Thursday, July 24, 1919. A "Quiet and uneventful day" on the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy, Cedar Rapids to Marshalltown, Iowa. 75 miles in 9.5 hours. The Round The Rim flight takes off from Washington D.C. National Association of Negro Musicians meets in Chicago..

A typical day for the Motor Transport Convoy.

Breakdowns, rescues by the Militor, lunch and with the Red Cross.  The Knights of Columbus, in this instance, provided refreshments and dinner at Marshalltown, Iowa.

A "Quiet and uneventful day".

The Knights of Columbus were one of the many U.S. service organizations that responded to World War One.  As we addressed earlier, an organization like the USO didn't exist during the Great War, and service organizations filled that roll instead.  The war was now over, of course, but many of them were still acting in that role as mobilization wound down, and of course they would have responded to events like this in any event.  The KoC is a Catholic service organization.

It wasn't as quiet at Bolling Field at Washington D.C. where the U.S. Army commenced a second transcontinental expedition, this time by air.

A single Martin GMB bomber with five crewmen took off to circumnavigate the rim of the U.S. border, counter clockwise in what was billed the Round the Rim Flight.

The country had been crossed by air before, as indeed the country had been driven across before, but a giant flight around the periphery of the country was new.  That the air branch of the Army would commences this while the Army was driving across the center of the country is a bit of an odd coincidence, if it is.

The flight by a single aircraft was about 10,000 miles in length, and it took until November to complete.  Completion, we'd note, was a returning to Bolling Field.

Stealing thunder?  The Round The Rim Flight made the front page of the Casper paper.

The National Association of Negro Musicians commenced its first meeting in Chicago.  It's the nation's oldest organization of black musicians and had formed that prior May.

African Americans had a strong presence in American music since it became a thing of its own.  The Great Migration had brought, and was very much then bringing, African American musicians and forms of music north, and into the American mainstream at the time, with jazz and blues influenced musical forms very much on the rise.  That the conference was held in Chicago, a northern city, cannot be regarded as an accident.

January 19, 1919. Echos from a distant wall. Red Army commences assault on Allies in Northwestern Russia, the first real democratic German election, the Atrocities of the Turks upon the Armenians in Film, Welcomes to Returning Troops and Odd News.

On this day the Allied Expeditionary Force in northwestern Russia came under attack in a series of events that would lead to its practical defeat at the hands of the Red Army, even though it fought well throughout the ordeal.

The prior summer and fall the Allies, under the command of British General Poole, had advanced south from their bridgehead at Arkhangelsk.  The Americans had dispatched the 339th Infantry, a unit made up of Michigan and Wisconsin draftees, to the mission in northwestern Russia without instruction.  Upon arrival, their commander, Lt. Col Stewart (MoH from the Philippines) agreed to Gen. Poole's use of American troops and in fact he basically sat the rest of the expedition out from Arkangelsk thereafter.  The most successful unit of the campaign, in turn, turned out to be Company A of the 339th which advanced sought of the resort town of Shenkursk that fall.

Shenkursk in 1919. Shenkursk was a pre war restort town and had only come under Allied occupation that previous fall when a British commanded offensive caused Company A of the 339th Infantry to capture it.

Allied Expeditionary forces, in this case American, British and Canadian troops, came under attack in a major battle of the Russian Civil War that's all but forgotten, as in fact is the case for the Allied expedition in the context of being direct combatants itself, on this day in a Red Army effort to regain the ground lost that fall.

The Battle of Shenkursk commenced on this day with a giant Red Army artillery bombardment on Allied, principally American, positions at Nizhnyaya Gora followed by a 1,000 man bayonet charge on a position held only by 47 American troops of the 339th Infantry, and supported by nearby company of White Cossack's.  The American force obviously had no choice but to withdraw, but it was ordered to do so only after putting up as much as a delaying action as possible.  While they were doing this the Cossack company arrived but withdrew after their commanding officer was wounded, showing the unreliability of White forces.  By the time the American retreat was authorized, the streets of the town were covered by Red machine guns so an alternative route under heavy fire and with no artillery support was undertaken at great loss.  The artillery, for its part, was White Russian and the cannoneers at first abandoned their posts until they were compelled to return at pistol point by the overall American commander, Cpt. Otto "Viking" Odjard. Unfortunately, they returned to their posts too late to provide covering artillery fire.  As a result, only American soldiers, including their commander Lt. Meade, made it through the fire to return to Allied lines.

339th Infantry in Russia in 1918.  The majority of the men were conscripts from Michigan, rounded out by conscripts from Wisconsin.

Showing the unreliability of the Red troops next, they failed to followup on their initial success and the Americans were able to return to the field during the day and recover their wounded.  By nightfall, only nineteen remained uncovered, of which six were known to be dead.  During the night, two of the missing made it through the Red lines back to Allied lines.  

Unit crest of the 339th Infantry recalling their Russian service.

Overnight, Canadian field artillery arrived with artillerymen who took over two 3 in. filed artillery pieces that had been abandoned by the White Russians.  The Cossack company undertook a strategic withdrawal from Ust Padenga to Vsyokaya Gora without being detected by the Reds.  Over the next three days outnumbered Allied forces held on against repeated attacks by a reinforced Red Army.  The Allied forces inflicted heavy casualties on the Reds, but were ultimately compelled to withdraw on January 22.  By January 24, after fighting a delaying action at Sholosha, they arrived at Shenkursk where they were quickly surrounded by the pursing Red forces.

At Shenkursk Cpt. Odjard requested instructions from his commander, British General Edmund Ironside, who was in Arkangelsk.  Ironside ordered the Allied force to withdraw.  That withdrawal was commenced at midnight of January 24 by way of an unguarded logging trail.  The Allied withdrawal was conducted entirely at night and the Red Army commenced firing artillery on a new empty Shenkursk the morning of the 25th.  The retreating men occupied Vystavka on January 27 where  they were again engaged by the Reds over several weeks.  

The resulting Allied retreat cleared the far north western Russia of Allied forces and therefore constituted an important Red victory.  With the Allies marginalized in the north, the only forces opposing the Reds in that region were the Whites, who would prove to be ineffective in the north.

