UNRAVELING FREEDOM

UNRAVELING FREEDOM

The Battle for Democracy on the Home Front During World War I

ANN BAUSUM

For Kedron

Text copyright © 2010 Ann Bausum

All rights reserved.

Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission from the National Geographic Society is prohibited.

PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

John M. Fahey, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer

Gilbert M. Grosvenor, Chairman of the Board

Tim T. Kelly, President, Global Media Group

John Q. Griffin, Executive Vice President; President, Publishing Nina D. Hoffman, Executive Vice President; President, Book Publishing Group

Melina Gerosa Bellows, Executive Vice President, Children’s Publishing

PREPARED BY THE BOOK DIVISION

Nancy Laties Feresten, Vice President, Editor in Chief, Children’s Books

Jonathan Halling, Design Director, Children’s Publishing

Jennifer Emmett, Executive Editor, Reference and Solo, Children’s Books

Carl Mehler, Director of Maps

R. Gary Colbert, Production Director

Jennifer A. Thornton, Managing Editor

STAFF FOR THIS BOOK

Jennifer Emmett, Editor

Jim Hiscott, Art Director

Lori Epstein, Illustrations Editor

Marty Ittner, Designer

Kate Olesin, Editorial Assistant

Grace Hill, Associate Managing Editor

Lewis R. Bassford, Production Manager

Susan Borke, Legal and Business Affairs

MANUFACTURING AND QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Christopher A. Liedel, Chief Financial Officer

Phillip L. Schlosser, Vice President

Chris Brown, Technical Director

Nicole Elliott, Manager

Rachel Faulise, Manager

A NOTE ON THE DESIGN

The design inspiration for Unraveling Freedom is drawn from the propaganda posters of World War I. You’ll see examples of these bold, graphic pieces on Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. The title text for the book is set in Trade Gothic and Marmalade, and the body text is set in Minion Pro. The palette for the book echoes the colors of the American flag—red, white, and blue. To add new life to old photographs and to draw the eye to the central subject matter of an image, some of the pictures in the book (see, for example, Chapter 3) are silhouetted with a special digital technique that pulls the subject of the photograph forward in the frame, while the background is tinted with a color. The colored diagonal design elements, and the frequent angling of the images contribute to a sense of disruption, of things being off balance. This feeling echoes the turbulent sentiment of the times, brought on by the first global war and the erosion of liberties on the home front.

Echoes of history. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States (closing endpapers, headline news) prompted the nation’s entry into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; almost a century earlier, the sinking of the Lusitania helped propel the United States toward combat during World War I. The New York Times coverage of the 1915 maritime disaster (opening endpapers) reproduced a German warning of possible attacks (lower right, headlined “NOTICE!”).

The graphic foreword by Ted Rall, President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, evokes the era of political cartooning that flourished during World War I.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bausum, Ann.

Unraveling freedom: the battle for democracy on the home front during World War I / by Ann Bausum.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-1-4263-0728-7

1. United States—Politics and government—1913-1921—Juvenile literature. 2. World War, 1914-1918—Social aspects—United States—Juvenile literature. 3. German Americans—Social conditions—20th century—Juvenile literature. I. Title.

E780.B38 2010

940.3’73—dc22

2010010631

Version: 2017-07-05

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

CHAPTER 1 SUNK

CHAPTER 2 A CALL TO ARMS

CHAPTER 3 OFF TO KILL THE HUN

CHAPTER 4 HOLD YOUR TONGUE

CHAPTER 5 BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE

Afterword

Guide to Wartime Presidents

Timeline

Notes and Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Resource Guide

Citations

Illustrations Credits

FOREWORD
BY TED RALL

Ted Rall is President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Visit him online at: http://www.rall.com/

Wilson at war. “It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs,” observed Woodrow Wilson before his inauguration as President of the United States. The outbreak of war in Europe a year later assured just that.

“We shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts [until we] make the world itself at last free.”

