OMNI
WWI, APRIL 6, 1917, US
DECLARED WAR ON GERMANY AND AUSTRIA, CONTINUATION OF ARMISTICE DAY NEWSLETTERS
(Veterans Day), NEWSLETTER #11, APRIL 6, 2017
WE, THE PEOPLE BUILDING
A CULTURE OF PEACE AND JUSTICE FOR THE PEOPLE
Compiled by Dick
Bennett
Contents
ARKANSAS
WORLD WAR I CENTENNIAL 2017:
Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette Reporting
Arkansas’ Commemoration Events
Celebrate
or Mourn?
PBS,
AETN, “American Experience: The Great War”
PBS Publicity and Dick’s Commentary
Jeff Guskey: Myths about Black/American
troops in Europe during WWI
Woodrow Wilson and War versus Democracy:
Espionage and Sedition
Acts
Acts
Peace
and Justice Heroes Against WWI
Eugene V. Debs
Jane
Addams
Alice Paul
National Woman’s Party
ACTIONS,
Resistance to US Wars (see earlier newsletters)
Commemorating
World War I Centennial in Arkansas in
the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (ADG), April
2017.
April 6, 2017, was 100 years since the United States entered WWI. Between April 2 and April 15 the state
newspaper published six articles about the centennial, of which four expressed
jubilation for the heroism and reverence for the “sacrifice” of the US troops,
one offered qualified celebration, and the sixth muted criticism. The first two manifested the militarism we
have been indoctrinated into accepting. The
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, anticipated
the Day on April 2 with a long,
illustrated (8) article entitled “War and Remembrance: State’s Centennial
Celebrations to Honor All Involved in WWI” by Jack Schnedler. It begins by declaring its intention to be
positive, to offer the “pluses,” for example to the economy, for the jobs the
war provided, and to keep the troops, the “doughboys” as they were called, “at
forefront.” There are to be festivities,
“a potpourri of events and exhibits responding to Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s
centennial call ’to commemorate, preserve and honor the courage, sacrifice and
valiant efforts of all Arkansans who served in World War I.’” A traveling exhibit, “The Great War: Arkansas
in World War I” will be set up at the Old State House Museum. The creation of the Arkansas State Archives,
the State is heavily invested in promoting the war.
Not that the actual horror of the war is
completely omitted. Mentioned are the deaths of 2,183 Arkansans,
with 1,751 “wounded or injured,” that “brought grief to families and friends in
all 75 counties.” And the “war to end
all wars” is described as “wishful thinking.”
The
Day April 6 was celebrated by the ADG
in an editorial titled “Vive les Americains!” The writer covers events leading up to
the US declaration of war and the unpromising preparations for war, until the
troops arrived in Paris on July 4, 1917, cheered by the French. Little did they know of what was ahead—from
tanks to trench foot, from trench latrines to flame throwers.
And generals. This writer observes what the others
suppressed: leaders devoid of sense and
humanity. “The generals threw their men into frontal assaults directly into
machine gun fire. Over and again. . . .What madness is this?” “All that death and cold and gas and frontal
assaults. Also ahead, the future of the
bloody century. . . .” Is the war an
occasion for festivities or lamentation?
(The two articles project tepid patriotism
compared to celebrations in Kansas City, where the nation’s official World War
I monument is located. An “eight-plane
flyover left the sky streaked with plumes of red, white and blue contrails” and
“members of the 129th Artillery Battalion fire[d] a salute” for the
“Sacrifice for Liberty and Peace.”
“…dozens of foreign ambassadors watched [as] a color guard dressed as
WWI-era doughboys present[ed] the colors,” while “short films displayed on twin
screens 25 feet tall offered documentary-style flashbacks,” and “military pomp
and recitations of writings of the period filled voids between speeches.” But this reporter did add this reminder of
the slaughter: “By the time U.S. troops
helped vanquish Germany and the conflict ended in 1918, more than 9 million
people died, including some 116,000 Americans.” (ADG April 7, 2017 from wire stories.) But even these data are softened by subtraction. Here’s Wikipedia’s more numerous count: “The total number of military and civilian
casualties in World War I was more than 38 million:
there were over 17 million deaths and 20 million wounded,
ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history.”).
