This day, which was a Monday in 1918. Woodrow Wilson gave his fist post war State of the Union address.
It's interesting to note that Wilson, in spite of serving a full eight years during which the world was at war for four of which, and during which the United States teetered close to war for nearly the entire time, he only delivered one address while the nation was actually at war.
The address was a significant one dealing with the post war world, how Wilson envisioned it, and the peace.
GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:
The year that has elapsed since I last stood before you to fulfill my
constitutional duty to give to the Congress from time to time
information on the state of the Union has been so crowded with great
events, great processes, and great results that I cannot hope to give
you an adequate picture of its transactions or of the far-reaching
changes which have been wrought of our nation and of the world. You have
yourselves witnessed these things, as I have. It is too soon to assess
them; and we who stand in the midst of them and are part of them are
less qualified than men of another generation will be to say what they
mean, or even what they have been. But some great outstanding facts are
unmistakable and constitute, in a sense, part of the public business
with which it is our duty to deal. To state them is to set the stage for
the legislative and executive action which must grow out of them and
which we have yet to shape and determine.
A year ago we had sent
145,918 men overseas. Since then we have sent 1,950,513, an average of
162,542 each month, the number in fact rising, in May last, to 245,951,
in June to 278,760, in July to 307,182, and continuing to reach similar
figures in August and September, in August 289,570 and in September
257,438. No such movement of troops ever took place before, across three
thousand miles of sea, followed by adequate equipment and supplies, and
carried safely through extraordinary dangers of attack,-dangers which
were alike strange and infinitely difficult to guard against. In all
this movement only seven hundred and fifty-eight men were lost by enemy
attack, six hundred and thirty of whom were upon a single English
transport which was sunk near the Orkney Islands.
I need not
tell you what lay back of this great movement of men and material. It is
not invidious to say that back of it lay a supporting organization of
the industries of the country and of all its productive activities more
complete, more thorough in method and effective in result, more spirited
and unanimous in purpose and effort than any other great belligerent
had been able to effect. We profited greatly by the experience of the
nations which had already been engaged for nearly three years in the
exigent and exacting business, their every resource and every executive
proficiency taxed to the utmost. We were their pupils. But we learned
quickly and acted with a promptness and a readiness of cooperation that
justify our great pride that we were able to serve the world with
unparalleled energy and quick accomplishment.
But it is not the
physical scale and executive efficiency of preparation, supply,
equipment and despatch that I would dwell upon, but the mettle and
quality of the officers and men we sent over and of the sailors who kept
the seas, and the spirit of the nation that stood behind them. No
soldiers or sailors ever proved themselves more quickly ready for the
test of battle or acquitted themselves with more splendid courage and
achievement when put to the test. Those of us who played some part in
directing the great processes by which the war was pushed irresistibly
forward to the final triumph may now forget all that and delight our
thoughts with the story of what our men did. Their officers understood
the grim and exacting task they had undertaken and performed it with an
audacity, efficiency, and unhesitating courage that touch the story of
convoy and battle with imperishable distinction at every turn, whether
the enterprise were great or small, from their great chiefs, Pershing
and Sims, down to the youngest lieutenant; and their men were worthy of
them,-such men as hardly need to be commanded, and go to their terrible
adventure blithely and with the quick intelligence of those who know
just what it is they would accomplish. I am proud to be the
fellow-countryman of men of such stuff and valor. Those of us who stayed
at home did our duty; the war could not have been won or the gallant
men who fought it given their opportunity to win it otherwise; but for
many a long day we shall think ourselves "accurs'd we were not there,
and hold our manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought" with these at
St. Mihiel or Thierry. The memory of those days of triumphant battle
will go with these fortunate men to their graves; and each will have his
favorite memory. "Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, but hell
remember with advantages what feats he did that day!"
What we
all thank God for with deepest gratitude is that our men went in force
into the line of battle just at the critical moment when the whole fate
of the world seemed to hang in the balance and threw their fresh
strength into the ranks of freedom in time to turn the whole tide and
sweep of the fateful struggle,-turn it once for all, so that thenceforth
it was back, back, back for their enemies, always back, never again
forward! After that it was only a scant four months before the
commanders of the Central Empires knew themselves beaten; and now their
very empires are in liquidation!
