Where else are you able to have face time with historians such as we have here . It is one of the great delights of such an experience, which leads me to the opportunity to introduce jennifer keene, not only a specialist in American Military history in world war i but extraordinary educator and lifetime friend of the museum and its mission. Jennifer spent some time in australia. She was reminiscing about being kangaroosy crowds of while she was there, so we have a lot in common. She has published widely on the american involvement in world ar i, including, doughboys world war i and the remaking of states, and the united and the first world war. She is also the lead author for an American History textbook, visions of america, that uses a visual approach to teaching students u. S. History. Jennifer has received numerous awards for her scholarships, including a fulbright to france and australia in the membership of the library of congress scholarships and international studies. Theres much we could say about jennifer, but most significantly is her work in understanding the impact in the United States of world war i. President of the society of military history, longtime advisor to the museum. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming dr. Jennifer keene. [applause] this will be my first test. Welcome to the museum. Welcome to the museum. It is always a pleasure to speak here. Im especially pleased with the way our talks were scheduled because i think what i have to withhat feels nicely davids presentation which was focused on the difference america made in the war. And my talk this morning is going to do the flip side of that which is to think about the impact of the war on america especially to think about the impact of the war on the men who fought for the United States. Consequently, that is the title of my presentation. In some respects, they were also reflected in some of the experiences american soldiers had. We have already heard about the complicated path by which america came to realize it would need to send troops overseas and increasingly realized it needed to send significant troops overseas. They United States did prepare from the immediate entry for the possibility of needing to send those troops. The question became in may and june of 1917 how to best secure this army. Praised the large force america would eventually need to send to europe. And we have all seen this poster, the iconic image that comes out of the first world war. And we probably all know that in may of 1917 the United States past the conscription act. It seems clear the United States has given the government the power it needs to raise a large force through the draft. There was a short window in which men could volunteer for the army. When the draft was organized, until middecember of 1917, it was possible for men to volunteer. There were hopes this might be enough to raise the force america needed. They certainly hoped they would fill the National Guard units and maybe some extras as well. Of the iconic imagery we see when we look at propaganda posters connected to military enlistment deal with the early time when there is hope we can raise a large number of volunteers. I wanted to talk about this for a second because i think its important to take a look at these posters and some of the letters of men who volunteered to get a sense of what was motivating them. And what they actually perceived military service to mean. These images are interesting because in some respects, especially this one on the right hand side, you can see an appeal to traditional notions that military service represents a way to show your masculinity. It is a way for you to join with your community and its also clearly a patriotic act. This one on the right where we have this man hiding in the shadows with his back turned to his community, he is honest ashamed and needing to seclude himself from the others marched sunlight inbright uniform, proudly on display for all to see. I dont want what im about to say next to dissuade anyone from believing that men who volunteered were unpatriotic or not believing in the war cause. But i think we are remiss if we dont expand upon this portrait and think about other motivations that people might have had for volunteering. This is important to understand because it has always been my argument that the first world wars significance in American History is because it defines what it will mean to serve in the military for the 20th century. I wanted to talk about a 26yearold who enlists in pittsburgh and leaves a 23yearold wife at home. Is clearly he somebody who couldve gotten out of the draft because he was married. There are many wonderful sets of letters here at the national museum. I work at chapman university. We also have a center for american war letters there. This correspondence comes from one of our collections. And we happen to have both sides of the correspondence. We have his letters to his wife and his wifes letters back to him. What is quite interesting is from the very beginning, while they talk about the hope that he will survive the war and certainly about their dedication to the cause, what they also talk about a lot is their financial future. And the ways they expect his military service to improve their lives postwar, that in many respects they are seeing the benefits that military service and especially Wartime Service