On April
9 the ADG published two more
articles about WWI observances. Jake Sandlin,
“Officer in WWI Battled for State.” The
report is an upbeat, patriotic celebration of Lt. William Heber McLaughlin from
Lonoke County, who at age 35 was one of the first US soldiers wounded in
combat. Despite his severe wounds from
shrapnel, “’he refused to leave the field of battle’” from which he emerged a
decorated hero. The “’Americans brought
a new and aggressive spirit, which the Germans had difficulty coping with and
which amazed the French.’” The article
summarizes his life following the war, and gives statistics about the war. The “festivities” were sponsored by the world
War I Centennial Commemoration Committee.
“Arkansas Heritage Month in May will also focus on World War I.” And other topics.
Brandon
Mulder, “State Kicks Off WWI Observance.”
The article describes re-enactors at the beginning of the war at the
kickoff of “Arkansas and the Great War: Remembering 1917,” focusing on two
college student actors. Arkansas’
Governor Hutchinson, who had created the Arkansas World War I Centennial
Commemoration Committee, attended. We
learn also that additional events will occur “throughout the next two years to
honor Arkansas’ role in the war.”
Both articles celebrate Arkansas preparing for
and engaging in war, with brief comment by the Governor providing statistics of
deaths and wounded, and about the how the war did not produce the peace the
president and many citizens hoped for.
Finally, or at least up to April 15 (the
month of May and the next two years will provide additional events), a regular political
commentator, Prof. Emer. Hoyt Purvis, provided a column on “No War to End War?”
in which he relates his sobering visit to WWI battlefields, and comments on the
continuation of conflict to this day, putting his finger on one cause: WWI was the last war actually declared by the
US. “even though there is a long list of U.S. military conflicts and
interventions” since that time” (in his
books Killing Hope and Rogue State William Blum discusses some
40 illegal US invasions and interventions). Purvis lists a few very recent invasions and
interventions by the US. Further,
despite the heroic propaganda contributing to US going to war, the war
“certainly did not prove to be the “war to end war.” The column challenges the appropriateness of all
the “festivities” reported earlier by the newspaper, except to those credulous readers
unread in U.S. history .
AETN’S
6-HOUR DOCUMENTARY
Thanks to PBS and the Arkansas
Educational Television Network (AETN), additional thoughtfulness was provided
the citizens in a three-part, 6-hour documentary on WWI, “American Experience:
The Great War” (April 10-12). Here is
the official announcement:
The Great War
Aired April 12, 2017A nation comes of age.
Film
Description
"Detailed and entertaining...full of arresting images and
startling snippets." -- The New York Times
"Enormously absorbing" -- The Wall Street Journal
"Sprawling and engrossing" -- TV Guide
Drawing on unpublished diaries, memoirs and letters, The
Great War tells the rich and complex story of World War I through the
voices of nurses, journalists, aviators and the American troops who came to be
known as “doughboys.” The series explores the experiences of African-American
and Latino soldiers, suffragists, Native American “code talkers” and others
whose participation in the war to “make the world safe for democracy” has been
largely forgotten. The Great War explores how a brilliant PR
man bolstered support for the war in a country hesitant to put lives on the
line for a foreign conflict; how President Woodrow Wilson steered the nation
through years of neutrality, only to reluctantly lead America into the
bloodiest conflict the world had ever seen, thereby transforming the United
States into a dominant player on the international stage; and how the ardent
patriotism and determination to support America’s crusade for liberty abroad
led to one of the most oppressive crackdowns on civil liberties at home in U.S.
history. It is a story of heroism and sacrifice that would ultimately claim 15
million lives and profoundly change the world forever.
Dick’s Commentary on the film and
(or about) Helfand, Guskey, Rottmann, Remarque, Wilson, Creel, propaganda for
the war, opponents of the war, civil liberties disasters: Espionage Act and
Sedition Acts.
An article in Skeptical Inquirer (May/June 2017),
“Surviving the Misinformation Age” by David Helfand, explores the origins of present loosened standards of truth. He does not discuss the role that visual and
audial media have played, when no text is available. That is, imagine a treaty whose record is
only what people are filmed saying about it.
So I expect this film will
inspire considerable and often confusing controversy until the precise words
are in print, except for those individuals who possess exceptional memory of
eidetic imagery or hyperthymesia.