And throughout it all how fine
the spirit of the nation was: what unity of purpose, what untiring zeal!
What elevation of purpose ran through all its splendid display of
strength, its untiring accomplishment! I have said that those of us who
stayed at home to do the work of organization and supply will always
wish that we had been with the men whom we sustained by our labor; but
we can never be ashamed. It has been an inspiring thing to be here in
the midst of fine men who had turned aside from every private interest
of their own and devoted the whole of their trained capacity to the
tasks that supplied the sinews of the whole great undertaking! The
patriotism, the unselfishness, the thoroughgoing devotion and
distinguished capacity that marked their toilsome labors, day after day,
month after month, have made them fit mates and comrades of the men in
the trenches and on the sea. And not the men here in Washington only.
They have but directed the vast achievement. Throughout innumerable
factories, upon innumerable farms, in the depths of coal mines and iron
mines and copper mines, wherever the stuffs of industry were to be
obtained and prepared, in the shipyards, on the railways, at the docks,
on the sea, in every labor that was needed to sustain the battle lines,
men have vied with each other to do their part and do it well. They can
look any man-at-arms in the face, and say, We also strove to win and
gave the best that was in us to make our fleets and armies sure of their
triumph!
And what shall we say of the women,-of their instant
intelligence, quickening every task that they touched; their capacity
for organization and cooperation, which gave their action discipline and
enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their aptitude
at tasks to which they had never before set their hands; their utter
self-sacrifice alike in what they did and in what they gave? Their
contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal. They have added a
new lustre to the annals of American womanhood.
The least
tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men in political
rights as they have proved themselves their equals in every field of
practical work they have entered, whether for themselves or for their
country. These great days of completed achievement would be sadly marred
were we to omit that act of justice. Besides the immense practical
services they have rendered the women of the country have been the
moving spirits in the systematic economies by which our people have
voluntarily assisted to supply the suffering peoples of the world and
the armies upon every front with food and everything else that we had
that might serve the common cause. The details of such a story can never
be fully written, but we carry them at our hearts and thank God that we
can say that we are the kinsmen of such.
And now we are sure of
the great triumph for which every sacrifice was made. It has come, come
in its completeness, and with the pride and inspiration of these days
of achievement quick within us, we turn to the tasks of peace again,-a
peace secure against the violence of irresponsible monarchs and
ambitious military coteries and made ready for a new order, for new
foundations of justice and fair dealing.
We are about to give
order and organization to this peace not only for ourselves but for the
other peoples of the world as well, so far as they will suffer us to
serve them. It is international justice that we seek, not domestic
safety merely. Our thoughts have dwelt of late upon Europe, upon Asia,
upon the near and the far East, very little upon the acts of peace and
accommodation that wait to be performed at our own doors. While we are
adjusting our relations with the rest of the world is it not of capital
importance that we should clear away all grounds of misunderstanding
with our immediate neighbors and give proof of the friendship we really
feel? I hope that the members of the Senate will permit me to speak once
more of the unratified treaty of friendship and adjustment with the
Republic of Colombia. I very earnestly urge upon them an early and
favorable action upon that vital matter. I believe that they will feel,
with me, that the stage of affairs is now set for such action as will be
not only just but generous and in the spirit of the new age upon which
we have so happily entered.
So far as our domestic affairs are
concerned the problem of our return to peace is a problem of economic
and industrial readjustment. That problem is less serious for us than it
may turn out too he for the nations which have suffered the
disarrangements and the losses of war longer than we. Our people,
moreover, do not wait to be coached and led. They know their own
business, are quick and resourceful at every readjustment, definite in
purpose, and self-reliant in action. Any leading strings we might seek
to put them in would speedily become hopelessly tangled because they
would pay no attention to them and go their own way. All that we can do
as their legislative and executive servants is to mediate the process of
change here, there, and elsewhere as we may. I have heard much counsel
as to the plans that should be formed and personally conducted to a
happy consummation, but from no quarter have I seen any general scheme
of "reconstruction" emerge which I thought it likely we could force our
spirited business men and self-reliant laborers to accept with due
pliancy and obedience.