The Allied mission in Russia never had a clear purpose to start with and was seen in strikingly different terms by the different Allied forces committed to it.  In the east, the Americans were strictly precluded from engaging in offensive actions.  In the north, they'd been given no instructions at all and fell under British command. The British saw their mission as being to directly provide for the defeat of the Reds and to aid the various White forces.  The British commanded forces performed well and outfought the Red Army, but they were never committed in sufficient strength to be able to really engage an army the size of their growing opponents and had, in fact, basically outrun their ability to control ground in any event that prior fall.

The German flag under the Weimar Republic . . and again for the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949.

In Germany, proportional voting for the Reichstag, featuring the first election in which women were allowed to vote, took place, although the election was trailed out as German soldiers stationed in the East, where things remained tense, did not vote until February 2.  The election is regarded as the first really democratic election in German history.

The results were that the Social Democratic Party took 163 seats out of 421 giving them the largest block in the Reichstag but not a majority.  Second position went to the Centre Party, a Christian Democratic Catholic Party, which took 91 seats, with the third position going to the left of center German Democratic Party.  The German Communist Party didn't take any seats, but the Independent Socialist, a heavily left of center party took 22 seats.  The SDP would add two seats after the soldiers in the east voted in February.

Because the structure of the German government varied from other parliaments, the immediate impact of this is a little difficult to explain.  Philipp Scheidemann of the SDP would become the chancellor, but would only take office in February, and would ultimately resign in protest over the terms of the Versailles Treaty.

The initial German election offered some hope for the future as holding an election, for a country that had never had fully fair elections before, right after a major defeat in war and during the midst of a civil war is a difficult feat.  Under the circumstances, the election was a triumph for German democracy and, moreover, for the SDP which, while it did not obtain a majority of seats, acquired more than any other party and essentially had its views ratified by the majority of Germans, including a majority of serving soldiers.  Democracy in Germany would prove to be fragile, however, and the Germans would hold four more elections prior to the Great Depression really setting in. In that last pre Great Depression election the German National People's Party, a right wing nationalist party, took second position demonstrating the rise of German nationalism even before that time.  In that same election the Centre Party and the Communist Party, in third and fourth places, were not far behind the SDP, although all were fairly far behind it.  In the next election, 1930, the Nazi Party was in second place with 107 seats to the SDP's 143 and the Communist Party in third with 77.  In the last democratic election prior to World War Two the Nazi's supplanted the SDP as being in first position, taking 196 seats to the SDP's 121 while the Communist took an even 100.  Oddly enough, even under the Nazi's first election in 1933, the last election in which other parties appeared, the Communist took 88 and the SDP took 120.  No party ever had over 50% of the German vote in any election.

In Washington state the Knights of Columbus dedicated a hut for returning servicemen on this Sunday, January 19, 1919.  The Knights had been one of the really active service organizations of the Great War, which is remarkable in that the country remained, at that time, very much a Protestant country in spite of having a significant Catholic minority.

Closer to home, and in-spite of ongoing combat involving American troops in Russia, and no official peace in Europe, troops were pouring home.  Service organizations were turning their attention on that in an era in which the support for soldiers did not have the infrastructure it later would, as this "yard long" photograph of a dedication of a Knights of Columbus hut in Washington state demonstrates.

Like all service religion based service organizations of World War One, the Knights hut served everyone, not just Catholics.  

I've talked about the Knights of Columbus a little bit, but not much, in my threads about service and fraternal organizations I've posted here.  The Knights were formed for a variety of reasons, including the fact that fraternal organizations were huge in the United States in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. So huge, that membership in one was practically necessary for people in certain lines of work.  Some of those organizations were Protestant or at least Anti Catholic in nature and therefore Catholics could not join them, or they were secret societies which Catholics are precluded by their faith from joining.  So, as a reaction, the Knights were founded.

I've seen it claimed, and indeed in a state journal run by one of the various Knights of Columbus state organizations, that World War One abated anti Catholicism in the United States but I don't think that's really true.  Indeed, Al Smith would loose the Presidential election of 1928 principally because he was a Catholic.  It would take World War Two and the GI Bill to mainstream Catholics into American society and it would take the Presidency of John F. Kennedy to really blend them into the American fabric to such an extent that their distinctiveness was substantially lost, in no small part due to their own accommodations with American life that they had up until then not acquiesced to.  Interestingly enough, in spite of notable Catholics rising to high position in American life, including the featuring of some of them absolutely abandoning the positions of their faith, a strong element of prejudice remains, as exhibited during the 2016 Presidential election in which a Clinton staffer insulted the entire faith. Recently, interestingly enough, liberal commentator Jill Filipovic called the Knights of Columbus an extremist group for holding traditional Catholic opinions on such things as abortion and the nature of marriage, which would also put the Knights in tune with the bulk of human history and nature.  If it were any other group other than a Christian one, and more particularly a Catholic one, there'd be cries of outrage over that.  But as is often noted, anti Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice in American life.

Another anti Christian prejudice hit the movie screens on this Sunday, January 19, 1919, that being the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks, which was both ethnic and religious in character, the Armenians being ancient residents in the region in which the Turks were originally an invader and also a people that had remained faithful to their faith, the Armenian Apostolic Church. That church in fact one of the Apostolic Churches and today is in the Oriental Orthodox branch of the Apostolic faiths.  The Ottoman Turks were of course Muslims.  But to be fair they were also aggressive against all non Turkic people in their empire.

Ravished Armenia, also known as the Auction of Souls is a film for which only twenty minutes survives but it is a powerful film even at that.  The film, perhaps partially because some of it is original footage (I'm not certain), or perhaps because it appears to be, is nearly a documentary in character.  What's so additionally remarkable about this is that the Turkish atrocities were well known almost at the very moment they were committed, and yet Turkey continues to deny they occurred to this very day.   The film was based on a book by an Armenian survivor of Turkish atrocities who also stared in the film, Aurora Mardiganian, who was only 18 years old at the time the film was released.  At that time, she was recalling events of just a few years earlier, and she had herself escaped death by being sold into slavery and then escaping.