Already however PBS’ “The Great War” is
being examined by viewers who have gathered the verbatim text on specific parts
of the film. For example, Jeff
Guskey, in “How Could PBS’s ‘The Great War’ Get It So Wrong?” (Huffington Post 04/15/2017)
presents detailed corrective facts regarding myths about Black/American troops
in Europe during WWI.
My
intention for viewing the “The Great War” was particularly to see how credible
it was in presenting the justifications for US engagement in the war, the
proponents and opponents of the war, and facts about the enemy.
Of course, the enemy’s reality is not given. A more productive, hopeful peacemaking war history is the type that presents opponents in their full humanity. I am thinking of such books as Voices from the Ho Chi Minh Trail: Poetry of America and Vietnam, 1965-1993 compiled by Larry Rottmann (1993). I can’t believe US leaders would have decimated the German cities during WWII, or the North Korean cities during the Korean War, had they been able to visualize the men, women, children inhabitants. Even if the film maker or book author of “The Great War” stringently and comprehensively, critically and truthfully, reported the dark sides of “their side” of the war, as the film often seems to do, we still do not understand WWI with the “enemy” erased. Even if viewers of the film had read books like All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel by Erich Maria Remarque about trench warfare from the German perspective, we cannot judge the necessity of President Wilson’s switch from opposing to choosing war, for especially disastrous to truth is the failure of the filmmakers to investigate who started the war. Wilson denounced German evil and contrasted US (Wilson’s) noble efforts to bring democracy and peace to the world. Only the one side, however, our side, is presented.
General Pershing is shown magnificently fighting US wars of conquest against Mexicans, Cubans, Filipinos, without questioning the legality, morality, or necessity of those wars. Instead the filmmakers seek our tears from the death of his wife and children in a fire, to which he responds with grief and the discipline of a brave soldier. Attention is paid to the immense, triumphal achievement of the US arms build-up and transporting a million troops to a foreign war. But the story of one million Frenchmen and a third of a million Britons already killed is little told.
In these omissions of important contexts, the film restricts the scope and truth of its story of “The Great War.”
The film is more comprehensively contextual in telling the home front story of the harms of the war to the U.S. itself and the equally important story of opposition to the war.
U.S. democracy, liberty, the Bill of rights were significantly and permanently damaged. The film exposes the intensive, patriotic, manipulative campaign of the Wilson administration, under the extraordinarily competent direction of George Creel, to turn the public from peace to war and to sustain the war effort, particularly the draft (Creel cleverly called it “selective service”). And under Wilson and war, the Bill of Rights and civil liberties received two torpedoes whose damage remains with us today. Alleging need to maintain order to save democracy and win the peace, the Espionage and Sedition Acts curtailed First Amendment dissent and anti-war activities.
But not entirely. The film also depicts the many critics of the war (for example, Debs, Goldman, La Follette, Addams, Paul), and their struggle against the Wilson administration’s efforts to silence them. (More below). And (though barely mentioned) C0s numbered 64,000, while 3 million evaded the call to draft registration.
Nevertheless, Wilson, claiming “necessity,” armed by his Committee for “Public” Information (my quotation marks) and his criminalization of dissent, declared war even though the nation was about evenly divided.
In short, The People, massively indoctrinated and repressed, were treated as the people by the perpetrators of the colossal calamities of Wilson’s “war to end all wars.” General Pershing, ordered by Wilson to achieve victories, watched 26,277 of his soldiers die in the Battle of Argonne Forest, and 95,786 wounded. Depressed by such victories, he turned his command of the American Expeditionary Force over to his subordinates. After the Senate’s rejection of the League of Nations, Wilson became physically and mentally incompetent.
Of course, the enemy’s reality is not given. A more productive, hopeful peacemaking war history is the type that presents opponents in their full humanity. I am thinking of such books as Voices from the Ho Chi Minh Trail: Poetry of America and Vietnam, 1965-1993 compiled by Larry Rottmann (1993). I can’t believe US leaders would have decimated the German cities during WWII, or the North Korean cities during the Korean War, had they been able to visualize the men, women, children inhabitants. Even if the film maker or book author of “The Great War” stringently and comprehensively, critically and truthfully, reported the dark sides of “their side” of the war, as the film often seems to do, we still do not understand WWI with the “enemy” erased. Even if viewers of the film had read books like All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel by Erich Maria Remarque about trench warfare from the German perspective, we cannot judge the necessity of President Wilson’s switch from opposing to choosing war, for especially disastrous to truth is the failure of the filmmakers to investigate who started the war. Wilson denounced German evil and contrasted US (Wilson’s) noble efforts to bring democracy and peace to the world. Only the one side, however, our side, is presented.