While the war lasted we set up many
agencies by which to direct the industries of the country in the
services it was necessary for them to render, by which to make sure of
an abundant supply of the materials needed, by which to check
undertakings that could for the time be dispensed with and stimulate
those that were most serviceable in war, by which to gain for the
purchasing departments of the Government a certain control over the
prices of essential articles and materials, by which to restrain trade
with alien enemies, make the most of the available shipping, and
systematize financial transactions, both public and private, so that
there would be no unnecessary conflict or confusion,-by which, in short,
to put every material energy of the country in harness to draw the
common load and make of us one team in the accomplishment of a great
task. But the moment we knew the armistice to have been signed we took
the harness off. Raw materials upon which the Government had kept its
hand for fear there should not be enough for the industries that
supplied the armies have been released and put into the general market
again. Great industrial plants whose whole output and machinery had been
taken over for the uses of the Government have been set free to return
to the uses to which they were put before the war. It has not been
possible to remove so readily or so quickly the control of foodstuffs
and of shipping, because the world has still to be fed from our
granaries and the ships are still needed to send supplies to our men
overseas and to bring the men back as fast as the disturbed conditions
on the other side of the water permit; but even there restraints are
being relaxed as much as possible and more and more as the weeks go by.
Never before have there been agencies in existence in this country
which knew so much of the field of supply, of labor, and of industry as
the War Industries Board, the War Trade Board, the Labor Department, the
Food Administration, and the Fuel Administration have known since their
labors became thoroughly systematized; and they have not been isolated
agencies; they have been directed by men who represented the permanent
Departments of the Government and so have been the centres of unified
and cooperative action. It has been the policy of the Executive,
therefore, since the armistice was assured (which is in effect a
complete submission of the enemy) to put the knowledge of these bodies
at the disposal of the business men of the country and to offer their
intelligent mediation at every point and in every matter where it was
desired. It is surprising how fast the process of return to a peace
footing has moved in the three weeks since the fighting stopped. It
promises to outrun any inquiry that may be instituted and any aid that
may be offered. It will not be easy to direct it any better than it will
direct itself. The American business man is of quick initiative.
The ordinary and normal processes of private initiative will not,
however, provide immediate employment for all of the men of our
returning armies. Those who are of trained capacity, those who are
skilled workmen, those who have acquired familiarity with established
businesses, those who are ready and willing to go to the farms, all
those whose aptitudes are known or will be sought out by employers will
find no difficulty, it is safe to say, in finding place and employment.
But there will be others who will be at a loss where to gain a
livelihood unless pains are taken to guide them and put them in the way
of work. There will be a large floating residuum of labor which should
not be left wholly to shift for itself. It seems to me important,
therefore, that the development of public works of every sort should be
promptly resumed, in order that opportunities should be created for
unskilled labor in particular, and that plans should be made for such
developments of our unused lands and our natural resources as we have
hitherto lacked stimulation to undertake.
I particularly direct
your attention to the very practical plans which the Secretary of the
Interior has developed in his annual report and before your Committees
for the reclamation of arid, swamp, and cutover lands which might, if
the States were willing and able to cooperate, redeem some three hundred
million acres of land for cultivation. There are said to be fifteen or
twenty million acres of land in the West, at present arid, for whose
reclamation water is available, if properly conserved. There are about
two hundred and thirty million acres from which the forests have been
cut but which have never yet been cleared for the plow and which lie
waste and desolate. These lie scattered all over the Union. And there
are nearly eighty million acres of land that lie under swamps or subject
to periodical overflow or too wet for anything but grazing, which it is
perfectly feasible to drain and protect and redeem. The Congress can at
once direct thousands of the returning soldiers to the reclamation of
the arid lands which it has already undertaken, if it will but enlarge
the plans and appropriations which it has entrusted to the Department of
the Interior. It is possible in dealing with our unused land to effect a
great rural and agricultural development which will afford the best
sort of opportunity to men who want to help themselves and the Secretary
of the Interior has thought the possible methods out in a way which is
worthy of your most friendly attention.