Armenian stamp honoring Mardiganian.

The film, not surprisingly, was subject to some censorship because it includes nudity, in the form of Armenian women being crucified nude by Turks.  Mardiganian somewhat objected to the portrayal, however, not because it was cruel or because of the nudity, but rather because she maintained that the Turks raped Armenian women and then impaled them through their vaginas in a particularly masochistic fashion that the film makers determined not to portray as it was so barbarous.  The film itself used many Armenian extras living in Southern California, which has a large Armenian population even today.  Sadly, over twenty of the extras died due being exposed to the Spanish Flu during the film.  

Mardiganian herself lived to old age and died in Californian in 1994.

If that film was too heavy of content, and it likely was for many, a comedy entitled Here Comes The Bride oped that weekend as well.

It doesn't survive, but frankly, it sounds like a typical pre Hayes Code cheesy comedy.

The Dub also opened that Sunday.

It was a comedy too, and it's also a lost film.

Or maybe it'd just be more entertaining, sort of, to read the paper that day.  Russian revolutionaries who were "spry" and had "sass", discharged soldiers shaving off the mustaches of NCO's., bad beer in the UK and radicalism in Cheyenne. . . . 

American Service Organizations During the Great War

Some time ago we published this photo:

Gov. C. E. Milliken addressing new soldiers at Y.M.C.A. Hut 24, Fort Devons, Massachusetts. August 5, 1918.

And we've certainly posted a lot of photographs of members of the American Red Cross in Europe during WWI as well.

What was going on with service organizations anyhow? Well, quite a lot.  Almost too  much, quite frankly, to report on accurately.

And, moreover, why did this occur?

First of all, let's look at what did occur, although our report will frankly be incomplete.

And let's start with the American Red Cross.

American Red Cross

It should be evident from the numerous photographs of the American Red Cross in action during World War One that it played a huge role in the war.  Indeed, while not readily evident from what we have posted here, it played a gigantic role that extended to both sides of the war, with individual national Red Cross organizations playing a different role in different countries.  In the case of the Allies, the American Red Cross's role was large and partisan prior to the United States entering the war, and its medical establishment was so well developed that the American Army simply partially absorbed it in place, personnel and all.

How on earth did that occur?

The American Red Cross was founded in 1881 by American nurse, Clara Barton.  She had seen the International Red Cross in operation in the Franco Prussian War and was impressed with its humanitarian mission.

Clara Barton in 1904.

The Swiss based International Red Cross was a young organization when Barton first encountered it, existing only since 1863. It's origin has specifically been war, when its primary inspiration, Henri Dunat, had witnesses Italian casualties in the the Italian wars of unification suffering on the battlefield without attention.  His efforts resulted in the International Committee of the Red Cross, to provide relief to the victims of war of any nation, and it exists to this day.

The originator of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Henri Dunat.

Indeed, the ICRC provided nursing services to all the combatants during the First World War and continues on to this present day as a humanitarian organization.  Barton was inspired by her observations of the ICRC during the Franco Prussian War, as noted, and came back to the United States and lead the effort to form the ARC.

The American Red Cross was just one of the many Red Cross organizations that contributed nurses, hospitals and doctors to the warring nations.  It arrived in Europe well before any American soldiers did in that role.  It's important to note, however, that its services were provided to Allied nations in that context.  In later wars the ICRC tends to be associated with neutrality, and this should be how it was regarded in World War One, but it's also the case that during World War One the American Red Cross rapidly became an Allied deal.

As an "Allied deal", as I've put it, it provided a lot of emergency services that went far beyond the battlefield.  Much of what it did was of the classic Red Cross type of thing, but far beyond that.  It ran hospitals and distributed food and the like all over France and Italy.  But as the war progressed, what it came to do, while in keeping with its traditional role, became what we'd have to regard as partisan.

 Interior of operating room. American Red Cross Evacuation Hospital No. 110, Coincy, France

The Red Cross came to provide an ambulance and hospital service that existed very much in a military support role.  Red Cross ambulance drivers, all male, wore military uniforms and many, but not all, of the men who volunteered for that duty saw it as volunteering for a type of military service prior to the United States having entered the war.  Indeed, Ernest Hemingway's famous "military service" was actually Red Cross service as an ambulance driver in Italy, a role in which he was wounded.

A uniformed Red Cross ambulance driver, Ernest Hemingway.  In this uniform Hemingway's appearance would have been very close to that of an officer in an Allied army, even though he was not an officer nor even a soldier.

When the U.S. entered the war the line between the American Red Cross as a humanitarian organization and the American Red Cross as a auxiliary of the medical corps of the U.S. Army became highly blurred and then actually, to an extent, ceased to exist altogether.  Given the delay in building up the U.S. military going towards the war, there was no earthly way that the services could build a medical corps of sufficient size to handle the vastly expanded military.  The American Red Cross, however, was there in place, and in fact, in France and Italy. So they were partially incorporated into the Army.

 American Red Cross Advance Dressing Station. Major Franciscolin, 109th Inf. 28th Division in charge, assisted by Lt. Powell Leighton, A.R.C. attached to the 28th Div. Near St. Gilles, France. Aug. 15, 1918

But only partially.  Male members of the Red Cross were given the option of entering the Army in their existing roles at a rank assigned to them by the Army, and by and large they did.  They didn't have to, however, and some chose not to.  Nurses remained outside of the Army and stayed in their existing roles in what were now Army medical facilities.

Having said that, however, that only addresses the medical support roles taken on by the American Red Cross during the war.  Other roles also existed.  Simply providing comfort, often in the form of canteens or mobile canteens (i.e., coffee and donuts) was a role that, while not exactly major, was often fondly remembered post war.  Back in the U.S., the Red Cross undertook a serviceman and family support role that would be of the type that would be undertaken by the United Service Organizations (USO) during World War Two and beyond.  

The ARC also retained a humanitarian relief role that went far beyond the areas where the US military operated, attempting to provide humanitarian relief in the Middle East, Asia and Russia.  