General Pershing is shown magnificently fighting US wars of conquest against Mexicans, Cubans, Filipinos, without questioning the legality, morality, or necessity of those wars. Instead the filmmakers seek our tears from the death of his wife and children in a fire, to which he responds with grief and the discipline of a brave soldier. Attention is paid to the immense, triumphal achievement of the US arms build-up and transporting a million troops to a foreign war. But the story of one million Frenchmen and a third of a million Britons already killed is little told.
In these omissions of important contexts, the film restricts the scope and truth of its story of “The Great War.”
The film is more comprehensively contextual in telling the home front story of the harms of the war to the U.S. itself and the equally important story of opposition to the war.
U.S. democracy, liberty, the Bill of rights were significantly and permanently damaged. The film exposes the intensive, patriotic, manipulative campaign of the Wilson administration, under the extraordinarily competent direction of George Creel, to turn the public from peace to war and to sustain the war effort, particularly the draft (Creel cleverly called it “selective service”). And under Wilson and war, the Bill of Rights and civil liberties received two torpedoes whose damage remains with us today. Alleging need to maintain order to save democracy and win the peace, the Espionage and Sedition Acts curtailed First Amendment dissent and anti-war activities.
But not entirely. The film also depicts the many critics of the war (for example, Debs, Goldman, La Follette, Addams, Paul), and their struggle against the Wilson administration’s efforts to silence them. (More below). And (though barely mentioned) C0s numbered 64,000, while 3 million evaded the call to draft registration.
Nevertheless, Wilson, claiming “necessity,” armed by his Committee for “Public” Information (my quotation marks) and his criminalization of dissent, declared war even though the nation was about evenly divided.
In short, The People, massively indoctrinated and repressed, were treated as the people by the perpetrators of the colossal calamities of Wilson’s “war to end all wars.” General Pershing, ordered by Wilson to achieve victories, watched 26,277 of his soldiers die in the Battle of Argonne Forest, and 95,786 wounded. Depressed by such victories, he turned his command of the American Expeditionary Force over to his subordinates. After the Senate’s rejection of the League of Nations, Wilson became physically and mentally incompetent.
Jeff Guskey, MD. “How Could PBS’s ‘The Great War’ Get
It So Wrong? Huffington Post 04/15/2017.
Myths
and facts regarding Black/American troops in Europe during WWI.
WAR VERSUS DEMOCRACY: ESPIONAGE AND SEDITION ACTS
The
Espionage Act, June 15, 1917, was designed to prevent sedition in the army and acts of espionage, such as sabotage and the passing of secrets
to the enemy. Its scope was extended by the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it
possible to prosecute anyone who cast the war and the U.S. in a negative light. The Sedition Act was repealed following the
war, but the Espionage Act continues to be employed.
Espionage
and Sedition Acts of World War I. © The Oxford Companion to American Military
History, 2000,
Espionage and Sedition Acts of World War I (1917, 1918) were
the first forays since 1798 into federal regulation of First Amendment rights. These criminalizations of certain forms of
expression, belief, and association resulted in the prosecution of over 2,000
cases, but in reaction they also produced a movement to protect the civil
liberties of all Americans.
The Espionage Act (15 June 1917), enacted quickly by Congress following the U.S. declaration of war on Germany, authorized federal officials to make summary arrests of people whose opinions “threatened national security.” The measure prohibited willfully making false reports with intent to interfere with the success of the military or naval forces, inciting insubordination, disloyalty, or mutiny in the military, and obstructing recruitment or the enlistment service of the United States. Further sections authorized the Postmaster General to ban from the mails material advocating resistance to any law of the United States. This gave Post Office officials in the Wilson administration virtual dictatorial control over circulation of the nation's subsidiary press.
Realizing that the vagueness of the Espionage Act opened up opportunities for broad repression by government officials, as well as for mob violence and vigilante action, Congress augmented it with the Sedition Act on 16 May 1918. This set forth eight new criminal offenses, including uttering, printing, writing, or publishing any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language intended to cause contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrespect for the U.S. government or the Constitution.