WOODROW WILSON, CONCLUDING REMARKS FROM HIS WAR MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, APRIL 2, 1917

INTRODUCTION

IN THE SPRING OF 1917, as the United States prepared to declare war on Germany and enter the fight that would become known as World War I, perhaps as many as a quarter of all Americans had either been born in Germany or had descended from Germans. My grandfather was one of them. But Frederic William Bausum and his family could be considered some of the lucky German-Americans on the eve of war. They spoke English and had no divided loyalty to an old-world country. They had grown up in the United States, married across ethnic lines, homesteaded on the Western plains, and embraced the customs and beliefs of the country. They had, in short, become Americanized.

Thousands of other German-Americans were less fortunate. Almost overnight, the language they spoke by birth, the relatives they retained ties to from their past, the books they read, the schools they attended, even the food and drink they found most familiar and enjoyable, all became associated with the enemy: Germany.

Immigrants and descendants from other places bore ties to competing nations, too, from Great Britain to France to Italy to Russia. U.S. residents who shared backgrounds and beliefs with these countries found themselves taking sides in the conflict at home even as President Woodrow Wilson tried to steer the United States away from joining the conflict abroad. Finally, on April 2, 1917, the President addressed Congress and made a dramatic appeal for the nation to enter the fight. In words that continue to be quoted for their eloquence and passion, Wilson asserted that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”

Yet, in one of the greatest ironies of 20th century U.S. history, the President so committed to securing democracy and freedom abroad failed to prevent the unraveling of freedom in his own country. Even as millions of Americans put on military uniforms and as the nation expended billions of dollars to fund the fight, freedom came under siege in the United States.

Dogs in the fight. Even though the United States remained neutral after fighting broke out in Europe in 1914, Americans followed the conflict between the continent’s leading nations with concern. Dogs became symbols for competing countries, with dachshunds representing Germany. The American bull terrier personified a confident and fearless stand by the United States.

New laws tested the rights of individuals to question and criticize the government. Leaders who spoke from the edges of the political spectrum found themselves ridiculed, harassed, even jailed. A government-sponsored propaganda effort built public support for the war by fanning anti-immigrant feelings within the nation. At a time when Americans fought abroad in the name of freedom and democracy, Americans at home burned German-language books, put German-language newspapers out of business, condemned German foods and drinks, and spied on fellow citizens, especially those with ancestral ties to Germany.

Some of these wrongs took decades to right. Others forever altered the nature of American life—from the nation’s commitment to teaching foreign languages to its tolerance of differences in people from foreign lands. What happens when a segment of the population can be charged with disloyalty simply because of its heritage? Why may democracy go off track when national security seems at risk? How can a nation of immigrants, whose strength comes in part from its diversity, survive the internal conflicts that follow when wars develop with old homelands?

One needs only to look back at history to find questions—and answers—that echo from the past into events of modern times.

1

“The ship was sinking with unbelievable rapidity. There was a terrible panic on her deck. It was the most terrible sight I have ever seen…. The scene was too horrible to watch.”

CAPTAIN WALTHER SCHWIEGER, OF U-BOAT 20, AFTER FIRING A TORPEDO AT THE LUSITANIA

SUNK

It TOOK ONLY 18 MINUTES for the great ship to sink. Even the Titanic had lingered on the ocean surface for more than two hours before sliding to the bottom of the Atlantic in 1912. But, on a sunny spring afternoon just three years later, the Lusitania began to list toward her starboard side almost immediately after being struck by a single submarine-fired torpedo. Minutes later she was gone.

The British ship had been within sight of the Irish coast when U-boat Captain Walther Schwieger commanded his German crew to launch a torpedo at the ocean liner as it steamed past, perhaps 2,300 feet away. It was 2:10 in the afternoon on May 7, 1915. Germany, England, and other European powers had been at war for nine months. Most of the Lusitania’s 1,257 passengers, having eaten their last lunch of the journey, were anticipating their arrival in England the next morning when the 20-foot-long torpedo struck their ship broadside, punching a large hole in the giant vessel’s midsection.

Going down! As the Lusitania sank, the surrounding water became filled with “waving hands and arms belonging to struggling men and frantic women and children,” according to one survivor. The sea “was black with people," observed another.