will give them as a way war in a higher place in the socioeconomic ladder than they had begun. They strategize about this in some interesting ways. They are not just making this up. We have many propaganda posters aimed at soldiers extolling the benefits of military service. This is one image i pulled out from a larger poster. Hang on. There we go. In terms of thinking about gathering the fruit, the positive things the military can give you. There are things like confidence, ambition that , military service is in a sense going to be a school that will give you the traits and determination to succeed not just in the military but in your civilian life as well. The wartime environment also gives her a way to contribute to this Bright Future. Surprising because we always think of women as having to right for the right to work during the war. He is writing to her encouraging her to get a wartime job and to hold out for one that is going to pay well. And she has an interesting womaning as a 23yearold looking for work as she is appalled to realize she will be paid less than a man for doing the same job. She gets a job securing speakers for the bureau of public speaking. These are the men who go out and talk. She is required by him to constantly send budgets about how she is spending her money and how much she is saving. She in turn is writing back to him and saying you should try really hard to become an officer because this will be a great job reference for you when you get out of the service. This is a motif we can see in this poster. The whole point of the poster is to encourage soldiers to work for an Honorable Discharge. Behave yourself, listen to your commanders, do what you are supposed to do. You will also have this Honorable Discharge you can present to employers after the war. Intangibles, im going to work hard to get commissioned, there is also an interesting way in which they talk about something that david mentioned. Keep going. There we go. Which is liberty bonds. Aboutquite rightly talked in the macro picture what this means in terms of financing the war effort. But for this couple, these are investments for them. And they talk about the importance of lucille taking half their earnings and putting it into liberty bonds. This becomes a way to think about their financial future, securing it through Investment Opportunity that the military is offering. These are posters that emphasize two people to lend your money to the government. Certainly, it is a patriotic thing to do, but there is some selfinterest as well. The u. S. Treasury will pay you interest every six months. This one is my absolute favorite. It makes me wish i could buy a liberty bond at 4 interest. That is great. You could see right away that this is motivation. The lovely part of this is people do not have to choose. It is clearly the patriotic thing to do. You are encouraged to do it. At the same time you could be , saving for this Bright Future and the government is going to help you. This is going to be important because as we know, when the war turns out not to make peoples lives better and especially not to make their financial situation better, there will be a strong disillusionment of veterans coming home and this will animate a lot of their postwar crusades for compensation from the government. It is hard for us to understand why this becomes a critical thing for veterans after the war if we dont take into account the ways in which the government is raising these expectations as men come in. We continue to look at military service as a way you can in fact improve your life and end up in a better position when you leave the service and a lot of that general sentiment begins with the first world war. Another important component in terms of the expectations people have about what the wars going to do and how it is going to go comes from the actual way america raises the bulk of its forces. That is through conscription. The United States will raise 72 throughrmy conscription. The majority will not to volunteer even if they come in with the same expectations. I keep saying the draft and construction. But i suppose as many of you know, that is not what the draft is called in the first world war. The government is careful to rebrand the draft. There were a lot of bad connotations. People did remember the draft riots in 1863. They were concerned there would be objections to raising the bulk of the forces to conscription. Because there was still a significant portion of the American Population still unsure about this war, to immediately institute a draft gave the impression that you were forcing an unwilling country against its will into this conflict. Progressives are good rebrand ers. Draft, they call it what we still call it Selective Service. ,isnt that better . To be selected rather than drafted. I would like to be selected. This is an important reframing of what is going on. The Selective Service act and process is presented as a process in which all men are eligible for some form of service to the nation. Between the first draft in 1917, and then in 1918 it goes out to it is claimed every man has a 45. Responsibility to the nation and that is demonstrated through registering for the draft. When you register, it will be the local boards who make a determination about who is best serving the war effort in the military and whose best serving it by remaining at