In the end, it's difficult to actually define what the American Red Cross did during the war, as it was so vast in nature.  Some of it very closely mirrored what it does today.  Some of it anticipated the USO of later wars.  Some of it was in the nature of direct medical support to the Allied war effort.  It's role proved key in many ways to that effort, and its hard to imagine an Allied war effort without it.

The role of the American Red Cross was mirrored by the Red Cross organizations of other nations.  The International Committee of the Red Cross occupied a cross border humanitarian role much like it would during World War Two, not taking any sides in the war and attempting to provide relief where it could.  The German Red Cross trained nurses for the German military.  British and Canadian Red Cross organizations filled a role much like that of that of the American Red Cross and were augmented by national nursing organizations that were outside of the Red Cross but much like it.

Which takes us to the YMCA.

The Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association.

The YMCA?

YMCA "girl" depicted in a common YMCA role during the war, providing coffee and reading materials to the soldier, something that the YMCA did to a vast degree during World War One.

Yes, the Young Mans Christian Association..

The YMCA, contrary to the way people commonly imagine it, is actually a religion.  A branch of the Protestant Christian religions, the YMCA and its companion the YWCA came up during the Muscular Christianity movement we've discussed elsewhere.  It's history actually dates back to 1844 when it was founded in London, England, "to provide low-cost housing in a safe Christian environment for rural young men and women journeying to the cities."  This concern was not without a foundation as the mass influx of rural youth into European industrial cities did indeed exhibit a major corrupting aspect to it.*

Given the lack of service organizations that aided and supported soldiers prior to World War Two, it shouldn't surprise us, even though it tends to, that the YMCA started filling this role fairly early. There are some instances in the United States of it taking this role as early as the Civil War, but it really commenced them in a dedicated fashion during the Spanish American War.  So it should be no surprise that it stepped up to the plate again during World War One.

During the Great War the YMCA took up its service organization role in spades, occupying a role that again would be occupied by the USO during World War Two.  Like the Red Cross, it provided aid and comfort to soldiers serving in the war in the form of what we'd regard as canteens.  It also undertook to provide entertainment, assistance with writing letters (in an era in which the literacy rates were not as high as they'd later be.

YWCA poster urging young women to work in the factories and fields during the war.

The YMCA also took a direct role in recruiting women for war work during the Great War, associating itself with Womens' Land Armies in the agricultural sector and in recruiting women to industrial work.  In this, it somewhat ironically was in the situation of encouraging the very type of thing that it originally was formed to address, in that the Land Armies and the industrial work took young women out of their homes and into urban environments.

The YMCA and the YWCA were Protestant organizations, of course.  Given that, it's not surprising that we'd find the major Catholic organization in the US also involved in the war effort, that being the Knights of Columbus.

The Knights of Columbus

Or maybe it is surprising.  It cannot be fairly stated that there is a religious element to World War One.  All the warring nations in Europe were Christian nations. And confessionaly we would find that there were Protestant and Catholic nations on both sides, more or less.  The United Kingdom, at that time comprised of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and therefore was the home of two of two official Protestant faiths and one large unofficial Catholic one.  Germany was likewise split between Lutheran based Protestantism (it's somewhat more complicated than might be imagined in that area) and Catholicism, although Protestantism was heavily favored by the German crown.  The Austrian Empire, on the other hand, was nearly uniformly Catholic save for some regions that were Orthodox.  Italy was uniformly Catholic.  France was a Catholic country in culture and in faith although the French governments had been aggressively secular for a long time.  Imperial Russia was officially Orthodox but it had, on its western fringes, a large Catholic population.  The United States had no official religion at all, but had a majority Protestant population with a large Catholic minority (and of course minorities in additional Orthodox and Jewish populations).

The Knights of Columbus taking convalescing wounded on a tour of Washington, D.C.

Nonetheless, and particularly for countries like the United States and Canada (and the United Kingdom), confessional differences were very real and there was a real concern that minority Catholic soldiers in the US (and Canadian) armies would not have support facilities that reflected their faith.  The Knights of Columbus stepped up to the plate.

Indeed, the Knights were active prior to the United States entering the war.  They'd become involved early due to the concern noted above for Canadian soldiers.  This followed with the organization organizing support facilities for Catholic National Guardsmen who were mobilized to serve on the Mexican border during the Punitive Expedition.  So the organization had a head start for the American involvement in the Great War.

The role played by the Knights was similar to that played by the YMCA and the Red Cross in terms of rear area support.

The National Civil Federation

The National Civil Federation was a business organization that was founded in 1900 as a business organization dedicated towards working to resolve labor disputes.  Gigantic labor disputes have become so rare in the United States over the years that we've forgotten they even existed in the form that they once did. We've seen some of that story here, but suffice it to say they could be quite extreme in comparison to what we've seen for the past several decades.

 

The National Civil Foundation and the American Red Cross together formed the wartime National League for Women's Service which contributed the Women's Motor Corps to the war effort.  Perhaps the Women's Motor Corps is what it is best remembered for in the Great War context.

The WMC wasn't the only thing the National Civil Foundation did during the Great War, however.  It also operated domestic support facilities for soldiers.

Youth Organizations

The Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts rather obviously contributed to the war effort through various efforts, including patriotic displays.  Both organizations, which we've discussed before, had martial origins in addition to being party of the Muscular Christianity movement.  That martial origin was particularly evident with the Boys Scouts which, as earlier noted, had a heavily military appearance at the time.

J. C. Leyendecker poster noting the Boy Scout's support of the Third Liberty Loan.

Some of this would repeat during World War Two, but not nearly to the extent that had been seen in World War One.  The Red Cross was of course highly active.  Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts reprized their earlier role.  But by World War Two the Army itself was prepared to take on the medical role that had fallen to the Red Cross and much of the home front support came from a new organization, the United Service Organization, which still exists.

It's interesting in that its a missed part of the Great War in a way.  World War Two, particularly in the United States, grossly overshadows the story of World War One so the huge civilian mobilization that the first war had seen has largely been lost in the mists.  But it says something about the war itself.  There were those who avoided it, to be sure, but the extent to which the civilian population self mobilized is truly remarkable.