Before its repeal in 1921, the Sedition Act led to numerous arrests, particularly of dissident radicals, but also of important figures such as the socialist leader Eugene V. Debs. The Espionage Act remained on the books to be invoked in the post–World War II period to charge certain controversial figures such as Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, accused of atomic espionage, with being a threat to the United States in the Cold War.
[See also Alien and Sedition Acts; Civil Liberties and War; Schenk and Abrams Cases.]
The Espionage Act (15 June 1917), enacted quickly by Congress following the U.S. declaration of war on Germany, authorized federal officials to make summary arrests of people whose opinions “threatened national security.” The measure prohibited willfully making false reports with intent to interfere with the success of the military or naval forces, inciting insubordination, disloyalty, or mutiny in the military, and obstructing recruitment or the enlistment service of the United States. Further sections authorized the Postmaster General to ban from the mails material advocating resistance to any law of the United States. This gave Post Office officials in the Wilson administration virtual dictatorial control over circulation of the nation's subsidiary press.
Realizing that the vagueness of the Espionage Act opened up opportunities for broad repression by government officials, as well as for mob violence and vigilante action, Congress augmented it with the Sedition Act on 16 May 1918. This set forth eight new criminal offenses, including uttering, printing, writing, or publishing any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language intended to cause contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrespect for the U.S. government or the Constitution.
Before its repeal in 1921, the Sedition Act led to numerous arrests, particularly of dissident radicals, but also of important figures such as the socialist leader Eugene V. Debs. The Espionage Act remained on the books to be invoked in the post–World War II period to charge certain controversial figures such as Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, accused of atomic espionage, with being a threat to the United States in the Cold War.
[See also Alien and Sedition Acts; Civil Liberties and War; Schenk and Abrams Cases.]
Bibliography
Harry N. Scheiber , The Wilson Administration and Civil Liberties, 1960.
Paul L. Murphy , World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States, 1979.
Harry N. Scheiber , The Wilson Administration and Civil Liberties, 1960.
Paul L. Murphy , World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States, 1979.
Paul L. Murphy
PEACE
HEROES AGAINST THE WAR
EUGENE V. DEBS
JANE ADDAMS
ALICE PAUL
NATIONAL WOMAN’S
PARTY
(Related: Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars, a history of opposition to the war in Britain: Bertrand
Russell and Emily Hobhouse; Keir Hardie and Charlotte Despard; Stephen Hobhouse
and Sylvia Pankhurst.)
EUGENE
V. DEBS
The
following is from Wikipedia
Incarceration[edit]
Debs with Max Eastman and Rose Pastor Stokes in 1918
Debs'
speeches against the Wilson administration and the war earned the enmity of
President Woodrow Wilson, who later called Debs a
"traitor to his country."[41] On June 16, 1918, Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio, urging resistance to the
military draft of World War I. He was arrested on June 30 and
charged with ten counts of sedition.[42]
 |
Wikisource has
original text related to this article:
|
His
trial defense called no witnesses, asking that Debs be allowed to address the
court in his defense. That unusual request was granted, and Debs spoke for two
hours. He was found guilty on September 12. At his sentencing hearing on
September 14, he again addressed the court, and his speech has become a
classic. Heywood Broun, a liberal journalist and not a
Debs partisan, said it was "one of the most beautiful and moving passages
in the English language. He was for that one afternoon touched with
inspiration. If anyone told me that tongues of fire danced upon his shoulders
as he spoke, I would believe it."[43]
Your honor, I have stated in this court that
I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the
social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by
perfectly peaceable and orderly means....
I am thinking this morning of the men in the
mills and factories; I am thinking of the women who, for a paltry wage, are
compelled to work out their lives; of the little children who, in this system,
are robbed of their childhood, and in their early, tender years, are seized in
the remorseless grasp of Mammon, and forced into the industrial
dungeons, there to feed the machines while they themselves are being starved
body and soul....
Your honor, I ask no mercy, I plead for no
immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never more fully
comprehended than now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one
hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom. I can see the dawn of a
better day of humanity. The people are awakening. In due course of time they
will come into their own.