home and working in the economy. All those homefront activities also contributing to the war. Everybody has to render service. The question is where you are selected to be placed. This will also become a very important thing returning veterans will come back to at the end of the war because a lot of that rationale is quickly discarded in a postwar period by the government. They want to remind the government of what it claimed. Sense that get the all men in the draft eligible age range are required to render their service, we can see this rationale being explained through the process by which the draft worked. Unlike in the civil war were the draft had been an individual process, individual men filled , andrforms in their homes the way it is now when you fill it out when you reach a certain age. There were two National Registration days. A day wheres was every man of the draft eligible ages would go to their polling places and in full view of their friends and neighbors would register for the draft. There were parties. There were celebrations. You can get kind of a sense of this poster, which is making it a patriotic festive day. The day all these men show up at the same time to register. Of course it was also a way to those men who did not show up and gave local communities the ability to publish their names in the newspaper and to enlist the community and exerting peer pressure on men to comply with Selective Service regulations. I did a project where i looked at a bunch of newspapers just to get a sense of how did this play out in communities throughout the nation. This is a chain newspaper. The one on the left is harrisburg, pennsylvania. This one is san bernardino. You can see this beautiful graphic around the front page where you have men standing in line and you can tell from their hats they come from all different walks of life. The closer they get to uncle sam , they are literally running. They cant wait to hand in their draft registration cards to him. Im afraid to click this. As you can see here in the center of this image, you have the cartoon. And then you have photographic evidence in case you doubted this was happening. These are men lined up in order to hand in their draft registration cards. My alltime favorite is this chicagoch comes from which i think sums it up exactly , right. Patriots will register gladly. All others must. That is exactly right. And the cartoon in the center is because itctive here shows once again that you come in from all walks of life. Those of you who have seen a lot of british propaganda see this as plagiarizing from that famous poster step into line, which shows lots of hats and men from British Society as they march off in the distance. This is exactly what is happening in the top of this. You come in different. You are registered. Off you walk and you look like the men in the early propaganda poster. The part i want to Pay Attention through is this one down here at the bottom. It is hard for you to read. This is a judge speaking sternly to the draft dodgers, the men who did not sign up. He tells them, you are going to spend a year in jail, thats your punishment for not registering. And then, you will be drafted. , but you willed be put on ships in a noncombatant job. You will be a laboring troop for the duration of the war. What is interesting is that this is june of 1917. And the conception of what it will mean to be in the military is still very much that being in the military means fighting on the western front. It means being a combat soldier, it means learning how to fight. But the reality for it is 60 of the men who served will serve in noncombatant roles. Some of these will be highly technical jobs. Some laboring jobs. Being a noncombatant does not mean youre not exposed to danger. Primary response billy is not to fight on the western front you have other things you and are doing. You can see in a cartoon like this that you were somebody by putting that in a noncombatant role, youre not actually elevating this to the status or preparing them for the reality that many of them will not get anywhere near the western front. When david was talking about the problems america has in the supply lines and logistics, that is absolutely true from an organizational standpoint and also true from a morale standpoint. Many men are not prepared for the reality of what their contribution is going to be for the war effort. They know these are not going to be the contributions that are honored when they come back to the country. This is setting up a lot of problems for the military and for the military in the future. We can imagine the scenario, and these are africanamerican soldiers who are men, like the majority of american soldiers who came from workingclass or rural backgrounds, never expected in their life to go further than 40 miles from the place they were born. They were now drafted into the military. They see parts of america they have never seen. They go to new york city and see a city they have never seen. They get on a ship. Maybe never have been on this kind of voyage before. They make it overseas. They arrive in france. For many African American soldiers not only , africanamerican soldiers, they arrive in france and this is what they see. Again david gave us a nice view , coming in. This is a portrait of when they arrive. And they see this. And this is the reality of america sending tons of