| American
Troops in the War |
Wilson had stepped up efforts for military preparedness as early as
1915. This enabled the U.S. Navy to move quickly to aid the
British
fleet in destroying the threat of German submarines to Allied shipping
by late 1917. The Army required more time, however, before it was
ready
for action. Congress passed the Selective Service Act in
May of 1917,
and eventually 2.8 million men were drafted—about 72 percent of the
entire army. No women were drafted, but 13,000 joined the military,
serving in clerical capacities in the Navy and Marines. Although the
Army refused to enlist women, nearly 18,000 served in the Army Corps of
Nurses, but without rank, pay or benefits. Another 5,000 civilian
women
served in various capacities in France, sometimes near the front
lines.
Many of these women were wealthy and well-educated who initially saw
the war as a grand adventure, but they would soon be exposed to its
horrors. Approximately 400,000 African Americans also served in the war, and 200,000 were sent overseas. Emmett J. Scott, an African American and former secretary to Booker T. Washington, functioned as the special assistant to the secretary of war in charge of black soldiers. Nonetheless, black soldiers were generally treated as second-class participants. Most black troops were commanded by white officers, served in segregated Jim Crow units in the Army that received the worst assignments, were relegated to food service in the Navy, and totally excluded from the Marines. American troops joined the Allied forces as a separate "Associate" force (the American Expeditionary Force, or AEF) under the command of General John J. Pershing in just the nick of time. By spring of 1918, a massive German offensive smashed to within fifty miles of Paris. When Russia pulled out of the war after the Bolshevik Revolution in November of 1917, tens of thousands of German soldiers were freed from the eastern front to join the assault on the western front. With fresh American troops, the Allies launched a counter-offensive in July of 1918. A large contingent of newly arrived American soldiers and thousands of U.S. mules (used to pull heavy artillery through the sluggish mud of the European front) pushed back German forces in a stunning one-day offensive at the battle of St. Mihiel. By early November, after the victorious Allied offensive in the Meuse-Argonne region, the Germans faced the ultimate reality of defeat and called for an armistice. At that point, more than 2 million American soldiers were in France, giving the Allies an advantage of almost 600,000 men. Of the total 9 million casualties in the war, the U.S. lost 115,000 men—including 48,000 killed in action. The rest had died from diseases, especially a global influenza epidemic that killed 500,000 Americans at home and abroad. |
| Federal
Wartime Authority |
Wilson's progressive agenda was seriously tested after the nation's
entry into World War I. Known by historians as the first
"total
war"
because it demanded the mobilization of the entire society and economy,
the war gave Wilson tremendous presidential authority over the domestic
arena. For all practical purposes, Wilson abandoned his New
Freedom
stance in favor of Roosevelt's New Nationalism approach. Wilson
understood that the war required even more industrial concentration
than presently existed. Indeed, the extent to which the federal
government exercised authority over the U.S. economy has never been
matched, not even in World War II or the American Civil War. For example, Wilson established the War Industries Board in 1917 to oversee production of war materials. Under the direction of Bernard Baruch, a Wall Street speculator, industrial production increased by 20 percent. Wilson also instituted daylight savings time to conserve fuel, consolidated the country's railroads, took over the telegraph and telephone system, and launched a massive shipbuilding program. In a nod to unions, Wilson endorsed collective bargaining and supported the eight-hour day in return for a no-strike pledge from labor. Union membership boomed from 2.7 million to more than 4 million by 1919. Wilson also appointed Herbert Hoover, a prominent mining engineer, as national Food Administrator. (Hoover later became the thirty-first president of the United States). Hoover promoted conservation of food with Meatless Mondays, Wheatless Wednesdays, and "war gardens." To pay for the war, Wilson levied a new income tax, which accounted for nearly half of the $33 billion spent on the war. The rest of the cost was met through Liberty Loan drives, which rallied the population to invest in America by buying Liberty Bonds. In a personal touch, Wilson donated the wool from the sheep that grazed on the White House lawn to the Red Cross for soldier's uniforms. (The sheep had replaced gardeners drafted into the military.) |
| Civil
Liberties during the War Years |
Large numbers of Americans bitterly opposed U.S. entry into World War
I. Even such notables as the Speaker of the House and the
president of
Columbia University were skeptical about intervening beforehand, but
most Americans supported Wilson's decision. Some German and Irish
Americans, however, led anti-war rallies and joined with the American
Socialist Party in denouncing the war. Socialists greatly
increased
their share of the vote in several urban places in 1917—winning 22