I have spoken of the
control which must yet for a while, perhaps for a long long while, be
exercised over shipping because of the priority of service to which our
forces overseas are entitled and which should also be accorded the
shipments which are to save recently liberated peoples from starvation
and many devastated regions from permanent ruin. May I not say a special
word about the needs of Belgium and northern France? No sums of money
paid by way of indemnity will serve of themselves to save them from
hopeless disadvantage for years to come. Something more must be done
than merely find the money. If they had money and raw materials in
abundance to-morrow they could not resume their place in the industry of
the world to-morrow,-the very important place they held before the
flame of war swept across them. Many of their factories are razed to the
ground. Much of their machinery is destroyed or has been taken away.
Their people are scattered and many of their best workmen are dead.
Their markets will be taken by others, if they are not in some special
way assisted to rebuild their factories and replace their lost
instruments of manufacture. They should not be left to the vicissitudes
of the sharp competition for materials and for industrial facilities
which is now to set in. I hope, therefore, that the Congress will not be
unwilling, if it should become necessary, to grant to some such agency
as the War Trade Board the right to establish priorities of export and
supply for the benefit of these people whom we have been so happy to
assist in saving from the German terror and whom we must not now
thoughtlessly leave to shift for themselves in a pitiless competitive
market.
For the steadying, and facilitation of our own domestic
business readjustments nothing is more important than the immediate
determination of the taxes that are to be levied for 1918, 1919, and
1920. As much of the burden of taxation must be lifted from business as
sound methods of financing the Government will permit, and those who
conduct the great essential industries of the country must be told as
exactly as possible what obligations to the Government they will be
expected to meet in the years immediately ahead of them. It will be of
serious consequence to the country to delay removing all uncertainties
in this matter a single day longer than the right processes of debate
justify. It is idle to talk of successful and confident business
reconstruction before those uncertainties are resolved.
If the
war had continued it would have been necessary to raise at least eight
billion dollars by taxation payable in the year 1919; but the war has
ended and I agree with the Secretary of the Treasury that it will be
safe to reduce the amount to six billions. An immediate rapid decline in
the expenses of the Government is not to be looked for. Contracts made
for war supplies will, indeed, be rapidly cancelled and liquidated, but
their immediate liquidation will make heavy drains on the Treasury for
the months just ahead of us. The maintenance of our forces on the other
side of the sea is still necessary. A considerable proportion of those
forces must remain in Europe during the period of occupation, and those
which are brought home will be transported and demobilized at heavy
expense for months to come. The interest on our war debt must of course
be paid and provision made for the retirement of the obligations of the
Government which represent it. But these demands will of course fall
much below what a continuation of military operations would have
entailed and six billions should suffice to supply a sound foundation
for the financial operations of the year.
I entirely concur with
the Secretary of the Treasury in recommending that the two billions
needed in addition to the four billions provided by existing law be
obtained from the profits which have accrued and shall accrue from war
contracts and distinctively war business, but that these taxes be
confined to the war profits accruing in 1918, or in 1919 from business
originating in war contracts. I urge your acceptance of his
recommendation that provision be made now, not subsequently, that the
taxes to be paid in 1920 should be reduced from six to four billions.
Any arrangements less definite than these would add elements of doubt
and confusion to the critical period of industrial readjustment through
which the country must now immediately pass, and which no true friend of
the nation's essential business interests can afford to be responsible
for creating or prolonging. Clearly determined conditions, clearly and
simply charted, are indispensable to the economic revival and rapid
industrial development which may confidently be expected if we act now
and sweep all interrogation points away.