munition and aid overseas. This is the reality of an industrialized war. For many soldiers, this is as far as they get in france. And when we look at what their work looks like, we can see that it looks like they are laborers, that they are not being treated like soldiers. They are not told to act like soldiers. In many senses, it looks like a typical Factory Assembly line outside as these boxes are coming off of the ship. It might be hard to see, but even the way that this whole picture is staged is so revealing of africanamericans experiences in the first world war. This soldier here has his uniform on. But over his uniform he has work overalls. He is literally ring dressed as a worker. Of course, the man supervising him is white. So the racial hierarchy is in place. Labor, drafted for their not made to feel like a soldier at all. The intent was for the war to change very little when it came to american Race Relations. There are some things that are different here. Not just the fact of being in france and coming into contact with white french who treat them like americans for the first time. There are opportunities africanamerican soldiers take to organize collective protests while they are in the United States and overseas. What occurs is often to have educated africanamericans come in contact with uneducated africanamericans. You just need a few people in a unit who can write well to organize letterwriting campaigns, petitions ways to , send your grievances higher up the chain of command to send your reports to africanamerican newspapers and civil rights organizations to make clear the abuses that are existing. And then of course, there are efforts by African American soldiers to arm themselves in france to protect themselves from racial attacks by white soldiers. When we start thinking about a different impact the war would have on American Society namely the impact on the civil rights movement, i would urge you not to think about africanamericans veterans waiting until they got home to participate in civil rights protest. In fact, faced with this situation, there were many units that organized and protested while they were in uniform. The fact they were behind the lines gave them the time and ability to do this. In that sense, when they come back home to civilian society they are ready to go. , they are already politicized and ready to join the naacp, which they do in large numbers. Of course, this is contested and what you might expect. I want to to give you two examples of activism on the part of american soldiers was going to be contested. One example comes from another soldiers letter collection, a white soldier from dallas texas. He was in the 36th division. He has a terrible war experience. He is in a Field Artillery unit but is constantly getting sick. He has trench foot. Three bouts of influenza. He is in and out of the hospital constantly. He makes it to the end of the war and writes his last letter to his family say you can expect me in three weeks when he gets his last bout of influenza and he never makes it home. A lot of his letters are about his health problems. Let his letters are also about his own personal battle. And he feels in many ways that he is fighting a personal battle to maintain the color line in france. His letters are full of his battles with hospital administrators who keep putting him next to africanamerican soldiers when he goes into the hospital. I wanted to read you one excerpt from a letter he writes to his mother about a fight he had with his supervisor. Badrites, he gave me a between two negroes. After he moved me, he said you sure are particular. I said im from texas. In the mess hall, i had the same trouble. One sat next to me and i moved. One man who is in charge asked me where i was going, i said to another table. He says you may as well get used to it now as opposed to later. I said no i wouldnt. I gave that quote two weeks ago at a different conference. I put the emphasis on his insistence of making this his own personal crusade. Somebody asked me. Its interesting what the man is telling him get used to it. What is his perspective . Why is he suggesting that he should change his mind at all . I think this is an interesting way to look at that letter. It gives a sense that there is an opening for there to be some changes in Race Relations and civil rights. I think there are some africanamerican soldiers who sense that as well. My second example comes from this propaganda poster, which also mimics a traditional scene you would see in many propaganda posters aimed at africanamerican as well as the white community. This is a privately produced poster. It is not produced by the government. It is seemingly innocuous because it champions patriotism, service to your nation, you have the service flag there. You can see the flags draped over the man asked rios portrait. The portrait of lincoln is quite prominent, that is a traditional in posters aimed at the African American community. In some respects, it seems like propaganda normal. Nothing really to note here. But because of the privately produced poster, these can be harder for us to find because a lot of these Companies Went out a business. They didnt stay around very long. How do we actually access them . And we have this poster because towas sent by a postmistress the postmaster general, asking him if this was the type of what we could be