percent of the vote in New York City and 34 percent in Chicago. To mobilize public opinion in support of the war, Wilson created the Committee on Public Information headed by George Creel, a muckraking journalist. Creel launched a campaign to sell the war to the American people by sponsoring 150,000 lecturers, writers, artists, actors, and scholars to champion the cause. His "Four-Minute-Men" (meaning that they were prepared to make a four-minute speech anytime and anywhere a crowd gathered) made 755,190 speeches in theaters, lecture halls, churches, and social clubs all over the nation. In the resulting patriotic fervor, opponents to the war were painted as slackers and even traitors. "Americanization" drives sought to pressure immigrants to abandon their native cultures. Some states prohibited the use of foreign languages in public. New York State required voters to demonstrate literacy in English. Libraries publicly burned German books. Some communities banned playing the music of Bach and Beethoven, and schools dropped German courses from their curriculum. Sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage," and German measles was renamed "liberty measles." Some Americans with German names were beaten in the streets and even lynched. To avoid such violence, others anglicized their names. Wilson sponsored the Espionage and Sedition Acts prohibiting interference with the draft and outlawing criticism of the government, the armed forces, or the war effort. Violators were imprisoned or fined. Some 1,500 people were arrested for violating these laws, including Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party. The Post Office was empowered to censor the mail, and over 400 periodicals, including the Saturday Evening Post and the New York Times were banned for a time. The Supreme Court upheld the Espionage and Sedition Acts as constitutional. Leaders and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) known as "Wobblies," were especially singled out for attack. In one incident, Justice Department agents raided IWW offices nationwide, arresting union leaders who were sentenced to jail terms of up to twenty-five years. The IWW never recovered from this incident. |
| Progressives
and the War |
Wilson's call for American entry into World War I in April 1917 created
a crisis of conscience for most progressives. Besides hating the
barbarism of war itself, many Progressives feared that American
participation in the war would divert attention from economic and
social problems at home. Other Progressives opposed the war
because they believed that bankers and industrialists had caused
American involvement in order to protect their loans to the Allied
nations, particularly Great Britain. As late as the eve of
American entry into the war, Wilson himself strongly expressed the
conviction that war and progressivism were irreconcilable. "Every
reform that we have won," he declared, "will be lost if we go into this
war." But once he was forced into the war, Wilson proved very adept at fashioning a progressive rationale for American entry on the side of the Allies. He said that the war would be a war to make the world safe for democracy, to protect the rights of small nations, and to end militarism and navalism. Many Socialists and Progressives rapidly converted to the President's point of view, especially when they realized that the war provided them with the opportunity to push through reforms at home that they would never be able to get in peacetime. They also believed that the war might offer them the opportunity to spread the progressive gospel beyond the boundaries of the United States, and achieve a liberal international postwar order. Even John Dewey, the social philosopher, harkened to the Progressives' war banner, saying that the war offered "social possibilities" for the "conscious and extensive use of science for communal purposes." Not every reformer rallied to the flag. Randolph Bourne , a pacifist intellectual, vigorously denied that the war could promote Progressive goals of any sort. He reminded the reformers of their earlier opposition to the war, and asked them: "If the war is too strong for you to prevent, how is it going to be weak enough for you to control and mould to your liberal purposes?" His question was at once incisive and unanswerable. Many Progressives later sadly noted that Bourne had been right. But in 1917, most welcomed the possibility that the war might make the nation more Progressive and free the world from the menace of militarism. War did provide an immediate opportunity for the professional reformers to employ their bureaucratic expertise and scientific techniques to the problem of mobilizing a nation for war. In order to achieve their wartime goals, many of the reformers employed the same methods of organization and persuasion which they had used in peacetime Progressive programs. For example, they tried to achieve as much as possible through voluntary methods, but were not averse to using government coercion to reach their goals. However it occurred, the war effort was organized along bureaucratic lines. This meant close governmental supervision of the nation's productive resources. It also depended on carefully designed appeals to public opinion, which had always been a significant force in progressive reform. And the basic message underlying all of this organization and appeal was the message that the war was a great moral undertaking. One example of war mobilization came in the task of raising and training an American army. The Selective Service Act was adopted in the spring of 1917, and made all young men eligible for the draft. It also established a government bureaucracy for the registration and induction of draftees. Amidst the coercion of the draft, however, it is significant to note that an aura of voluntarism still remained, expressed by the word "service" and exemplified by local civilian administration. Mobilization for the draft shows one part of the Progressive legacy--bureaucratic reform and professional organization. It also involved another part of the Progressive legacy--testing social control. Once enlisted, soldiers were subjected to a battery of social controls: they were inspected for disease, tested for intelligence, kept from alcohol and prostitutes, and ministered to by the Red Cross, the YMCA, and army chaplains. In this way, the Progressive organizers rendered the army as morally and scientifically "fit to fight." |
| Wilson and
the Fourteen Points |
Victorious in war, Wilson hoped to achieve a new world order at the
peace tables by revolutionizing the conduct of international affairs.
