Conversations] [applause] from the colby military writers symposium Michael Beckerman describes the change in american sentiment during the two years of the sinking of the loose in the in 1915 and the u. S. Joining world war i. Lets get started with the next presentation, folks. I teach military history here and i am very happy today to introduce my friend Michael Neilberg who is professor of history and the inaugural chair and war studies at the u. S. Army war college. Before that, he taught at the air force academy and then at university of southern mississippi. He writes widely on both world wars. He is recipient of numerous prizes and honors for his work such as the tomleson prize for the best english language booshgs in world war i, a book on the second battle of the mar, and the choice outstanding academic title award for fighting great war or american history. He has edited a number of important collections like arms of the man, reference works like the atlas of world war i and the great war reader. Dance of the furies, europe and the outbreak of world war i, the end of world war ii and the remaking of europe and the blood of freeman, the liberation of paris 1944 are his books. And making citizen soldiers, rotc and American Military service. In his free time, he is a self described service to a dog and three cats and a fan of all pittsburgh sports teams and Bruce Springste psteepringsteen. The book he is working on now traces our nations correspondence from ambivalence to belligerence showing how it became a moment of National Determination for us. Lets welcome dr. Michael neilberg. Thank you, reina and everybody. Thank you everyone for our effort. What i want to do is talk about the preequal to what jennifer talked about an hour earlier. I want totalk about how the United States got involved in the awwar and what the United States did to set the situation genitjennifer talked about. Jennifer and i were trained by the same dissertation advisor and look at things from the ground up. That is not saying politicians are necessarily representative of what american is doing. And this is especially the situation with wilson who only won because the Republican Party split and won the next election by a decision so raiser thin wilson went to bed that night thinking he had lost. What i want to do is talk about the prewar period. I dont know what any of you learned. But i learned nothing of consequence about this time period in high school, in college, or graduate school. I was taught it sinks and we go into the war two years later. Obviously there is something more going on. What i want to do is show what that something more is. I want to do one prelude in response to jennifers talk which is to say that once the war begins i think there is a very different dynamic going in the United States. Some of the things jennifer talked about were war time patterns that are not patterns from this period i am showing you. I want to take you on the journey of Walter Hines Paige who was a supporter of Woodrow Wilson and used his newspapers in North Carolina and others to support him in 1912. Paige had a front row seat for what was going on in europe. When world war i broke out, paige wrote wilson a letter saying now i thank god for the atlentantic ocean. Thank god we are out of it. Just over a year later, in october of 1915 he wrote this if germany wins, the Monroe Doctrine will be shot through. We shall have a great army and navy and walter paige meant that negatively. He meant the United States will have to spend a lot of money on something the americans have never spent money on. He said we will have to decide if we want to build one battleship or one university a month. Spending money on Something Like this was something americans never had to do but the war might force us to do it and that would be a bad thing. Suppose if england wins, we should have an academic dispute with her. It is a matter of life or death for english civilization. So i want to take you on the journey of we are out of it to it is life or death. I could have picked the American Ambassador to france and germany who said similar things but in the summer of 1916 he came to washington demanding to meet with wilson. Wilson ducked him so paige went to his summer home on the coast of new jersey and literally waited on the president s front porch because he felt wilson had to acknowledge something he was trying to ignore. I want to take you on that journey. What is happening in america from 19141917 because Walter Hines Paige is an ahead of this. What makes us go from thank god we are out of it to life or death. The story of the First World War in the United States if we know anything about it we know a lot of half truths. A lot of the work i did on the first and Second World War is getting a look at what the myths were and one is the American People were not paying attention to the war in european. I would like to expode that right away. This is from what was then the pittsburgh gazette. It is an advertisement for the work of richard davis. He was a good friend of roosevelt and covered the spanish war. Very famous guy. As soon as the war broke out, he was in mexico when the broke out. He got on the first ship to new york and then the first ship to europe in order to get to europe and start covering the war. Americans were paying attention to this war from the very beginning. They knew this was the single most important event that was likely to happen in their life time. They knew it was already affecting them directly. When the war broke out, the United States had no way to control the transfer of gold. The american currency is based in gold. European countries began selling stocks in new york city, taking the cash, converting it to gold and taking it out och the United States. If that continued, the United States would have run out of gold. The United States government ordered new york, philadelphia and Stock Exchange close. Imagine that happening today. The war is affecting the americans from the very beginning. One thing Richard Harding davis told his readers is the news you get from Great Britain is bias, propaganda and wrong. However the basic point the british is trying to make is correct. Germany is committing terrible atrocities in new york. You dont want to believe what we american reporters have seen with our own eyes. Woodrow wilson may have given a speech in august of 1914 in which he asked the American People to remain neutral and in fact and indeed. It doesnt make very much Historical Research to realize the American People were proallied from the start. They saw austria as the aggressor. Wilson also defined american nutrality in an interesting way. He could have said it means no trade with either side which is what some socialists in the United States wanted him to do. He could have said it means you have to trade x amount of dollars with the other side. He said it allowed american corporations and the American People to behave in any way they wanted. What that means is americas heart and pocketbook were going in the same direction. Let me introduce you to another american. This is mary robert rineheart one of the most famous writers in the United States in 1914. She wrote mysteries. I read a couple books of hers, including the circular staircase which was a best seller. They are actually not very good but must have been them. She was at a gala when the editor of the saturday evening post had an offer to send her as the first female reporter into the trenches of europe and into the royal houses of austria and german an and france and the president s house. She could go to all the government houses and into the trenches themselves. Her husband stood up and forbid her from going as the story goes and mary ryanheart stood up and said quote i dont intend to let the biggest thing go by without