looking at is its kind of boring, a normal patriotic scene. It was bordering on sedition to her. Therly the point of aspirational aspects of this poster in terms of economics and the patriotic sense that we are equal, she clearly seems to find a sense of. We can see the wartime moments, politicizing people that setting but also setting up the future conflicts to come. We know 1919 is one of the worst years of racial violence in American History. Why are american soldiers fighting when it comes to politics . What are they thinking about the war and Woodrow Wilsons war . The principle that he gives americans for actually fighting . If we look at correspondence, we will see these ideas, but a lot of other ideas as well. I wanted to go back to c is the one i boxed at the top. Woodrow probably could have written this. He finally makes it to the western front and rights this rights he writes this flowery letter. That strip a couple of hundred yards wide. They separated righteousness and evil, democracy and the property. Autocracy. He has internalized the great message that Woodrow Wilson has given that this is a war for democracy against autocracy. But that is not the only message that men had from their communities and their loved ones about what the war was going to mean. I wanted to be sure that we consider the expectations men had of the war to better understand the significance that they gave it in their own lives as well as the nation at large. We had the sense of a war the war as a great adventure. I believe that many men, men and women, when they go to war, understand themselves as participating in a great historical moment. A lot of letters and diary keeping and taking pictures and scrapbooks and souvenirs. These are ways in which people are commemorating their part in this experience. Creating personal museums to attest to the role that they played. These are ways in which people as much as they think about personal implications, they think about their part in the greater sweep of history. Here you can see that this was their one chance for excitement and risk. Men really understood that. You see what the people expected of us. Think about how the process is working and the army is organizing. Clearly there are heavy community pressures being put on men. My parents wouldnt want to say after the wars over their son didnt go to the front line and now they didnt have to say it. And the last here is to see the internalization of propaganda, antigerman propaganda. The sense that germans had done terrible things, that they were uncivilized and therefore needed to be defeated so an interesting mix throughout America Society but also individual ones that meant developing for themselves. That men are developing for themselves. I wanted to talk about one other soldier. This is charles minder. He was drafted from new york city, he served as the machine gunner in the 77th position. 77th division. He represents an experience we dont talk about enough and there was a question about this yesterday. And that is the soldier who is either foreignborn or germanamerican. Soldiers who have close ties to foreign speaking immigrant communities. The army is very aware of these large numbers of immigrants coming into the military. Militarye benefits the is seemed to give, other than the earlier ones, is it is seen as a way to americanize people. And a way to take people desperate regionally, ethnically, and unify them around common ideas about what it means to be an american. And what does it mean to be . This is a question we continue to ask. One of the things it means is the ability to speak english and the ability to rally around common themes. One of the things that has to be taught to many immigrant soldiers are the icons americans celebrate as representing the best of america. The last presentation had a view of the statue of liberty, and it says to remember the statue of liberty. This is another crazy thing that happened in world war i. Somehow you felt soldiers would assimilate the importance of the symbols better if you made them stand in the shape of them. This is actually 40,000 soldiers. They are standing out in the hot son and in the shape of the statue of liberty. If you read the commentary associated with this there is this idea that the soldiers learned by standing side by side, there is the sense of National Unity and they will rally around the symbols of what this nation stands for. It can be assumed, and has to be taught. Unique position, and he is not an immigrant, he is germanamerican. He understands that he is in a wartime environment where his very ethnicity is being questioned. Clearly we have the 100 americanism drive. Also a moment where if you are german and german born, you must go down to the Police Station and register as an enemy alien. He comes from a community where he knows people who have to do this. They have to be accountable to ,he police and their movements yet he is going into the military. He also writes a ton of letters. He writes to his mother, not his wife. And in his letters, which he publishes after the war. It isks a lot about how to be a german in the American Army. He doesnt love germany. And he believes the american cause. But he has internal demons and worries he cant share with anybody he is serving with. And the biggest thing he cant share is he comes almost tormented by this idea that in combat he may