When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas,
looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the Southern Cross, burning luridly above the
tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches the Southern Cross begins to
bend, and the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry
finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of Time upon the dial of the universe;
and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the look-out knows that the
midnight is passing – that relief and rest are close at hand.
Let the people take heart and hope
everywhere, for the cross is bending, midnight is passing, and joy cometh with
the morning.
Debs
was sentenced on November 18, 1918, to ten years in prison. He was also disenfranchised for life.[3] Debs presented what has been called his
best-remembered statement at his sentencing hearing:[45]
Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship
with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better
than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a
lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and
while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Debs
appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court. In its ruling on Debs v. United States,
the court examined several statements Debs had made regarding World War I and socialism. While Debs had carefully worded his
speeches in an attempt to comply with the Espionage Act, the Court found he had the
intention and effect of obstructing the draft and military recruitment. Among
other things, the Court cited Debs' praise for those imprisoned for obstructing
the draft. Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr. stated in
his opinion that little attention was needed since Debs' case was essentially
the same as that of Schenck v. United
States, in which the Court had upheld a similar conviction. . .
.
A recently published book about Debs and WWI:
Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right
to Dissent. By Ernest
Freeberg. Harvard University P, 2008.
Or
read Ray Ginger's The Bending Cross (1940) or
Nick Salvatore's life history, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and
Socialist (1982). Also see William Preston's Aliens and Dissenters (1963) or Paul
Murphy's World War I and the Origins of Civil Liberties in the United
States (1979) about federal repression of radicals and
dissenters before, during, and after the Great War.
UAF’s
Mullins Library Catalog has 19 entries; check it out. but Freeberg’s book is not there; I’ll
request purchase.
JANE ADDAMS
From
America’s Story www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/addams/aa_addams_peace_1.html
|
 |
Jane
Addams, the Peacemaker
Jane Addams was a peacemaker even when she was criticized for her views. She taught, wrote, and lectured about peace both nationally and internationally. Before World War I, Addams was probably the most beloved woman in America. In a newspaper poll that asked, "Who among our contemporaries are of the most value to the community?" Jane Addams was second, after Thomas Edison (another "Amazing American"). When she opposed America's involvement in World War I, however, newspaper editors called her a traitor and a fool, but she never changed her mind. Have you ever believed you were right about something, when most people thought you were wrong?   page 1 of 3  |
Jane Addams writes to Woodrow Wilson about dangers of
preparing ...
www.history.com/.../jane-addams-writes-to-woodrow-wilson-about-dangers-of-prepar...
On this day in History, Jane Addams writes to Woodrow Wilson about dangers of ...
When World
War broke out in the summer of 1914, President Wilson ...
ALICE PAUL and NATIONAL WOMAN’S PARTY
From the National Women’s History Museum
Alice Paul (1885-1977)
A vocal leader of the
twentieth century women’s suffrage movement, Alice Paul advocated for and
helped secure passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting
women the right to vote. Paul next authored the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923,
which has yet to be adopted. . . .
In January 1917, Paul and
over 1,000 “Silent Sentinels” began eighteen months of picketing the White
House, standing at the gates with such signs as, “Mr. President, how long must
women wait for liberty?" They endured verbal and physical attacks
from spectators, which increased after the U.S. entered World War
I. Instead of protecting the women’s right to free speech and peaceful
assembly, the police arrested them on the flimsy charge of obstructing
traffic. Paul was sentence to jail for seven months, where she organized
a hunger strike in protest. Doctors threatened to send Paul to an insane
asylum and force-fed her, while newspaper accounts of her treatment garnered
public sympathy and support for suffrage. By 1918, Wilson announced his support
for suffrage. It took two more years for the Senate, House, and the
required 36 states to approve the amendment. . . .
Afterward, Paul and the
National Women’s Party focused on the Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee women
constitutional protection from discrimination. Paul spent her life
advocating for this and other women’s issues. The ERA was ratified by 35
states in the 1970s, but by the 1982 deadline was three states short of 38
needed to become a constitutional amendment. --edited by Debra
Michals, Ph.D.
NATIONAL
WOMAN’S PARTY AND WWI WOMEN DISSENTERS
National Woman's Party Protests During World War I
Belmont-Paul
Women's Equality National Monument, National Mall and Memorial
Parks , President's Park (White House)
National Woman's Party
picketers outside the White House.