being a part of it. I am going. Her husband demanded a 10,000 Life Insurance settlement from the post which they made for and mary went with the sum of 1,000 per dispatch. That is about 20,000 per article in todays money. An enormous money. She stayed until 1915. Her journey had the view of a lot of americans from october 1914 to march 1915 in four ways. One, her first piece she wrote before leaving said she wanted to go to europe to condemn all sides for the stupidity of allowing a war to begin over something so little. By the time she began the tour of the western front, she became convinced the allies had to win the war. It really was a war of autocratic germany fighting against democratic britain and france. They had an interest in seeing the allies win. Second, she argued Great Britain would try to draw the United States into this war. They would try through propaganda to pull the United States into the war. She argued the United States shoo should not get into the war unless the american interests were threaten. Under no circumstances should the United States go to war to rescue britain. Third, she believed that the United States should start to think about getting ready for this war. That the United States could not pretend that the war would not affect america or the United States would not get involved and she wrote a beautiful letter i will show you later about this process. And fourth, by the time she came back from the United States just before the sinking, she had determined that this war was a war of high principles and high ideals. It was a war of democracy against atocracy. They found only six editorals of americans wanted to go to war. The ship forced american to answer the question what do you want to do about the war . What should americas proper response to the war be . Some of you know, William Jennings brian who was wilsons secretary of state thought the appropriate thing was to ban americans from traveling overseas. William Jennings Brian resigned after wilson refused to go that far. She became an advocate of preparedness. It is time for the United States to get military ready, if not necessarily to fight a war but to make it Strong Enough that the europeans will infringe. The wonderful annanalogy. It is Strong Enough and powerful enough to depend itself but not enough to threaten anybody else. I am a city kid. I dont know if that is true of po pork e pines. This a cartoon from the new york tribune. This is what the germans had on their belt buckle, god is with us. The argument is the Armenian Genocide could have never been gone without the german help. They blamed german for the campaign of submarine warfare and blamed the germans for a series of events that happened in the United States in 1915 and 1916 including the attempted assassination of jp morgan, a bomb put in the Vice President s office in the Capitol Building by that same person, two diplomats were pushed out, and the last chancellor of germany, and the detonation in new jersey which was then the worst act of terrorism in United States history only surpassed by the act of september 11th. There are claims they were trying to buy newspapers. There were allegations to prove there is no new idea there is allegations the germans were trying to rig the elections and they were behind pancho villas raid in 1916. There is a wonderful cops and robbers story about falling a sleep on the elevated train line, woke up and realized he was at the wrong stop and jummed out of the elevated card and the American Secret Service agent trailing him grabbed his brute case and is running down the detroit with his gun trying to flag down a taxi and the papers show the German Government voufb involvement to disrupt the american industry. The u. S. Government for reasons i would be happy to talk about in question and answer didnt do much because of the partnership between republicans and democrats and two different wings of the Republican Party and the fact it was a president ial election here and nobody wanted to talk about a war that didnt have any answers. So what happened is this movement called prepared ness which was mostly led by private citizens. Not too far from here was the most famous showcased answer of this where young men voluntarily paid money and gave up their summer to go to a faux military Training Camp supported by people like roosevelt and leonard wood to train those men into becoming officers. Nobody thought these camps would train young men to be officers. The point was to shame Woodrow Wilson into doing something at the federal level. This movement therefore became a private movement. American citizens on their own accord are saying if the American Government wont get us ready for war we will do it ourselves. A third industrial named paul evans led a movement and was head of the one of the great railroads that raised enough money so if men wanted to go get military training they had a fund they would pay their salaries while they did it. He led charity movements in philadelphia to repair and replace buildings destroyed in belgium and help out french and polish charities. There was an organization to get scientists organizationed. The famous Mayo Community forld prepared. Columbia university sent out a memo to over member of the faculty explaining the gstaff situation and asking every professor at columbia to identity where on that system their services could best help the country in an emergency. In 1960 every member of the faculty agreed to put their name on the list. This is an add from at t in the fall of 1915 that says we are prepared. In the little semi circle that is paul revere 1775. The Bigger Picture is the United States army staff officer and behind him is a map that says the Bell Telephone system. And the text reads in part in preparedness to inform citizens of National Need the United States stands alone. It can command the entire Bell Telephone system which covers our country with its network of wires. The corporations will be the new paul revers. For reasons i would be lapy to discuss in q and a in 1916 this Preparedness Movement at the government level only produced half measures. A slightly larger navy, an rotc program created and a lot of parades. The debate remained. How to be neutral and safe from what american americans began to describe as the fire in yourneryour neighbors house. There were people who pled germanys case. This is a really interesting man born in germany, came to the United States and became a professor at harvard. One of the most famous and well known professors in the United States in this time period. He was an early advocate and developer of criminal psychology. That is trying to get at the psychological causes of crime. Very famous, interesting and influenced all kind of things and learned he was an indirect influence on the creation of wonder woman as well. He was an enormous supporter of the new media of cinema. He had written many articles before world war i urging the German Government to put on less military poster and show more of germanys scientific and education facets and especially their superiority in cinema. He began writing open letters to president wilson and a quick book called america and the war in which he argued the war began because germany was trying to take away russia was trying to take away some of germanys weal wealth. In the Boston Library there is correspondence telling him you need to shut up. You have the right to say what you will say but you need to under how much harm this is causing harvard and the u. Nobody agrees with this. We dont agree with you. You need to stop doing this. He kept. Letters from all kinds of people in the boston public library. Second was munsterberg recognition that germans born in germany living in the United States like himself defended germany but german americans sided with the