inadvertently kill his uncle and cousins, who he knows are fighting on the other side. It gets to the point where he almost has a nervous breakdown on the battlefield. He writes to his mother about this moment hes providing covering fire as a machine gunner. He can see he has hit two germans on an opposing machine gunner nest. He says i have to see. He walks over to these two men and one is still alive. He looks into the mans eyes and the man looks back at him area him. He holds the mans hand and asks him, are you my uncle . The man never responds to him, closes his eyes and dies. And he writes to his mother saying of course he was not, but i kept thinking of him and my cousin is there to. The war in many respects had become a terrible nightmare. And one of the ways he tries to deal with the difficulties he has experienced because of his ethnicity and his increasing at a borns for the heart of the war is through this publication, where you can see the daytoday record of an American Private on the western front in which he publishes personal sets of correspondence and shares his antiwar views and sense about why should i be forced to show my patriotism to america by killing my relatives in germany . The kind of stands he begins to see. And the less you think by my emphasizing the importance of a noncombatant work in the American Army that i was ignoring the toll that combat did take, i wanted to talk about horns pickm, in Lawrence Pippen fights in the most famous africanamerican regiment of the war who is also haunted by his combat experiences. And he is shot in the right shoulder and never regains all full use of his right arm. He tries to write about the work, but cant express himself in words in a way that satisfies him. Sketched and painted, he decides to start painting. He has to hold his brush in his right hand and with his left hand actually move it around the canvas. Its almost a form of self therapy to paint what he has witnessed. And one of his earliest and most famous paintings takes him three years to complete. This was in the art exhibit we were talking about. World war i american art. I have talked about this painting a lot and i would say it is a thrill for me to finally see it in person. The thing is it is the motive that he feels compelled to continue to paint. Here you see the planes crashing, the german soldier actually surrendering to his unit. He has other scenes of men falling to their death. You can tell those men are wearing gas masks. He writes a lot about the suffocation he feels when forced to wear a gas mask for hours. And the devastation that he witnesses in french villages. These would be experiences that haunted him for the rest of his life. They come home and are able to share their experiences. They use either writing or art to make sense of them. As we know, there will be a significant number of men who dont make it home, and so one of the things we will see the United States do is create over seas cemeteries to house the people who died in france. Only 30 of the men who died in france are housed in these cemeteries. The government gave families the option to repatriate them home to personal cemeteries or leave them overseas in these international cemeteries. We can see debate within these families over whether or not you continue to consecrate the bodies of their sons to the great cause, or whether or not they want to return them to civilian lives in death. This became an interesting debate, and of course the creation of the tomb of the unknown soldier in washington, d. C. , which follows from similar tombs being erected in paris and london. For a long time it served as the primary site of mourning for world war i veterans. Dealing with combat and dealing with death, these were certainly things that gave significance to the war for the american soldier. I want to return to this theme i started with, this idea, this expectation that military service was going to have a personal benefit for you if you came home, that it could be a way for you to rise, and it could be away for you to gain some social mobility. Selective service was an opportunity to share the burden equally in society, not just for the men who served in the military. In both of those expectations, american soldiers were disappointed. Dwight who had all of these hopes i started with, they were going to buy a house and a car, get a better job, have savings. None of those things happened for dwight. He came back to pittsburgh, worked for the same newspaper at the same level he had left. They continue to rent. They found no material difference in their lives at all. At least, dwight came back to a job. As this cover shows, by 1919 in 1920, a lot of american soldiers came back to an economy that had fallen into recession and had a difficult time readjusting. The government gave them minimal financial help. It was very difficult to get rehabilitative services. You can see veterans getting to get angrier and angrier about the idea this promise not been fulfilled. Here is this juxtaposition, you send us off to praise and with parades and flowers in 1917, and we come home and nobody is interested in us. This would lead to a very significant moment in American History where veterans organized and started clamoring for something called the adjusted compensation certificate. Adjusted compensation goes back to the Selective Service argument. You said everybody