National Woman's Party
“MR. PRESIDENT: IT IS UNJUST
TO DENY WOMEN A VOICE IN THEIR GOVERNMENT WHEN THE GOVERNMENT IS CONSCRIPTING
THEIR SONS.”
-Draft
Day Picket Banner, Sept 4, 1917
What is the role of political dissent during wartime? Is it treasonous to criticize a president when the nation is at war?
On June 20, 1917, National Woman’s Party (NWP) co-founder Lucy Burns took up her position on the sidewalk in front
of the White House entry gate. Burns and NWP member Dora
Lewis held between them a large banner address “To the Envoys of Russia.” The
banner accused President Woodrow Wilson of deceiving the Russians when he
claimed that the two countries were fighting to preserve democracy. “We, the
Women of America, tell you that America is not a democracy,” the banner read.
“Twenty million American Women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson
is the chief opponent of their national enfranchisement.” The Russian
delegation saw the banner as their car passed through the White House gate on
their way to meet with the president.
The National Woman’s Party
had organized pickets of the White House for six days a week, in all kinds of
weather, since January 10, 1917. The “Silent Sentinels” as they were known
showed up each day holding banners demanding the right to vote for American
women. Rather than pursue enfranchisement state by state, as the National
American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) had done, the NWP focused their
efforts on the passage of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment,
named for Susan B. Anthony and first introduced in 1878, guaranteed that “The
right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
National Woman's Party
The NWP strategy to
promote passage of the Anthony Amendment included pressuring President Wilson
to support it. Presidents have no role in amending the Constitution, but NWP
leader Alice Paul believed that Wilson’s endorsement would sway
members of Congress from the Democratic Party to vote for the amendment’s
passage. Their efforts had only managed to push Wilson to offer tepid support
for women’s suffrage eventually, although he asked for patience, chiding
American women that “you can afford a little while to wait.”
During their months of
picketing, the women often held banners echoing Wilson’s own words, such as:
“MR. PRESIDENT, YOU SAY
LIBERTY IS THE FUNDAMENTAL DEMAND OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT.”
and
“MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG
MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?”
Once the United States
entered the war in Europe, many in the women’s suffrage movement
believed that their lobbying and activism should be put on hold. The leaders of
the National Woman’s Party, however, decided to continue the demonstrations. Public
opinion turned against the Silent Sentinels, who were now seen as unpatriotic.
Rather than back down, the
NWP decided to become more confrontational. Onlookers became increasingly more
hostile to the picketers. On that June day when Lucy and Dora raised the
provocative banner addressing the Russians, the anger boiled over. Crowds
ripped the banner out of the hands of the picketers and off its poles. The next
day, picketers returned, this time with a banner quoting Wilson.
“WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS
WE HAVE ALWAYS HELD NEAREST TO OUR HEARTS.”
This time, the police
tried to confiscate the banner. When the women refused, they were arrested.
Over the next several
months, women continued to take up positions in front of the White House. They
faced violence and arrest. More than 150 women were convicted of obstructing
traffic for their protest. They served jail time rather than pay what they
considered unjust fines for exercising their constitutional rights. As
picketing and arrests continued, the sentences increased from a few days in the
District Jail to several months in the Occoquan Work House in Virginia. The
women, many of whom came from prominent and politically connected families,
demanded to be treated as political prisoners. They went on hunger strikes to
protest their conditions and many were violently force-fed.
Among the hunger strikers
was NWP leader Alice Paul, arrested on October 20, 1917 carrying a banner that
read:
“THE TIME HAS COME TO
CONQUER OR SUBMIT. FOR US, THERE IS BUT ONE CHOICE. WE HAVE MADE IT.”
The slogan, adapted from
Woodrow Wilson’s own words, was used throughout the country on posters
supporting the war effort. Alice Paul declared her own war against injustice by
co-opting the battle cry for the cause of women’s suffrage. As she declared in
1919:
“When men are denied
justice, they go to war. This is our war, only we are fighting it with banners
instead of guns.”
Alice Paul (1885-1977) - Education & Resources -
National Women's ...
https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/alice-paul/
Paul's mother, a suffragist, brought her daughter
with her to women's suffrage ... which increased after the U.S. entered World War I. Instead of protecting
the ...