CAPTAIN SCHWIEGER, HIS CREW OF 34 MEN, and their adopted litter of dachshund puppies had been at sea a week when the Lusitania appeared in the sights of the submarine’s periscope. By then the crew had already attacked several smaller ships, sinking three and expending four of the sub’s seven torpedoes. Two of the remaining three weapons were to be held in emergency reserve for the return trip to Germany, leaving one torpedo available for an attack.

The Lusitania proved to be an easy target. Despite assurances that she would be greeted in home waters by an armed escort, no such protection materialized as she approached her destination of Liverpool, England, either because none had been requested or because none could be spared by the British Navy. At full speed the Lusitania could easily have outrun any German submarine, but wartime economies had closed one of her four boiler rooms, and the ship’s captain had further reduced her speed for navigation purposes.

Captain William Turner had commanded the Lusitania for only a few months of the ship’s eight-year history, but he had sailed for more than three decades with the vessel’s Cunard Line owner. The 30,000-ton ocean liner had made her maiden voyage in 1907, five years ahead of the Titanic’s single journey. Like the Titanic, the Lusitania promised passengers a swift passage across the Atlantic under luxurious conditions. A crew of more than 700 men and women tended to the needs of passengers during the five to seven days required for a transatlantic crossing. Many crew members on this voyage were new to the service and relatively inexperienced in shipboard safety; they occupied posts held by seamen called up recently for military service.

Battles on the seas. The Lusitania (anchored at New York City in 1907) was one of the world’s fastest ships and symbolized Great Britain’s sea savvy.

When World War I broke out, Great Britain had the largest fleet of military submarines (75 boats). Germany had only 28 U-boats, short for Unterseeboot or underwater boat, but her subs were of more modern design. (U-boat 14).

Early in the war Walther Schwieger, captain of U-boat 20, attacked and sank the Lusitania.

Setting off. Some passengers decided not to sail on the Lusitania after Germany printed warnings in American newspapers of attacks on ships.

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt had cancelled travel on the Titanic’s maiden voyage three years earlier but sailed as planned on the Lusitania.

Passengers who traveled in first class enjoyed gourmet meals in plush, gilded surroundings. Some suites even had their own wood-burning fireplaces. Facilities in second class were almost as luxurious. Even third-class passengers received courteous service and feasted on a bountiful assortment of specially prepared food. Those who embarked on their trip from the harbor in New York City on May 1, 1915, included the usual complement of celebrities and millionaires. Most notable, perhaps, was Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, descendant of the railroad magnate; he was one of about 200 other Americans bound for England on the Lusitania. Most of the rest of the passengers were British or Canadian. Everyone knew that this transatlantic crossing carried added risks because of the new European war.

Submarines (U-boat 7), earned the nickname the “assassins of the seas.”

In August 1914, soon after Allied forces from such nations as England and France pushed back against Germany’s invasion of Belgium, the Germans began attacking enemy ships with submarines. Submarine warfare was a new idea then, and there was not yet a code of conduct for using this new technology. Which ships could be attacked? Warships, clearly yes. But what about merchant ships carrying cargo and supplies to enemy countries? Or boats that carried passengers and cargo? Should vessels be forewarned of attack so that they could be evacuated? Or could subs attack without warning? Answers remained unclear, and unease developed in February 1915 after Germany announced that it would begin using submarines to attack other ships, whatever their nationality, if they approached British ports. Since then the Germans had sunk 66 commercial ships; 23 had been attacked just since the Lusitania’s departure from New York.

Thus, the first glimpses by passengers of the Irish coast on the morning of May 7 signified both the nearness of their destination and their arrival in dangerous waters. Many people were on one of the Lusitania’s open-air decks as Captain Schwieger prepared to fire at the passing target. A number of survivors could recall their horror upon glimpsing the silhouette of U-boat 20’s periscope above the calm, sunny ocean. They and others stood mesmerized as they realized that the trail of bubbles advancing toward them marked the unstoppable track of a torpedo set to reach its target in less than a minute’s time. Most on board remained oblivious to the approaching danger until they heard and felt the impact of the torpedo.