I take it for granted
that the Congress will carry out the naval programme which was
undertaken before we entered the war. The Secretary of the Navy has
submitted to your Committees for authorization that part of the
programme which covers the building plans of the next three years. These
plans have been prepared along the lines and in accordance with the
policy which the Congress established, not under the exceptional
conditions of the war, but with the intention of adhering to a definite
method of development for the navy. I earnestly recommend the
uninterrupted pursuit of that policy. It would clearly be unwise for us
to attempt to adjust our programmes to a future world policy as yet
undetermined.
The question which causes me the greatest concern
is the question of the policy to be adopted towards the railroads. I
frankly turn to you for counsel upon it. I have no confident judgment of
my own. I do not see how any thoughtful man can have who knows anything
of the complexity of the problem. It is a problem which must be
studied, studied immediately, and studied without bias or prejudice.
Nothing can be gained by becoming partisans of any particular plan of
settlement.
It was necessary that the administration of the
railways should be taken over by the Government so long as the war
lasted. It would have been impossible otherwise to establish and carry
through under a single direction the necessary priorities of shipment.
It would have been impossible otherwise to combine maximum production at
the factories and mines and farms with the maximum possible car supply
to take the products to the ports and markets; impossible to route troop
shipments and freight shipments without regard to the advantage
or-disadvantage of the roads employed; impossible to subordinate, when
necessary, all questions of convenience to the public necessity;
impossible to give the necessary financial support to the roads from the
public treasury. But all these necessities have now been served, and
the question is, What is best for the railroads and for the public in
the future?
Exceptional circumstances and exceptional methods of
administration were not needed to convince us that the railroads were
not equal to the immense tasks of transportation imposed upon them by
the rapid and continuous development of the industries of the country.
We knew that already. And we knew that they were unequal to it partly
because their full cooperation was rendered impossible by law and their
competition made obligatory, so that it has been impossible to assign to
them severally the traffic which could best be carried by their
respective lines in the interest of expedition and national economy.
We may hope, I believe, for the formal conclusion of the war by treaty
by the time Spring has come. The twenty-one months to which the present
control of the railways is limited after formal proclamation of peace
shall have been made will run at the farthest, I take it for granted,
only to the January of 1921. The full equipment of the railways which
the federal administration had planned could not be completed within any
such period. The present law does not permit the use of the revenues of
the several roads for the execution of such plans except by formal
contract with their directors, some of whom will consent while some will
not, and therefore does not afford sufficient authority to undertake
improvements upon the scale upon which it would be necessary to
undertake them. Every approach to this difficult subject-matter of
decision brings us face to face, therefore, with this unanswered
question: What is it right that we should do with the railroads, in the
interest of the public and in fairness to their owners?
Let me
say at once that I have no answer ready. The only thing that is
perfectly clear to me is that it is not fair either to the public or to
the owners of the railroads to leave the question unanswered and that it
will presently become my duty to relinquish control of the roads, even
before the expiration of the statutory period, unless there should
appear some clear prospect in the meantime of a legislative solution.
Their release would at least produce one element of a solution, namely
certainty and a quick stimulation of private initiative.
I
believe that it will be serviceable for me to set forth as explicitly as
possible the alternative courses that lie open to our choice. We can
simply release the roads and go back to the old conditions of private
management, unrestricted competition, and multiform regulation by both
state and federal authorities; or we can go to the opposite extreme and
establish complete government control, accompanied, if necessary, by
actual government ownership; or we can adopt an intermediate course of
modified private control, under a more unified and affirmative public
regulation and under such alterations of the law as will permit wasteful
competition to be avoided and a considerable degree of unification of
administration to be effected, as, for example, by regional corporations
under which the railways of definable areas would be in effect combined
in single systems.
The one conclusion that I am ready to state
with confidence is that it would be a disservice alike to the country
and to the owners of the railroads to return to the old conditions
unmodified. Those are conditions of restraint without development. There
is nothing affirmative or helpful about them. What the country chiefly
needs is that all its means of transportation should be developed, its
railways, its waterways, its highways, and its countryside roads. Some
new element of policy, therefore, is absolutely necessary—necessary for
the service of the public, necessary for the release of credit to those
who are administering the railways, necessary for the protection of
their security holders. The old policy may be changed much or little,
but surely it cannot wisely be left as it was. I hope that the Con will
have a complete and impartial study of the whole problem instituted at
once and prosecuted as rapidly as possible. I stand ready and anxious to
release the roads from the present control and I must do so at a very
early date if by waiting until the statutory limit of time is reached I
shall be merely prolonging the period of doubt and uncertainty which is
hurtful to every interest concerned.