___________________________________________________________________________________

*This strays way off topic, but the corrosive influence of large cities had long been noted and indeed was observed to be a primary facdtor in the destruction of democracies by Thomas Jefferson, who felt that large cities always gave rise to mobs and always ended up destroying democracies.  Indeed, in his writings he felt that the American democracy would ultimately fall prey to that fate and that it could only be staved off so long as most Americans were Yeomen Farmers.

The same factors noted by the founders of the YMCA and the YWCA lead to the formation of a
German Catholic organization with the same (male) focus, but whose name I unfortunately cannot now recall.  It also lead to a vareitiy of movements that sought to address or even redirect the forcdes that were in play.

Tuesday, October 12, 1915. The execution of Edith Cavell.

The Germans proved that they could be thoroughgoing bastard even before World War Two by executing Edith Cavell for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium.

In an era in which we see American forces being asked to execute illegal orders, it's worth noting that "I was ordered" will be a thin excuse at the General and Particular Judgment.

Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech on Americanism at Carnegie Hall, to the Knights of Columbus.  He stated:

Four centuries and a quarter have gone by since Columbus by discovering America opened the greatest era in world history. Four centuries have passed since the Spaniards began that colonization on the main land which has resulted in the growth of the nations of Latin-America. Three centuries have passed since, with the settlements on the coasts of Virginia and Massachusetts, the real history of what is now the United States began. All this we ultimately owe to the action of an Italian seaman in the service of a Spanish King and a Spanish Queen. It is eminently fitting that one of the largest and most influential social organizations of this great Republic, a Republic in which the tongue is English, and the blood derived from many sources, should, in its name, commemorate the great Italian. It is eminently fitting to make an address on Americanism before this society. We of the United States need above all things to remember that, while we are by blood and culture kin to each of the nations of Europe, we are also separate from each of them. We are a new and distinct nationality. We are developing our own distinctive culture and civilization, and the worth of this civilization will largely depend upon our determination to keep it distinctively our own. Our sons and daughters should be educated here and not abroad. We should freely take from every other nation whatever we can make of use, but we should adopt and develop to our own peculiar needs what we thus take, and never be content merely to copy.

Our nation was founded to perpetuate democratic principles. These principles are that each man is to be treated on his worth as a man without regard to the land from which his forefathers came and without regard to the creed which he professes. If the United States proves false to these principles of civil and religious liberty, it will have inflicted the greatest blow on the system of free popular government that has ever been inflicted. Here we have had a virgin continent on which to try the experiment of making out of divers race stocks a new nation and of treating all the citizens of that nation in such a fashion as to preserve them equality of opportunity in industrial, civil, and political life. Our duty is to secure each man against any injustice by his fellows.

One of the most important things to secure for him is the right to hold and to express the religious views that best meet his own soul needs. Any political movement directed against anybody of our fellow- citizens because of their religious creed is a grave offense against American principles and American institutions. It is a wicked thing either to support or to oppose a man because of the creed he professes. This applies to Jew and Gentile, to Catholic and Protestant, and to the man who would be regarded as unorthodox by all of them alike. Political movements directed against men because of their religious belief, and intended to prevent men of that creed from holding office, have never accomplished anything but harm. This was true in the days of the ‘Know-Nothing’ and Native-American parties in the middle of the last century; and it is just as true to-day. Such a movement directly contravenes the spirit of the Constitution itself. Washington and his associates believed that it was essential to the existence of this Republic that there should never be any union of Church and State; and such union is partially accomplished wherever a given creed is aided by the State or when any public servant is elected or defeated because of his creed. The Constitution explicitly forbids the requiring of any religious test as a qualification for holding office. To impose such a test by popular vote is as bad as to impose it by law. To vote either for or against a man because of his creed is to impose upon him a religious test and is a clear violation of the spirit of the Constitution.

Moreover, it is well to remember that these movements never achieve the end they nominally have in view. They do nothing whatsoever except to increase among the men of the various churches the spirit of sectarian intolerance which is base and unlovely in any civilization, but which is utterly revolting among a free people that profess the principles we profess. No such movement can ever permanently succeed here. All that it does is for a decade or so to greatly increase the spirit of theological animosity, both among the people to whom it appeals and among the people whom it assails. Furthermore, it has in the past invariably resulted, in so far as it was successful at all, in putting unworthy men into office; for there is nothing that a man of loose principles and of evil practices in public life so desires as the chance to distract attention from his own shortcomings and misdeeds by exciting and inflaming theological and sectarian prejudice.

We must recognize that it is a cardinal sin against democracy to support a man for public office because he belongs to a given creed or to oppose him because he belongs to a given creed. It is just as evil as to draw the line between class and class, between occupation and occupation in political life. No man who tries to draw either line is a good American. True Americanism demands that we judge each man on his conduct, that we so judge him in private life and that we so judge him in public life. The line of cleavage drawn on principle and conduct in public affairs is never in any healthy community identical with the line of cleavage between creed and creed or between class and class. On the contrary, where the community life is healthy, these lines of cleavage almost always run nearly at right angles to one another. It is eminently necessary to all of us that we should have able and honest public officials in the nation, in the city, in the state. If we make a serious and resolute effort to get such officials of the right kind, men who shall not only be honest but shall be able and shall take the right view of public questions, we will find as a matter of fact that the men we thus choose will be drawn from the professors of every creed and from among men who do not adhere to any creed.