Historians disagree as to Wilson's motivation for entering the
war—whether to make the world safe for democracy or as part of a cabal
of British and American bankers and businessmen interested in securing
the huge American loans made to the Allies. Nonetheless, few doubt his
idealism for the new order that was envisioned in his plan for peace,
which he called the Fourteen
Points. In a speech delivered to Congress
in January of 1914 (partly written by the liberal columnist Walter
Lippmann), Wilson presented his vision for the future. It called
for a
"new diplomacy" consisting of "open covenants openly arrived at."
No
more secret treaties like the ones that had pulled the world into war
in 1914 would be tolerated. Next, Wilson wanted to dismantle the
imperial order by opening up non-white colonial holdings to eventual
self-rule and all European sections of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian
empires to immediate independence. He also proposed a general
disarmament after the war, with the Germans and Austrians giving up
their armed forces first. There would be no hostile occupation of
the
defeated Central Powers. Other points included freedom of the
seas at
all times and free trade all over the world. But Wilson's most important point rested upon a practical method of preventing future wars by means of a new international organization, a League of Nations, open to membership of all independent states. This new world body would be in charge of disarmament and the dismantling of colonial possessions. Most importantly, the League would hold power over all disputes among the nations of the world. Wilson believed that this League would transform international relations and usher in a new era of world peace. When Wilson sailed for France in December of 1918 to head the American peace delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. It was the first time that an American president in office had gone to Europe. He brought along some 200 experts on European history, culture, and ethnology—but no Republicans as advisors. Everywhere he went in France, Italy, and Germany, welcomed him as the savior of the world. He knew, however, that few European leaders were ready to accept his proposals. He hoped to go around them by influencing public opinion. Consequently, Wilson's target European audience heard him preach the message that his new world order offered an alternative to international communism (which he feared would sweep the world should his efforts fail) and the old imperial order that had created World War I. In the end, faced with the determined insistence of Allied leaders to punish Germany with heavy reparations, territorial occupation, and total disarmament, Wilson was forced to compromise on every one of his points. Instead of a "peace without victory," the "Big Four" leaders David Lloyd Georges (Great Britain), Georges Clemenceau (France), Vittorio Orlando (Italy), and Wilson, held secret negotiations and produced the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty imposed harsh victory terms on Germany and left little of Wilson's original Fourteen Points plan intact. European and colonial territories were stripped from the losers and ceded over to the winners. Wilson returned home to America with only a modified League of Nations in hand for Senate consent. The opposition at home equaled the opposition abroad. Senate Republicans, which controlled the Senate, were split into two groups: the "reservationists" and the "irreconcilables." The first group was led by Henry Cabot Lodge, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who wanted amendments to the treaty. The second group was smaller and was opposed to any involvement of the United States in world affairs. Most Senate Democrats supported Wilson and the treaty. Embittered over Republican opposition, Wilson launched into an arduous speaking tour to rally the nation to his cause—9,981 miles with speeches in twenty-nine cities. The effort depleted his already exhausted body and he collapsed in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 25. Soon after, he suffered a serious stroke that left him half-paralyzed and totally secluded for the remainder of his presidency. In one of the most controversial episodes in presidential history, Wilson—completely out of touch with a public opinion that had become increasingly isolationist—refused to consider any compromises to the League, issuing his orders via his wife, who was the only person, other than his doctors, who spoke with him during the League battle in Congress. As a result, after the Senate Republicans amended the treaty (to ensure that the president could not use U.S. forces on League business without securing congressional assent), Wilson told his supporters to vote against the amended treaty, and they joined with the Republican "irreconcilables" to reject the League. America never joined the international organization that Wilson had envisioned to be the hallmark of his new world order. This failure of the League was a devastating conclusion to Wilson's almost superhuman efforts for world peace based upon international cooperation and the arbitration of international disputes. |
| The End of Progressivism |
Wartime repression and social conflict gave way to
even greater outbreaks of fear and violence during 1919, the year of
the Great Red Scare. The Bolshevik
Revolution in Russia in 1917 had initiated what seemed to
be the spread of communism
across Europe, and set off a wave of hysteria in the United
States.