I welcome this occasion to
announce to the Congress my purpose to join in Paris the representatives
of the governments with which we have been associated in the war
against the Central Empires for the purpose of discussing with them the
main features of the treaty of peace. I realize the great inconveniences
that will attend my leaving the country, particularly at this time, but
the conclusion that it was my paramount duty to go has been forced upon
me by considerations which I hope will seem as conclusive to you as
they have seemed to me.
The Allied governments have accepted the
bases of peace which I outlined to the Congress on the eighth of
January last, as the Central Empires also have, and very reasonably
desire my personal counsel in their interpretation and application, and
it is highly desirable that I should give it in order that the sincere
desire of our Government to contribute without selfish purpose of any
kind to settlements that will be of common benefit to all the nations
concerned may be made fully manifest. The peace settlements which are
now to be agreed upon are of transcendent importance both to us and to
the rest of the world, and I know of no business or interest which
should take precedence of them. The gallant men of our armed forces on
land and sea have consciously fought for the ideals which they knew to
be the ideals of their country; I have sought to express those ideals;
they have accepted my statements of them as the substance of their own
thought and purpose, as the associated governments have accepted them; I
owe it to them to see to it, so far as in me lies, that no false or
mistaken interpretation is put upon them, and no possible effort omitted
to realize them. It is now my duty to play my full part in making good
what they offered their life's blood to obtain. I can think of no call
to service which could transcend this.
I shall be in close touch
with you and with affairs on this side the water, and you will know all
that I do. At my request, the French and English governments have
absolutely removed the censorship of cable news which until within a
fortnight they had maintained and there is now no censorship whatever
exercised at this end except upon attempted trade communications with
enemy countries. It has been necessary to keep an open wire constantly
available between Paris and the Department of State and another between
France and the Department of War. In order that this might be done with
the least possible interference with the other uses of the cables, I
have temporarily taken over the control of both cables in order that
they may be used as a single system. I did so at the advice of the most
experienced cable officials, and I hope that the results will justify my
hope that the news of the next few months may pass with the utmost
freedom and with the least possible delay from each side of the sea to
the other.
May I not hope, Gentlemen of the Congress, that in
the delicate tasks I shall have to perform on the other side of the sea,
in my efforts truly and faithfully to interpret the principles and
purposes of the country we love, I may have the encouragement and the
added strength of your united support? I realize the magnitude and
difficulty of the duty I am undertaking; I am poignantly aware of its
grave responsibilities. I am the servant of the nation. I can have no
private thought or purpose of my own in performing such an errand. I go
to give the best that is in me to the common settlements which I must
now assist in arriving at in conference with the other working heads of
the associated governments. I shall count upon your friendly countenance
and encouragement. I shall not be inaccessible. The cables and the
wireless will render me available for any counsel or service you may
desire of me, and I shall be happy in the thought that I am constantly
in touch with the weighty matters of domestic policy with which we shall
have to deal. I shall make my absence as brief as possible and shall
hope to return with the happy assurance that it has been possible to
translate into action the great ideals for which America has striven.
The importance of the speech wasn't lost on the press, which reported on it that very day. Not surprisingly, in a railroad town like Laramie, the press noted that Wilson wasn't in favor of relinquishing government control of the railroads. This had been a major feature of the war and in fact the country had nationalized the lines during the war, something it didn't have to do during World War Two. That rationalized rail transport and kept labor demands in check, but it wasn't universally popular and had some odd collateral impacts.
Colorado Midland advertisement. The Colorado Midland had seen its business dramatically expand, and then collapse, under government control. It went bankrupt in 1918 as a result.