For thirty-five years I have been more or less actively engaged in public life, in the performance of my political duties, now in a public position, now in a private position. I have fought with all the fervor I possessed for the various causes in which with all my heart I believed; and in every fight I thus made I have had with me and against me Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. There have been times when I have had to make the fight for or against some man of each creed on ground of plain public morality, unconnected with questions of public policy. There were other times when I have made such a fight for or against a given man, not on grounds of public morality, for he may have been morally a good man, but on account of his attitude on questions of public policy, of governmental principle. In both cases, I have always found myself 4 fighting beside, and fighting against, men of every creed. The one sure way to have secured the defeat of every good principle worth fighting for would have been to have permitted the fight to be changed into one along sectarian lines and inspired by the spirit of sectarian bitterness, either for the purpose of putting into public life or of keeping out of public life the believers in any given creed. Such conduct represents an assault upon Americanism. The man guilty of it is not a good American. I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian. As a necessary corollary to this, not only the pupils but the members of the teaching force and the school officials of all kinds must be treated exactly on a par, no matter what their creed; and there must be no more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or Protestant than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protestant. Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of the public schools.

What is true of creed is no less true of nationality. There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts ‘native’ before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as anyone else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

I appeal to history. Among the generals of Washington in the Revolutionary War were Greene, Putnam, and Lee, who were of English descent; Wayne and Sullivan, who were of Irish descent; Marion, who was of French descent; Schuyler, who was of Dutch descent, and Muhlenberg and Herkimer, who were of German descent. But they were all of them Americans and nothing else, just as much as Washington. Carroll of Carroll ton was a Catholic; Hancock a Protestant; Jefferson was heterodox from the standpoint of any orthodox creed; but these and all the other signers of the Declaration of Independence stood on an equality of duty and right and liberty, as Americans and nothing else.

So it was in the Civil War. Farragut's father was born in Spain and Sheridan's father in Ireland; Sherman and Thomas were of English and Custer of German descent; and Grant came of a long line of American ancestors whose original home had been Scotland. But the Admiral was not a Spanish-American; and the Generals were not Scotch-Americans or Irish-Americans or English-Americans or German-Americans. They were all Americans and nothing else. This was just as true of Lee and of Stonewall Jackson and of Beauregard.

When in 1909 our battlefleet returned from its voyage around the world, Admirals Wainwright and Schroeder represented the best traditions and the most effective action in our navy; one was of old American blood and of English descent; the other was the son of German immigrants. But one was not a native-American and the other a German-American. Each was an American pure and simple. Each bore allegiance only to the flag of the United States. Each would have been incapable of considering the interests of Germany or of England or of any other country except the United States.

To take charge of the most important work under my administration, the building of the Panama Canal, I chose General Goethals. Both of his parents were born in Holland. But he was just plain United States. He wasn't a Dutch-American; if he had been I wouldn't have appointed him. So it was with such men, among those who served under me, as Admiral Osterhaus and General Barry. The father of one was born in Germany, the father of the other in Ireland. But they were both Americans, pure and simple, and first-rate fighting men in addition.

In my Cabinet at the time there were men of English and French, German, Irish, and Dutch blood, men born on this side and men born in Germany and Scotland; but they were all Americans and nothing else; and every one of them was incapable of thinking of himself or of his fellow-countrymen, excepting in terms of American citizenship. If any one of them had anything in the nature of a dual or divided allegiance in his soul, he never would have been appointed to serve under me, and he would have been instantly removed when the discovery was made. There wasn't one of them who was capable of desiring that the policy of the United States should be shaped with reference to the interests of any foreign country or with consideration for anything, outside of the general welfare of humanity, save the honor and interest of the United States, and each was incapable of making any discrimination whatsoever .among the citizens of the country he served, of our common country, save discrimination based on conduct and on conduct alone.

For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.

Now this is a declaration of principles. How are we in practical fashion to secure the making of these principles part of the very fiber of our national life? First and foremost let us all resolve that in this country hereafter we shall place far less emphasis upon the question of right and much greater emphasis upon the matter of duty. A republic can't succeed and won't succeed in the tremendous international stress of the modern world unless its citizens possess that form of high-minded patriotism which consists in putting devotion to duty before the question of individual rights. This must be done in our family relations or the family will go to pieces; and no better tract for family life in this country can be imagined than the little story called ‘Mother’, written by an American woman, Kathleen Norris, who happens to be a member of your own church.

What is true of the family, the foundation stone of our national life, is not less true of the entire superstructure. I am, as you know, a most ardent believer in national preparedness against war as a means of securing that honorable and self-respecting peace which is the only peace desired by all high-spirited people. But it is an absolute impossibility to secure such preparedness in full and proper form if it is an isolated feature of our policy. The lamentable fate of Belgium has shown that no justice in legislation or success in business will be of the slightest avail if the nation has not prepared in advance the strength to protect its rights. But it is equally true that there cannot be this preparation in advance for military strength unless there is a social basis of civil and social life behind it. There must be social, economic, and military preparedness all alike, all harmoniously developed; and above all there must be spiritual and mental preparedness.

There must be not merely preparedness in things material; there must be preparedness in soul and mind. To prepare a great army and navy without preparing a proper national spirit would avail nothing. And if there is not only a proper national spirit, but proper national intelligence, we shall realize that even from the standpoint of the army and navy some civil preparedness is indispensable. For example, a plan for national defense which does not include the most far-reaching use and cooperation of our railroads must prove largely futile. These railroads are organized in time of peace. But we must have the most carefully thought out organization from the national and centralized standpoint in order to use them in time of war. This means first that those in charge of them from the highest to the lowest must understand their duty in time of war, must be permeated with the spirit of genuine patriotism; and second, that they and we shall understand that efficiency is as essential as patriotism; one is useless without the other.

Again, every citizen should be trained sedulously by every activity at our command to realize his duty to the nation. In France at this moment the workingmen who are not at the front are spending all their energies with the single thought of helping their brethren at the front by what they do in the munition plant, on the railroads, in the factories. It is a shocking, a lamentable thing that many of the trade-unions of England have taken a directly opposite view. I am not concerned with whether it be true, as they assert, that their employers are trying to exploit them, or, as these employers assert, that the labor men are trying to gain profit for those who stay at home at the cost of their brethren who fight in the trenches. The thing for us Americans to realize is that we must do our best to prevent similar conditions from growing up here. Business men, professional men, and wage workers alike must understand that there should be no question of their enjoying any rights whatsoever unless in the fullest way they recognize and live up to the duties that go with those rights. This is just as true of the corporation as of the trade-union, and if either corporation or trade-union fails heartily to acknowledge this truth, then its activities are necessarily anti-social and detrimental to the welfare of the body politic as a whole. In war time, when the welfare of the nation is at stake, it should be accepted as axiomatic that the employer is to make no profit out of the war save that which is necessary to the efficient running of the business and to the living expenses of himself and family, and that the wageworker is to treat his wage from exactly the same standpoint and is to see to it that the labor organization to which he belongs is, in all its activities, subordinated to the service of the nation.