was going to sacrifice equally. A lot of guys stayed at home and made pretty good money, especially war profiteers, who made millions from arms trades. The government, they argued, has a responsibility to actually make sure the sacrifice is shared equally. What they were asking was for a redistribution of income from war profiteers to the men who fought. So they get adjusted compensation in 1924, which in their language retroactively raised their wartime wages. Adjusted compensation, retroactively compensating them with more money for the days they were in service. In 1924, the bond payment is d bond payment is due in 20 years. All of that is fine for the veterans. It is collateral. It is life insurance. Their survivors can cash in immediately. By the depression, people are not so willing to wait for that money anymore, and we have the bonus march in 1932, which is demanding immediate payment on that adjusted compensation certificate. They dont win in this demonstration. As you probably know, they are forcibly evicted from the city. They do get it in 1936. These are going to be important things for American Society, not just because of the relative difficulty that world war i veterans have incoming home. It is not a small payment. Most veterans will end up with 1500. It is a lot of money now, and it is definitely a lot of money in the 1930s. It will be important to see how these lessons get translated into the next conflict. When we start heading into this is another point about the bonus march, one of the untold parts of the bonus march is that it is integrated. About 20 to 30 of the marchers are africanamerican. It becomes for some people as an indication that there might be some way to move forward in racial matters. When we come forward to world war ii, both of these things, this is the last point i want to make, there is this whole history and expectation that has been given to what military service will represent. Will military service represent social progress in terms of advancing Race Relations . Will military service represent individual social mobility . Will the government once again in act as Selective Service system can ensure the sacrifice is equally shared . Especially the financial sacrifice or entailed. We will see in world war ii some steps being made to make good on these promises they continue to be made, the same as in world war i. The most significant one is the g. I. Bill of rights, which is written by the american legion. These are world war i veterans who write this legislation and push it through congress with the same argument that when their sons come home from war, they should not face the same difficulties that their fathers did. The g. I. Bill, we think we know, schooling, tuition, unemployment, low cost loans, all of these benefits veterans will get are also framed in 1944 as a way to equalize the sacrifice of war so that men do not come home financially disadvantaged and sit back in their lives for doing their patriotic duty. Nod to the a expectations of the Africanamerican Community that Patriotic Service should lead to recognition and equal rights. I dont have time to talk about what happens in world war ii. Im certainly not ignoring the way in which racial violence and discrimination still dominates a segregated world war ii army, but i will point to this, which is that this kind of poster, which really puts an africanamerican, anglo looking american, and the guy in the foreground looks kind of italian to me, you would never, ever, ever have seen a poster like this in world war i. Just the fact that by world war ii you see it, and the government believes you need to see it actually represents a different conception of the kind of change that serving in the military could render for American Society. Thank you very much. [applause] we welcome questions. You spoke about the platoons tombs and cemeteries in france. How does your Research Address those who came back and survived the war not having their graves marked in a majority as to their world war i service . It is really hard for me to hear you. How does your Research Address the fact that many survivors of world war i service, regular army, regular navy, draftees, the majority of them dont seem to have their graves marked to their world war i service . That is interesting. Are you talking about in private cemeteries . I dont know actually. I would expect it is the decision of the family in terms of what they decide to put on a gravestone. It is interesting the number of world war i veterans who want to be buried in arlington. If you go to arlington, many of these veterans have passed away in the 1950s and 1960s. This is still something they see as a significant marker in their life. Because we raised 4 million men and 2 million men never leaft leave the country, you had veterans who were only in the service for a few months, so it may not have had gets in their had the same significance in their whole Life Experience that would have caused them to want to put it on their gravestone. That is Something Interesting to look into. Thank you for the talk. It was very helpful. I am working on the impact of the great war on my own small hometown in far western oregon. One thing i found there was that in addition to rebranding the draft into the Selective Service, they continued to make a big deal of the draftees. They had parades every few weeks, bands