The United States goes to war

Published:  Wednesday, April 23, 2008 (7 months ago)
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The patriotic young men who marched off to war to the tune of “Tipperary” were an optimistic group. Having mainly grown up in the rural areas of America they were used to relying on the whims of the weather, and making the best of things.
They were inventive and knew life was what you made of it and knew how to work hard. There was Karl F. Gunst from Van Wert, and Otto Grothause of Delphos and Fred and Herbert Hageman from Fort Jennings.  There were men who had not finished becoming citizens and many colored, as they were listed as.
There was also the young women. These were the ones that worked alongside their men from dawn to dusk and stayed at home and raised their children. They gave of their very best and made a contribution that defined who they were. They went as nurses and served in mobile units and Walter Reed. As reward for their service they were given the right to vote in 1920.
America, supposedly insulated from Europe, and the rest of the world by two oceans was not interested in the wars that many of them had left behind in the Old World. The Industrial Age was in its infancy and the West beckoned to many as a grand adventure.
Woodrow Wilson, governor of New Jersey before he became president, was changing machine politics and had gotten legislation pushed through that mandated direct party primaries for all elected officials of New Jersey. A corrupt practices law was passed that required all candidates to file campaign financial statements, limited monies for campaigns, and banned corporate contributions to campaigns.
Wilson, winning the presidency by a narrow margin in 1912, had seen the devastation of war when his father had taken a professorship  in Columbia, North Carolina. Columbia had been badly ravaged by the Civil War. So Wilson, running on a platform of peace, vowed to keep the United States out of Europe’s wars.
May 7, 1915, saw the Lusitania, a British luxury liner, torpedoed by a German submarine, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 passengers and crew. Nearly a hundred were children and 128 were Americans.  Wilson sent only a letter of indignation to Germany and many called him a coward. William Jennings Bryan, a pacifist, who was Secretary of State at the time, resigned in protest. Bryan had been a three time nominee for president.
Germany promised less submarine warfare and stuck to that policy for some time. The Kaiser finally  called off all unrestrictive sub attacks in August.
July 31, 1916, saw the first major terrorist attack on the United States when the Black Tom explosion occurred.  2,000 tons of explosives were blown up by sabotage on Black Tom Island, which lies next to Liberty Island in New York harbor. Munitions were stored there for shipment overseas to our allies. The terrific explosion measured 5.0 to 5.5 on the Richter scale. The Statue of Liberty was bombarded with shrapnel and the shock shook the Brooklyn Bridge. The area can be seen today as part of Liberty Park and is considered the worst act of terrorism in the United States. (Until 9/11.)
On Jan. 9,1917, a telegram was decoded by the British which had been sent to the German Foreign Minister in Mexico which brought dramatic new possibilities to Britain. (Britain was in severe difficulty because of Germany barricading their sea lanes and food was scarce.) The telegram was sent on a secure peace line in Sweden to the German Foreign Minister in Mexico. It happened to be intercepted because it passed through British air waves. The German Foreign Minister was requested to approach the Mexican government to inquire if Mexico would join with Germany if they declared war on the United States. Germany was fearful of losing the war.
However, Britain had trouble disclosing how they happened to intercept the telegram as it was a neutral communiqué. They needed the disclosure to convince the United States to enter the war. Finally they figured out that they could make it look like it had been intercepted at a telegraph station in Mexico.
But until they devised this the United States did not know about this latest development. Finally on Feb. 24, 1917, the British presented it to Wilson. American newspapers printed it March 1, 1917.
Everyone was astonished that such a communiqué could be intercepted and many thought it to be a forgery. Zimmerman, for whom the telegram is named, admitted it was real.
Mexico did conclude that it would be too costly even with the generous financial help that Germany promised and the return of the border states that had been ceded to the United States (Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona). Britain still was king of the seas and help from so far away would not be easy to obtain.
On Feb. 1, 1917, Germany announced that unrestrictive submarine warfare would resume and no ship would be spared, not even neutral or hospital ships.
In early April Germany also began to use gas more effectively and the mood of the people changed. On April 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress for permission to declare war on Germany and Congress bowed to the will of the people and made it official on April 9, 1917. It is reported that Wilson wept as war was declared.
It was, at first, decided that volunteers would be the best way to go about recruiting men for the army. There had been problems when soldiers tried to draft civilians in the Civil War and some of these soldiers were killed. So recruitment was put in the hands of local authorities. Qualified men who were talented volunteered, however, this left a void in the labor force if they should be killed so deferments were given in key areas where they could better serve in their own communities.
The draft was finally put in place in June, 1917.

Edythe Dean is a Fort Jennings resident and is a member of Trinity United Methodist Church in Delphos. She is a substitute teacher and authored “Over the Top and Back: They Answered Their Country’s Call,”  a chronicle of the men from her hometown in Portage County who went off to serve in World War I.

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