Now there must be some application of this spirit in times of peace or we cannot suddenly develop it in time of war. The strike situation in the United States at this time is a scandal to the country as a whole and discreditable alike to employer and employee. Any employer who fails to recognize that human rights come first and that the friendly relationship between himself and those working for him should be one of partnership and comradeship in mutual help no less than self-help is recreant to his duty as an American citizen, and it is to his interest, having in view the enormous destruction of life in the present war, to conserve, and to train to higher efficiency, alike for his benefit and for its, the labor supply. In return any employee who acts along the lines publicly advocated by the men who profess to speak for the I.W.W. is not merely an open enemy of business, but of this entire country and is out of place in our government.

You, Knights of Columbus, are particularly fitted to play a great part in the movement for national solidarity, without which there can be no real efficiency in either peace or war. During the last year and a quarter it has been brought home to us in startling fashion that many of the elements of our nation are not yet properly fused. It ought to be a literally appalling fact that members of two of the foreign embassies in this country have been discovered to be implicated in inciting their fellow-countrymen, whether naturalized American citizens or not, to the destruction of property and the crippling of American industries that are operating in accordance with internal law and international agreement. The malign activity of one of these embassies has been brought home directly to the ambassador in such shape that his recall has been forced. The activities of the other have been set forth in detail by the publication in the press of its letters in such fashion as to make it perfectly clear that they were of the same general character. Of course, the two embassies were merely carrying out the instructions of their home governments.

Nor is it only the Germans and Austrians who take the view that as a matter of right they can treat their countrymen resident in America, even if naturalized citizens of the United States, as their allies and subjects, to be used in keeping alive separate national groups profoundly anti-American in sentiment, if the contest comes between American interests and those of foreign lands in question. It has recently been announced that the Russian government is to rent a house in New York as a national center to be Russian in faith and patriotism, to foster the Russian language and keep alive the national feeling in immigrants who come hither. All of this is utterly antagonistic to proper American sentiment, whether perpetrated in the name of Germany, of Austria, of Russia, of England, or France or any other country.

We should meet this situation by on the one hand seeing that these immigrants get all their rights as American citizens, and on the other hand insisting that they live up to their duties as American citizens. Any discrimination against aliens is a wrong, for it tends to put the immigrant at a disadvantage and to cause him to feel bitterness and resentment during the very years when he should be preparing himself for American citizenship. If an immigrant is not fit to become a citizen, he should not be allowed to come here. If he is fit, he should be given all the rights to earn his own livelihood, and to better himself, that any man can have. Take such a matter as the illiteracy test; I entirely agree with those who feel that many very excellent possible citizens would be barred improperly by an illiteracy test. But why do you not admit aliens under a bond to learn to read and write within a certain time? It would then be a duty to see that they were given ample opportunity to learn to read and write and that they were deported if they failed to take advantage of the opportunity.

No man can be a good citizen if he is not at least in process of learning to speak the language of his fellow-citizens. And an alien who remains here without learning to speak English for more than a certain number of years should at the end of that time be treated as having refused to take the preliminary steps necessary to complete Americanization and should be deported. But there should be no denial or limitation of the alien's opportunity to work, to own property, and to take advantage of civic opportunities. Special legislation should deal with the aliens who do not come here to be made citizens. But the alien who comes here intending to become a citizen should be helped in every way to advance himself, should be removed from every possible disadvantage, and in return should be required under penalty of being sent back to the country from which he came, to prove that he is in good faith fitting himself to be an American citizen.

Therefore, we should devote ourselves as a preparative to preparedness, alike in peace and war, to secure the three elemental things : one, a common language, the English language; two, the increase in our social loyalty citizenship absolutely undivided, a citizenship which acknowledges no flag except the flag of the United States and which emphatically repudiates all duality of intention or national loyalty; and third, an intelligent and resolute effort for the removal of industrial and social unrest, an effort which shall aim equally at securing every man his rights and to make every man understand that unless he in good faith performs his duties he is not entitled to any rights at all.

The American people should itself do these things for the immigrants. If we leave the immigrant to be helped by representatives of foreign governments, by foreign societies, by a press and institutions conducted in a foreign language and in the interest of foreign governments, and if we permit the immigrants to exist as alien groups, each group sundered from the rest of the citizens of the country, we shall store up for ourselves bitter trouble in the future.

I am certain that the only permanently safe attitude for this country as regards national preparedness for self-defense is along its lines of universal service on the Swiss model. Switzerland is the most democratic of nations. Its army is the most democratic army in the world. There isn't a touch of militarism or aggressiveness about Switzerland. It has been found as a matter of actual practical experience in Switzerland that the universal military training has made a very marked increase in social efficiency and in the ability of the man thus trained to do well for himself in industry. The man who has received the training is a better citizen, is more self-respecting, more orderly, better able to hold his own, and more willing to respect the rights of others and at the same time he is a more valuable and better paid man in his business. We need that the navy and the army should be greatly increased and that their efficiency as units and in the aggregate should be increased to an even greater degree than their numbers. An adequate regular reserve should be established. Economy should be insisted on, and first of all in the abolition of useless army posts and navy yards. The National Guard should be supervised and controlled by the Federal War Department. Training camps such as at Plattsburg should be provided on a nation-wide basis and the government should pay the expenses. Foreign-born as well as native-born citizens should be brought together in those camps; and each man at the camp should take the oath of allegiance as unreservedly and unqualifiedly as the men of its regular army and navy now take it. Not only should battleships, battle cruisers, submarines, ample coast and field artillery be provided and a greater ammunition supply system, but there should be a utilization of those engaged in such professions as the ownership and management of motor cars, in aviation, and in the profession of engineering. Map-making and road improvement should be attended to, and, as I have already said, the railroads brought into intimate touch with the War Department. Moreover, the government should deal with conservation of all necessary war supplies such as mine products, potash, oil lands, and the like. Furthermore, all munition plants should be carefully surveyed with special reference to their geographic distribution and for the possibility of increased munition and supply factories. Finally, remember that the men must be sedulously trained in peace to use this material or we shall merely prepare our ships, guns, and products as gifts to the enemy. All of these things should be done in any event, but let us never forget that the most important of all things is to introduce universal military service. But let me repeat that this preparedness against war must be based upon efficiency and justice in the handling of ourselves in time of peace. If belligerent governments, while we are not hostile to them but merely neutral, strive nevertheless to make of this nation many nations, each hostile to the others and none of them loyal to the central government, then it may be accepted as certain that they would do far worse to us in time of war. If they encourage strikes and sabotage in our munition plants while we are neutral, it may be accepted as axiomatic that they would do far worse to us if we were hostile. It is our duty from the standpoint of self-defense to secure the complete Americanization of our people, to make of the many peoples of this country a united nation, one in speech and feeling, and all, so far as possible, sharers in the best that each has brought to our shores.