playing, local people making patriotic speeches. That really struck me. I wonder if they made the same deal for the national phenomenon. That is a great point. I emphasize the National Registration day. Because we made this quick decision to raise a large army, and the numbers we were trying to raise kept going up and up, we dont have Training Camps for these men, we dont have enough equipment, clothing, so this means you cannot just call one million men all at one time. The actual induction had to be staggered. You had communities that were constantly sending men off. It wasnt just one day. You were mobilizing small towns and cities as well constantly with parades, affairs, send the boys off with style, and it was a regular occurrence. In local newspapers, they will tell you, september 15, we are sending off, and they will list the names of the 25 guys that are going so you could talk to them, give them presence. This created a problem for the military because men would arrive in Training Camp loaded down with all of these gifts. The first thing they say is chuck it out. Immediately the men are unhappy about this. It keeps Selective Service and entering the military in the forefront of peoples minds constantly throughout the war. They made a bigger deal of the draftees than they did of the volunteers. That seems paradoxical to me. This is an interesting transformation. In the beginning, everybody is privileging the volunteer. You seem more patriotic. Volunteers get that press after get bad press after a while because people tend to volunteer for more specialized or less dangerous positions. There becomes, even within the military that the draft of man drafted man is stoically going where he needs to go, and there is maybe a month volunteers too much opportunism, that they are trying to get themselves in an advantage position. From the minute he enlists, he is patriotic, dedicated to victory, but he is trying to maneuver himself into the best position he can be in. A little bit of that. Our last question will come from this gentleman right here. Thanks. Great talk. The last time we had the draft, there were a number of allowances made in deferments that were permitted such that the composition of the conscript army having come from the lower socioeconomic portion of society. Was the conscript army in the aef a more egalitarian affair, or were the welltodo and wellconnected able to get out of service . You did not have the same ability to get out of the military service by being in college. Even being married to not automatically exempt you from the draft. What i would say is that the world war i army is definitely more representative of the Class Breakdown of American Society , again, it always depends on the year we are talking about in vietnam, so i am not going to go there. It is representative, but america is primarily a workingclass society where there is a small middle class and an even smaller upper class. The fact that america is primarily a workingclass society, it means most of the soldiers drafted are going to be workingclass. As was pointed out yesterday, because local draft boards were making the decision, it was certainly possible for people to exercise influence, but it might not be the kind of influence we would expect to see. For example, with drafting africanamericans in the south, you had examples where white landowners did not want to use their labor force, they would work out deals with the local labor board to not draft their africanamerican farm laborers or would withhold their draft notices until the harvest was in and then take them down to the Police Station and collect their reward for turning in slackers. What does this mean . When draft has to be met, a lot of poor white men are the ones who have to go. Even racism could work in this strange way to maybe be a little counterintuitive in terms of who was being picked and who wasnt. The local level meant there could be influence exerted, but overall there was a willingness on the part of upperclassmen to go. In that poster i showed you at the beginning, that is in upperclassmen. He is welldressed. Your sense of responsibility was a shared egos in American Society. Thank you very much. [applause] this weekend on the cspan networks. Tonight at 9 15 p. M. Eastern on cspan, former president ial speech writers for president mixing to obama, and sunday at 6 30 p. M. , on higher zip code impacts your health. Cspan2, tonight at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. Daily Caller News Foundation editorinchief Christopher Bedford on his book the art of the donald, lessons from americas philosopher in chief. And on sunday at 11 00 a. M. , Rebecca Fraser and her book the mayflower, the families, the voyage, and the founding of america. On American History tv on cspan3 at 8 55 p. M. Eastern. Penn State University history professor matthew rest all on the u. S. Capitolare and architectures. Sunday at 10 p. M. , the ground begins her morning for the dwight d. Eisenhower memorial in washington dc. This weekend on the cspan networks. Bookshelf history Melanie Kirkpatrick talks about her book thanksgiving, holiday at the heart of the american experience. In which she looks back four centuries to provide a history of thanksgiving. This is regarded at the Explorers Club in new york city in 2016. Its about one hour
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