The Boomerang was late on U.S. troops arriving in Germany. They'd already done that.
Cold and snow as in the forecast, just like the day on which I'm writing this.
The Cheyenne paper reported on the speech as well, but it was also noting the shopping frenzy of the season in a cartoon, once again giving evidence to the popular concept of the commercialization of Christmas being a recent phenomenon to be in error.
The Cheyenne paper was reporting on a royalist plot in Germany. I'm not familiar with that event, but then I'm not familiar in detail with all of the chaotic events of the immediate post war world in Germany.
Can anyone recommend a book on that?
Anyhow, this event was mentioned in a lot of newspapers at the time, and in fact the upper ranks of the German military never really lost their royalist views. Indeed, one of the often missed features of the Nazi militarization of the 1930s was a dedicated effort to wrestle control of the military away from the German aristocratic class, something that would have an overall negative impact on world events as the new officers very often indeed had Nazi loyalties, where as the old officer class was loyal principally to its own class. Neither situation was great, obviously, but Nazi loyalties were obviously worse.
The paper in Cheyenne also reported that the Bolsheviks in Russia were up to no good, which indeed was true.
The Casper paper also reported on the plot in Germany but a preview of coming attractions was given in the report of a shooting at the Midwest Hotel in Casper. Casper's population had exploded during the war and an old red light district had expanded into a major feature of the town, the legendary Sand Bar district. The Midwest Hotel was literally right on the boundary of the district.
The papers at that time typically wrote headlines in this frankly racist fashion. Violence in the Sand Bar was hardly confined to one race, but when African Americans were involved in it, their race was featured, as here, in the headline all too often.
Of course, with the war now over (save for in Russia) a lot was going on elsewhere. . .
RMS Mauretania in New York City with American aviators and other
troops returning from Europe after World War I on December 2, 1918.
The rather shocking speed at which the United States demobilized in 1918-1919 is demonstrated by the above. The RMS Mauretania brought home more than aviators, it also brought home ground troops, who disembarked in New York. The U.S. was already bringing soldiers home. Indeed, the American military was clearing out of the United Kingdom as quickly as possible.
There are a lot of reasons that this was the case, but it shows the old line about the Vietnam War, often said about World War Two, may not be fully informed. That classic assertion is that at the end of the Second World War there was a long stay in Europe or Asia followed by a long sea voyage home where as during the Vietnam War you were just brought home and dumped off. There's something to that, but at least at the end of World War One the U.S. was speeding some troops home. These guys would not be in uniform long.
Of course, that says nothing really about what happened during the second war. There were a lot of U.S. mistakes made in regard to everything in World War One, and things may very well have been different some twenty plus years later.
Graves Registration Service This skirmish line (detail of Company A, 321 Labor Battalion) is searching for bodies along the south bank of the Vesle River, near Bazoches. The stretchers are used to transport the bodies to the cemetery. December 2, 1918
Not everyone was coming right home, of course. Over 1,000,000 U.S. troops in France were going into Germany for occupation duty.
And some American soldiers were never coming home. These photographs show the grim details of a Grave Registration unit at work. Note that this unit is all black, showing how the inclination to assign black troops to service units was there during World War One. More black troops served in service units than in combat units in the Great War, a trend that would continue on into World War Two when almost all black troops were in service units until the end of the war, when that policy in the still segregated Army was reversed (the Marines didn't take in black enlistees at all until mid World War Two). During WWI there were black combat units including some state units with mostly black officers, however, so things actually were somewhat more equitable in WWI than they became by WWII.
One of the trenches ready for the reception of the bodies at the cemetery at Fère-en-Tardenois
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Signal Corps, U.S.A.
Some of those troops who would be coming home were convalescing in England and France. Here, some of those in the UK put on a show for local residents, who seemed to enjoy it, but must have found it odd after their own sons and daughters had been serving for a full four years in many instances.
This soldier in a wheelchair is supposed to be a tank. Note he's holding a M1917 revolver, no doubt removed from the holster of the soldier who is pushing him.