Captain Schwieger had aimed his torpedo with dead-on accuracy. Had he fired five seconds sooner or 20 seconds later, the weapon would have skimmed past the liner entirely. As it was, the missile hit the ship broadside, inflicting the maximum possible damage and triggering a sequence of catastrophic injuries to the liner. Some substance—probably coal dust—exploded almost immediately after the torpedo struck, widening the hole in the boat’s side. Thousands of gallons of water began rushing into the Lusitania, causing her to list toward the wound on her starboard side. Additional seawater poured in through open portholes and hatches as they fell below the water line, further dragging the ship off balance. Immediately the captain and crew found themselves without enough power or control to stop the vessel’s forward momentum or steer it toward shore.

Within minutes, the ship’s electrical power system failed, plunging passengers and crew still below decks into darkness. Passengers traveling to the upper decks inside electrically powered elevators found themselves permanently trapped. Crew members working in the deepest bowels of the boat—in areas only reachable by electric elevators—became cut off from all reasonable means of escape.

Even those standing on exterior decks faced uncertain exits from the ship. The Titanic tragedy assured that vessels now had ample lifeboats and life jackets, but most life jackets were stowed in passenger cabins, causing people to rush back and forth down crowded and (within minutes) darkened passageways to find them. As the ship listed to one side, baby carriages, some still occupied by infants, careened across the boat’s decks. Furniture, potted plants, and dishes spilled or broke, leaving decks, cabins, and passageways littered with debris. Halls and stairs became obstacle courses as the increasing slant of the ship upended their usual orientations.

THE LACK OF A PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM complicated efforts to establish an orderly evacuation of the liner. So did the increasing list of the Lusitania toward its wounded starboard side. Lifeboats hanging on this side of the ship swung away from the deck, almost out of reach. As incoming seawater caused the liner’s bow to sink, the bows of the hanging lifeboats dipped, too, leaving them cockeyed and harder to lower. Many of the seamen trained at launching lifeboats remained trapped below decks. Those who attempted it repeatedly failed to coordinate the complicated effort, dumping the lifeboats’ human cargo—principally women and children—into the ocean.

Meanwhile the listing of the ship caused lifeboats on the Lusitania’s port side to bump against the vessel’s exterior hull as they were lowered, spilling evacuees into the sea. Often then the empty boats crashed down on victims below. In the end, many passengers and crew members simply jumped into the water. Others were swept overboard. Countless more remained trapped on board when the ship sank out of sight at 2:28 p.m.

“It was freely stated and generally believed that a special effort was to be made to sink [the Lusitania] so as to inspire the world with terror.”

MARGARET MACKWORTH, PASSENGER ON THE LUSITANIA’S FINAL VOYAGE

No photographs were made of the sinking ship, so artists dramatized the scene. The New York Herald called the sinking “premeditated slaughter,” but Germans defended the attack, charging that the ship secretly carried war supplies, a claim that the Allies denied.

SOS! “Come at once,” signaled the Lusitania’s wireless operator after the ship was attacked by a German U-boat (a torpedo)

A life jacket did not necessarily assure safety in the water. Many people, in panic or ignorance, had put the devices on upside down or backward. Thus the jacket promptly flipped its wearer head first or face down in the water. Floating wreckage offered sanctuary for some but created life-and-death battles among others. People clung to anything that floated, including dead bodies. Calls for help, screams, and the cries of children filled the air around an ever-widening circle of debris floating in blood-red waters. The chill of the spring Atlantic—probably about 52 degrees—shortened the chances of survival for children and the elderly. Even the hardiest faced death by hypothermia within hours of immersion, if not sooner.

Scenes of wrenching separation and miraculous reunions punctuated the chaotic minutes of the ship’s sinking and the hours of waiting and rescue that followed. Gerda Nielson and John Welsh, who had fallen in love during their journey, were pulled from the water by occupants of a passing lifeboat. Norah Bretherton, a mother traveling alone in second class with two young children, was with neither one of them when the torpedo struck. She found, then lost track of, her 15-month-old daughter before escaping with her son in a lifeboat.

