. The United States entered the war in April 1917 because Woodrow Wilson decided to take the country in. Germany’s submarine attacks, renewed two months earlier, had brought shrill demands for immediate intervention from such war hawks as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, but every indicator of public and congressional opinion found most people clinging to what Wilson once called “the double wish of our people” to stand up to Germany and yet not get drawn into war. . . 

Read his entire article here:

https://newrepublic.com/article/118436/world-war-one-should-us-have-enterered-part-2

No!

Michael Kazin, author of War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918, begins his NO! article:

Every war is a tragedy, a failure to resolve sharp differences of ideology and interest or to stop evil men before they can impose their will on others. The First World War was one of the most tragic wars in history: Although none of its major protagonists expected or wanted it to occur, it initiated thirty years of bloodletting on an unprecedented scale and planted the seeds for civil conflicts that continue to rage today. Witness the fate of the Sykes-Picot Treaty, the secret pact drawn up in 1916 by diplomats from Britain and France that mashed together Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds in a new nation called Iraq. Historians will debate forever whether the Great War could have been prevented. But for the United States, it was indisputably a war of choice.

Read his entire article here:

https://newrepublic.com/article/118435/world-war-i-debate-should-us-have-entered

Sources:  New Republic Archives & Spartacus Educational

Sources of Frontline Intelligence: Sound Ranging

 

Recording from a Sound Ranging Network

Sound ranging [Schall-Messtellen] used acoustical principles in conjunction with forward observers to locate enemy artillery. Integral to the sound ranging operation was a forward observer who could recognize the artillery piece being fired by the sound created; he would then call headquarters with specifics regarding the weapon and location. The backup microphone sensors would then be analyzed for sound-wave characteristics and triangulated. Targeting information was then phoned on to the counter-battery artillery.

The acoustical analysis was possible because, with sound traveling at the known velocity of 1,100 feet per second, artillery reports created an arc that could be measured at several stations placed along the front. As the sonic wave from the artillery round moved through the air, the first microphone station made a recording, followed by the second, and so on. The microphones converted the sound into an electronic signal that was synthesized via a computational device (called a computer) that allowed the sound source distance and direction to be calculated and plotted on a map of the region covered. 

German Field Microphone

Sound ranging used a six-microphone configuration along a 9,000-yard sector to compile the information. For this the French used three-foot-high milk cans with platinum grid-wire microphones soldered into the top. The cans were placed on the arc of a circle, tied by a wire to the center. The center was superimposed on maps of the region. Additional functions for the sound ranger included correcting friendly fire with over-target, under-target, left or right, based on sound wave analysis.