The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population no other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens; it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of "Let alone" which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two standpoints. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it.

We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?

Justice Bowling in his speech has described the excellent fourth degree of your order, of how in it you dwell upon duties rather than rights, upon the great duties of patriotism and of national spirit. It is a fine thing to have a society that holds up such a standard of duty. I ask you to make a special effort to deal with Americanization, the fusing into one nation, a nation necessarily different from all other nations, of all who come to our shores. Pay heed to the three principal essentials: (i) the need of a common language, with a minimum amount of illiteracy; (2) the need of a common civil standard, similar ideals, beliefs, and customs symbolized by the oath of allegiance to America; and (3) the need of a high standard of living, of reasonable equality of opportunity and of social and industrial justice. In every great crisis in our history, in the Revolution and in the Civil War, and in the lesser crises, like the Spanish war, all factions and races have been forgotten in the common spirit of Americanism. Protestant and Catholic, men of English or of French, of Irish or of German, descent have joined with a single-minded purpose to secure for the country what only can be achieved by the resultant union of all patriotic citizens. You of this organization have done a great service by. your insistence that citizens should pay heed first of all to their duties. Hitherto undue prominence has been given to the question of rights. Your organization is a splendid engine for giving to the stranger within our gates a high conception of American citizenship. Strive for unity. We suffer at present from a lack of leadership in these matters.

Even in the matter of national defense there is such a labyrinth of committees and counsels and advisors that there is a tendency on the part of the average citizen to become confused and do nothing. I ask you to help strike the note that shall unite our people. As a people we must be united. If we are not united we shall slip into the gulf of measureless disaster. We must be strong in purpose for our own defense and bent on securing justice within our borders. If as a nation we are split into warring camps, if we teach our citizens not to look upon one another as brothers but as enemies divided by the hatred of creed for creed or of those of one race against those of another race, surely we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent will go down in crushing overthrow. I ask you here tonight and those like you to take a foremost part in the movement a young men's movement for a greater and better America in the future.

All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small. We must insist on the maintenance of the American standard of living. We must stand for an adequate national control which shall secure a better training of our young men in time of peace, both for the work of peace and for the work of war. We must direct every national resource, material and spiritual, to the task not of shirking difficulties, but of training our people to overcome difficulties. Our aim must be, not to make life easy and soft, not to soften soul and body, but to fit us in virile fashion to do a great work for all mankind. This great work can only be done by a mighty democracy, with these qualities of soul, guided by those qualities of mind, which will both make it refuse to do injustice to any other nation, and also enable it to hold its own against aggression by any other nation. In our relations with the outside world, we must abhor wrongdoing, and disdain to commit it, and we must no less disdain the baseness of spirit which lamely submits to wrongdoing. Finally and most important of all, we must strive for the establishment within our own borders of that stern and lofty standard of personal and public neutrality which shall guarantee to each man his rights, and which shall insist in return upon the full performance by each man of his duties both to his neighbor and to the great nation whose flag must symbolize in the future as it has symbolized in the past the highest hopes of all mankind.

Game four of the World Series was held.

October 12, 1915: Ernie Shore leads Red Sox to Game Four victory

Mormons in northern Mexico were reported to be fleeing, and for good reason.

Mexico has the second largest population of Mormon's next to the United States.  Having said that, their numbers are absolutely dwarfed by the number of Catholics in Mexico (and for that matter the United States). This certainly isn't too surprising in the case of Mexico, which was an extremely Catholic country prior to the unfortunate Mexican Revolution and which, in spite of the violence done to the church, remains a very Catholic country.

Mormon settlement in Mexico dates back to 1885 and reflected, early on, the Mormon retention, in spite of the official change in views, of polygamy, which was illegal in the US.  It wasn't legal in Mexico either, but Mexico has often had an oddly lack of enforcement of many of its laws, on a wide variety of topics.  This is still true today.  Polygamy itself wasn't officially ended in the LDS until 1890, and even then just in the US.  It was still allowed for Mormon faithful in Mexico and Canada.  It was stopped globally by the LDS in 1904, although existing polygamous marriages were allowed to continue to exist.

Up until 1890, 20 to 30 percent of Mormon families were polygamous.  Often not noted, polyandry, which is much rarer, was also allowed early on in the Mormon religion.

The Mexican Revolution had a distinctly anti foreign tinge to it and the country became overall hostile to those who were not ethnically Mexican.  This permanently damaged the Mormon population in Mexico.

Of interest, Diaz was in his second year of office at this time.  Diaz was particularly friendly to foreign investment, which in some ways also encouraged Mormon immigration.

Last edition:

Monday, October 11, 1915. Recognizing Carranza.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, 1915 World Series, Allies, baseball, Constitutionalist Army, Gallipoli, Mexican Revolution, Socialism, Venustiano Carranza, Woodrow Wilson, World War One