Suddenly, Socialists, union organizers, and genuine Communists were
lumped
together in the public mind. Much of this panic was related to
the
disillusionment of many Americans, who felt that the war had not
brought
about the kind of results they had been looking for. After all,
the
crusade which had been launched to make the world safe for democracy
had,
in some way, also unleashed the Russian Reds. Moreover, the one
great
goal which most progressives could support, Wilson's League of Nations,
had
quickly fallen victim to a resumption of prewar politics and personal
rivalries.
Capping off the disillusion and disappointment of 1919 was a series of
strikes
and labor violence (Red
Scare
of 1919
), including fierce clashes between blacks and whites, all underscored
by
a soaring inflation which once again seemed to threaten the very fabric
of
American society. Progressivism had been both the perpetrator and victim of this transition in the public mood. With the entry of the U.S. into the war, progressives had seized the day with the same kind of moral fervor and confident optimism which had infused their earlier reform movements. They found that they could just as easily channel this moral fervor into military actions against a foreign foe. And yet, once those battles had been won on the field, the progressives could not achieve their idealistic goals at the peace table. And so, in the same fashion that moralistic fervor had been channeled from domestic reform to military action, so it was again channeled back into the domestic arena. People turned their passion into a search for blame, seeking out those who were responsible for the failure of the Great Crusade to achieve its larger purposes. Any other nation except the United States of the Progressive Era would have been satisfied with the outcome of the war, which, after all, had ended in total a military victory. But years of reform had inculcated a widespread tendency to use overblown rhetoric, and worse still, the habit of believing that rhetoric. Progressive Americans wanted to hear the war's purposes proclaimed in the loftiest terms, and when those goals inevitably failed to be achieved, enormous disappointment ensued. The optimism that had inspired the kind of reforms which had flourished before the war now seemed severely shaken. Support for those reforms had depended in large part on optimism and hope for the future, and now that that optimism was gone, support for reform also dried up. Progressivism declined after 1917 not just because of the war, but also because of the revival of profound social divisions and intellectual weariness with the subject of reform. One indication of Progressivism's collapse was the disintegration of TR's Bull Moose wing of the Republican party by 1916, leaving conservatives in control of the GOP. The Democratic Progressive coalition had also collapsed by 1920 because of divisions over the League of Nations, and also because of old sectional and class rivalries among its members. In retrospect, it is clear that Progressives had always been too diverse to remain united and cohesive as a national political organization. After 1918, that fact became obvious. Elements of Progressivism still endured, despite the collapse of political coalitions and the disillusionment of peacetime, but remained strongest on the state and local level. There was also sporadic support for isolated reform measures, but by and large, the optimism and evangelical fervor which had marked earlier reform was strikingly absent. Americans would continue from time to time to improve their politics and their society, but not with the same hopeful faith which they had possessed between 1905 and 1917. While much of Progressivism endured, the Progressive Era was over. |
| Other Sources |
Woodrow
Wilson: The Visionary President
(http://216.132.160.230/KoTrain/Courses/WW/WW_In_Brief.htm). |
© Kahne Parsons, 2007-08