Captain Schwieger’s U-boat was long gone by the time the first rescue ship arrived at the field of floating debris about three and a half hours after the Lusitania had sunk. It took until 8 p.m. for an initial boatload of survivors to travel some 12 miles from the wreckage to the Irish seaport of Queenstown, the impromptu home base for rescue efforts. David Thomas, a former member of the British Parliament, was standing on the docks at 11 p.m., scanning the faces of survivors, when his grown daughter Margaret Mackworth struggled ashore. The pair had become separated following the attack. Captain Turner, who had jumped from his ship as she sank and been pulled from the wreckage hours later, arrived on the same boat. More vessels followed.

On dry land. Survivors struggled to comprehend the trauma they had experienced during the sinking of the Lusitania.

BIZARRE STORIES OF SURVIVAL abounded, including the case of Margaret Gwyer who, upon entering the water, found herself sucked into one of the ship’s four smokestack funnels as the Lusitania sank, only to be forcibly expelled from it moments later by a blast of steam from an exploding boiler. She survived, albeit minus most of her clothes and coated in soot and grease. Ian McDermott, shoveling coal in boiler room number two at the time of the attack, found himself washed to safety by seawater that swept through the ship and exited through the room’s ventilation shaft. Parry Jones, a member of a singing group returning from a North American tour, survived an eight-hour stay in the water.

Some reflexively refused to give up their life jackets. Sorting the living from the dead could be challenging. “Good gracious, are you alive?” asked a startled rescuer after a bellboy from the ship sat up amongst a pile of corpses.

George Hook and his adolescent son and daughter had jumped from the Lusitania’s decks, but had become separated. Father and daughter feared the boy dead even as the son assumed he’d lost them; they were reunited in a Queenstown hospital. The Morton brothers, Lusitania deckhands, presumed each other lost until they coincidentally inspected opposite ends of the same dead body in a makeshift mortuary. Avis Dolphin, a 12-year-old Canadian on her way to school in England, credited her survival to a friendly Scottish professor who had personally tied on her life jacket, an act that became crucial after her lifeboat capsized and dumped her into the water. When last seen by Professor Ian Holbourn, Avis was being sucked underwater in the Lusitania’s wake. She surfaced soon after, and the friends met again in Queenstown.

Remembering the dead. Nearly 150 bodies recovered from the Lusitania could not be identified. They were buried in one of three mass graves on the outskirts of Queenstown. Coffins were in short supply locally; more had to be shipped in from other cities.The bodies of Americans were returned to the United States unless relatives requested that they be buried in Ireland.

Artists drew countless cartoons about the attack on the Lusitania. Many emphasized the innocence of the youngest victims and the ship’s poor defenses, no better than toy cannons.

The mounting collection of bodies—stacked at first like cordwood and then laid out in makeshift morgues—made the day’s losses very real and very horrifying. Corpses with missing limbs and disfigured faces revealed the brutality of the final moments of life and the natural ravages of even a few hours spent in the ocean. Seagulls pecked out eyes. Scavenging fish ate away limbs. Torsos turned up without heads. Intact bodies became bloated with seawater. As gruesome as the task was of identifying the dead—and some bodies could not be identified at all—the presence of a corpse brought closure to surviving family members. The absence of a body left friends and loved ones on edge, hoping for a miraculous recovery of someone at an isolated point on the Irish coast or among those unidentified survivors housed at area hotels and hospitals.

Among the missing were Alfred Vanderbilt, observed by many in the act of helping others during the Lusitania’s final chaotic minutes above the surface. Charlotte Pye attested that Vanderbilt had taken off his own life jacket and placed it on her before helping her enter a lifeboat with her infant daughter. The millionaire’s body was never recovered.

Neither were the bodies of most of the dead. Even though corpses washed ashore in the weeks after the sinking, some 900 people remained missing and were never seen again. Still-fresh memories from the accidental sinking of the Titanic three years earlier may have made reports of the Lusitania’s destruction that much more grim and vivid. About two-thirds of the 1,962 individuals who sailed on the Lusitania’s final voyage perished, including 785 passengers and 413 crew members. Just 35 out of 129 children survived; nearly all infants perished. A total of 128 Americans lost their lives.