WWI Online :: Women Peace Activists During World War I
WWI Online :: Women Peace Activists During World War I
https://wwionline.org/articles/women-peace-activists-during-world-war-i/
Jul 15, 2014 - In 1915, U.S. activists Jane Addams, Carrie Chapman Catt, and
others formed the Woman's Peace Party (WPP). ... Some of the women active
during World
War I, and who can be ....Opposition to the War in the United States
RESISTANCE NOW: WHAT DID WE LEARN?
The
end of WWI on November 11, 1918, was originally celebrated as Armistice
Day. However, war-makers changed armistice to veterans, to Veterans Day--from signifying ending wars, to
celebrating the troops and preparing for the next war. This bellicose transformation calls
peacemakers to action. We should
1. Strive
to restore ARMISTICE DAY, and
advocate peacemaking, not warmaking.
Remembering the history of the name helps. The present Veterans
Day originated as “Armistice Day” on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of
the end of World War I. Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual
observance, and Nov. 11 became a
national holiday beginning in 1938. But In 1954, President Eisenhower (who in his
Farewell Address warned the nation against militarism) officially changed the
name of the holiday from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. Thus the name is not etched in stone, can
again be reversed, and will be by a nation whose citizens prefer peace over
war. (The militarization of Armistice
Day into Veterans Day is reinforced by Memorial
Day, the fourth Monday in May, that honors American service members who died or
who were injured in battle, while Veterans Day pays tribute to all American
veterans–living or dead.)
2.
Challenge monuments that glorify war, and try to stop monuments being
planned or under construction. Try to
prevent war monuments in the future. For example, Washington, D. C., is a city of
war monuments, and another is in preparation, and it’s a local story too. Joseph Weishaar, an
Arkansas native and a 2013 graduate of the Fay Jones School of Architecture at
the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, won the international competition
to design a monument for WWI to be
placed in Washington, D.C. He named his
design The Weight of Sacrifice.
Urge him to make his monument a peace monument. Prevent the addition of more. The year 2018 will mark the centennial of the end of WWI. Whether there will be another effusion of patriotic pride in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, or more monuments glorifying war, depends upon us. Read “Celebrating Slaughter: War and Collective Amnesia” by Chris Hedges describing how war memorials help perpetuate the national culture of violence and war.
Urge him to make his monument a peace monument. Prevent the addition of more. The year 2018 will mark the centennial of the end of WWI. Whether there will be another effusion of patriotic pride in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, or more monuments glorifying war, depends upon us. Read “Celebrating Slaughter: War and Collective Amnesia” by Chris Hedges describing how war memorials help perpetuate the national culture of violence and war.
3. Advocate for peace monuments and memorials, the anti-dote to war monuments and memorials.. See the admirable work by Ted Lollis to record all peace monuments in the world: website/directory, http://peace.maripo.com; bibliography, http://peace.maripo.com/p_bibliography.htm My essay contrasting war and peace monuments published in Peaceworks Magazine is apparently no longer available online http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0599/0510.htm
Further
Reading and Visuals
Museum of the
City of New York. Posters and Patriotism: Selling WWI in New York. Imagery of both the “ubiquitous pro-war
propaganda of the period” and anti-war art.
Tears of Stone: World War I Remembered. Photographs by Jane Alden Stevens.
Contents:
Armistice Day Newsletter #10, Nov. 11, 2016
Sound Out
for Armistice Day!
OMNI’s
National Days Project: Celebrate the DAYS of Peace, Justice,
and Ecology, Reject the Days of Violence
and Ecology, Reject the Days of Violence
Rory Fanning. Peace in Our Times. From Armistice Day for Peace, to Veterans
Day for Wars and Warriors. Now let’s return to the Day for Peace.
Day for Wars and Warriors. Now let’s return to the Day for Peace.
VFP: Reclaiming Armistice Day
from Veterans Day
Bully Nation USA from Schoolyard to Invasions and 800 Bases Around the World
Militarized Arkansas Celebrates War and Warriors
Senator Tom
Cotton;
University
of Arkansas, Fayetteville;
Monuments in Bella Vista and
Farmington;
Naming a Post Office;
LTE.
What to
Do
END WWI
NEWSLETTER #11, CENTENNIAL of US ENTERING WWI, APRIL 6, 2017, CONTINUING
ARMISTICE NEWSLETTERS
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