News of the catastrophe spread rapidly by way of telegraphed messages and phone calls. Soon banner headlines on both continents began to convey the horrors experienced by survivors, the extensive loss of life, and the almost immediate destruction of what had been considered, like the Titanic, to be an unsinkable ship. It did not take long for the tragedy to be transformed into a battle cry that would help inflame and expand the European conflict into the First World War. That cry echoed from shore to shore. It was passed along through newspapers, plastered onto military recruitment posters, and evoked with passion from the halls of the British Parliament to the chambers of the United States Capitol. And it rang from the voices of Allied soldiers as they charged across European battlefields. The voices rose and swelled into an enduring chorus: “Remember the Lusitania!”

War work. Few experiences in Woodrow Wilson’s life prepared him to be a wartime Commander in Chief while President of the United States. He had rarely traveled, never served in the armed forces, and barely studied military history.

2

“We must throw the influence of this nation in behalf of a plan…. This is the part I think you are destined to play in this world tragedy, and it is the noblest part that has ever come to a son of man.”

EDWARD M. HOUSE, ADVISING WOODROW WILSON TO TAKE AMERICA TO WAR, 1915

A CALL TO ARMS

BEFORE MAY 7, 1915, few people really believed that German subs could catch and attack the mighty Lusitania, or that German officers would dare to fire at the passenger ship without warning, or that the vessel could be destroyed so completely and rapidly. Such concepts were unthinkable, beyond imagination, in much the same way that few people anticipated the calculated and catastrophic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York City’s World Trade Center and other U.S. sites. The sinking of the Lusitania was the 9-11 of its time, and, like 9-11, it served as a backdrop as the United States moved toward war. Perhaps the most remarkable difference in the case of the Lusitania is that so much time passed between calamity and combat.

Wilson speaks out. Woodrow Wilson was the first U.S. President since John Adams to formally address Congress. He made repeated speeches there during his Presidency, including his 1917 appeal for war. Wilson wrote his own speeches, often typing them himself on his portable typewriter. He proposed to his future second wife, Edith Bolling Galt (far right), just days before the Lusitania’s sinking. His first wife had died the same month that war broke out in Europe.

“The day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness…. God helping her, she can do no other.”

WOODROW WILSON, CONCLUDING REMARKS FROM HIS WAR MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, APRIL 2, 1917

Finally, on the evening of April 2, 1917, legislators filled the chairs of the House of Representatives and guests packed the seats of its balcony to hear Woodrow Wilson call the nation to take up arms. The President’s call came nearly two years after the loss of the Lusitania because Germany had begun to violate safe passage agreements that had followed the 1915 sinking. Among those attending was the Democratic President’s new wife, Edith, whom he had married just 16 months earlier. Others present included two senators who did not support the move toward war, Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette and James Vardaman from Mississippi; unlike their colleagues, neither man wore American flag pins on their jacket lapels. Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a staunch advocate for war, did. Regardless of political opinion, expectations ran high that the President—who prided himself on his public speaking ability—would deliver a stirring address. He did not disappoint.

“The present submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind,” Wilson asserted. “I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and the people of the United States.”

Wilson presented the coming conflict in lofty and noble terms. “We are glad…to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples,” he proclaimed. The United States should fight “for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy…. We shall be satisfied when [the rights of mankind] have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.”

The audience rose in a standing ovation as Wilson concluded his speech. Robert Lansing, Wilson's second Secretary of State, described the President’s performance. “From the moment that he entered the auditorium up to the time that he passed out into the corridors of the Capitol he was master of the situation,” he observed. “His control of language and of his audience was a marvelous exhibition of his genius as an orator.”

Even former President Theodore Roosevelt, a fierce political opponent of Wilson’s, visited the White House within days of the speech and told Wilson that his words might “rank…with the great state papers of Washington and Lincoln.” A columnist for the New York Times commented that “the sole defect of this great and noble message is its date.” The writer, like Roosevelt, regretted that Wilson’s call for war had not “swiftly followed the crime of the Lusitania.”

Presidential contenders. William Jennings Bryan (wearing bow tie, talking with Woodrow Wilson in cap) was a Wilson supporter and former presidential candidate who earned the coveted post of Secretary of State following Wilson’s election in 1912.That election left Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress and the Presidency.

In fact Wilson had carefully avoided combat after the Lusitania went down. He tried instead to be a peacemaker for Europe and sought to bring harmony and democracy to the world’s citizens. Thus for two years he employed diplomacy and his powers of persuasion to avoid war. For a while he succeeded. Although Germans briefly celebrated the Lusitania’s sinking, the subsequent condemnation of the act as barbaric and criminal forced the Kaiser to scale back his submarine campaign. In the months that followed, Wilson scolded Germany when it occasionally attacked American-related shipping, and Germany responded by once again avoiding American targets. Even as people like Roosevelt urged for military combat to replace verbal combat, plenty of Americans remained reluctant to shed blood for what was essentially seen as a fight between old-world rivals. These citizens helped reelect Wilson in 1916 with the campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war.”

Posters on both sides of the Atlantic (from Great Britain) urged citizens to support the war effort in memory of victims of the Lusitania.

WILSON’S ADVISORS HAD MIXED FEELINGS about war. His first Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, had resigned in protest over Wilson’s favoritism toward the British during the early months of the European war. Although some members of his administration counseled against war, others favored the idea. So did an influential acquaintance of Wilson’s named Edward M. House. House, a wealthy Texan, had befriended Wilson during his quick rise to power. In the space of three years Wilson had gone from being the president of Princeton University to serving as governor of New Jersey to winning election, in 1912, as President of the United States. House had become one of Wilson’s closest and most trusted advisors during this transition and, although he had declined an official role in the government, he remained at the President’s service.

In early 1915 House had actually sailed to England on the Lusitania to serve there as an informal representative of the President. On the day that U-boat 20 sank the Lusitania, he had predicted at an English dinner party: “We shall be at war with Germany within a month.” Although his prediction failed then, House would forecast or promote the idea repeatedly in the months that followed, even as Wilson steadfastly resisted it.

By 1917, though, the President was running out of diplomatic tricks, and Germany’s military strategists were despairing on the battlefront. In an effort to regain the chance for victory, the Kaiser declared all-out war on the high seas, regardless of international opinion. German officials gambled that their forces would be able to cripple the Allies’ supply lines and defeat their foes before America could declare war, raise an army, train it, and send it into battle. His decision forced Wilson’s call to arms.

CONGRESS APPROVED A DECLARATION OF WAR WITHIN DAYS OF Wilson’s April 2nd speech. All but 56 of the 511 votes cast by members of the U.S. House and Senate supported the resolution. Thus a nation that had seen its population swell in recent decades by waves of European immigrants now found itself fighting against the ancestral homelands of some of its newest residents. The prospect loomed for major conflicts in loyalty and allegiance given the fact that a third of the U.S. population had claimed birth on foreign soil for themselves or at least one of their parents during the 1910 census. (President Wilson was one of them; his mother had been born in England.) Many Americans maintained sentimental loyalties, if not outright practical ones, to their motherlands. At that time Germany could claim the greatest number of offspring in America: Perhaps as much as a quarter of the entire U.S. population had either immigrated from Germany or descended from German immigrants.

The hyphens. Americans with hyphenated origins, such as German-Americans, often found their allegiance questioned at the time of World War I…

The presence of so many Germans and their descendants assured that German foods and beverages, the German language, German-American clubs and music groups, even bilingual schools, all flourished in the United States prior to World War I. During the early years of the war, while the U.S. government remained on the sidelines of the fight, many German-Americans had felt comfortable offering their public support of the German war effort through speeches, published commentary, and fund-raising. Some ethnic groups, such as the Irish, even cheered for Germany because of their own dislike for Germany’s foe, England. Others supported their ancestral homelands.

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