The Illusion of Victory

by Thomas Fleming

  Along with police work came hours of exhortation to the new soldiers and sailors to resist sexual temptation. Spokesmen for the Committee on Training Camp Activities (CTCA) orated on the way venereal disease destroyed a soldier’s “efficiency.” Pamphlets asked: “You wouldn’t use another fellow’s toothbrush. Why use his whore?” they urged soldiers to stop thinking about sex.“A man who is thinking below the belt is not efficient.” The CTCA tried to help this process by running athletic programs and dances in “hostess houses,” where the soldiers could meet respectable women.

  Supplementing these moral and social appeals were a series of films that drove home the horrors of venereal disease in the era before wonder drugs. Men and women in the late stages of syphilis were shown with sightless eyes and with noses, ears, and other organs rotting off their bodies. In case morality and terror failed, the army also lectured on the use of condoms and the importance of prophylactic treatment after casual sex.

  The ultimate goal was the creation of what Secretary of War Baker called “moral and intellectual armor” that would sustain the soldiers when they went overseas and were beyond the U.S. government’s “comforting and restraining and helpful hand.” the reformers were acutely aware that the French and British governments had a very different approach to the problem of social purity. One of Premier Georges Clemenceau’s gestures of solidarity with France’s new ally was an offer to set up brothels for the American army, staffed by French prostitutes. When Baker heard about it, he gasped,“For God’s sake . . . don’t show this to the president or he’ll stop the war!”7

  IV

  Over in France, General Pershing was making big decisions and accumulating even bigger worries that went far beyond sexual purity. He had no difficulty persuading General Pétain to assign the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) to training camps in Lorraine, south of Verdun, where they could eventually launch attacks against key German railroads and important coal and iron mines. But Pershing was troubled by the lack of unity between the British and French. Their centuries-old antagonism had not been healed by their wartime alliance.

  The French accused the British of fighting mainly to defend the part of France from which Germany could attack England. The British had a bigger army than the French, but they defended only a third of the front. Fistfights between French and British officers were not uncommon in Paris cafés. One brawl involved eighty men and required several squads of gendarmes before it was halted.

  As for the army of “brave little Belgium,” the French said it was good at only one thing: issuing communiqués. The British agreed. Even lower was the French and British opinion of the Italians. They could not even beat the Austrians. When the French Chamber of Deputies heard that a British warship had mistaken an Italian submarine for a German U-boat and sunk it, the legislators cheered. At the bottom of these strata of contempt were the Serbs, whose joke of an army had been chased all the way to Salonika by the Austrians and Bulgarians, with some discreet help from the Germans.8

  From the Eastern Front came even more dismaying reports. In July the revolutionary Russian government had launched a “liberty offensive” against the Germans and Austrians. By the first week in August, the attack had floundered into almost total disaster, with the Russian army virtually ceasing to exist. The specter of a vastly reinforced German army on the Western Front began taking nightmarish shape.

  Pershing soon decided he could not rely on the general staff in Washington for anything. It took weeks to get a reply from them. Acting Chief of Staff Tasker Bliss wrote orders with the stub of a pencil and hid urgent telegrams under his blotter while he made up his mind what to do about them. Pershing decided to set up his own general staff in France—a far more efficient one than the fumbling team in Washington.9

  Alfred Thayer Mahan, the son of West Point’s famed military philosopher, Dennis Mahan, was fond of saying that war was business. As commander of the AEF, Pershing proved it. Until he took charge, each army bureau and department had its own supply officer with its own budget. Back in the United States, this compartmentalization caused immense confusion and duplication of effort and expense. Pershing organized the AEF’s purchases around a general purchasing board, headed by an old friend and future vice president, Charles G. Dawes. A canny businessman, Dawes had absolute authority to buy anything and everything the AEF needed from the French and British at the best possible price.

  The decisions Pershing and Dawes made to prepare their men for battle were awesome. They placed an order for $50 million worth of French airplanes and did not report the purchase until it was too late for Washington to countermand it.“He did it without winking an eye, as easily as though ordering a postage stamp,” Pershing’s chief of staff, James Harbord, noted in his diary. Pershing and Dawes also bought French 75mm field guns for their artillery; English Enfield rifles, steel helmets, and French light machine guns (Chauchats) for their infantrymen; and, later, French light tanks (Renaults) for an embryo tank corps.10

  Pershing decided to make an AEF division 28,000 men, twice the size of an Allied or German division. He wanted an organization with the staying power to sustain an attack in spite of heavy casualties. Unfortunately, he did not double the size of the new division’s artillery, the first symptom of his inability to appreciate the lethal increase in firepower that had transformed warfare on the Western Front.11

  Pershing also strove to put his own stamp on the AEF.“The standards for the American Army will be those of West Point,” he announced. “The upright bearing, attention to detail, uncomplaining obedience to instruction required of the cadet will be required of every officer and soldier of our armies in France.” Every private a Pershing was an impossible dream, but the general never stopped striving for it.

  The British and French had trouble distinguishing between American officers and enlisted men. Pershing ordered officers to wear the British Sam Browne belt across their chests and authorized the use of canes. The first item was hated by many officers, and the latter was derided by enlisted men. But Pershing never wavered in his insistence on both.12

  The AEF commander also played a part in deciding what his troops would be called in the newspapers. British soldiers were “Tommies,” short for Tommy Atkins, the typical man in the ranks of Rudyard Kipling’s poems. French soldiers were poilus—“hairy ones”—because in the trenches they seldom had a chance to shave or get their hair cut. Pershing took an intense dislike to “Sammies,” the name the French and British reporters first fastened on the Americans. He ordered the Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper, to push for “doughboys.” Military etymologists still argue over this term’s origin. The most likely explanation traces it back to the Philippines, where infantry would return from long marches on dusty roads in tropic temperatures, caked with thick, white dust resembling dough. Pershing spent many years in the Philippines, another reason why he would have favored the nickname. It would take another six months for “doughboys” to catch on with the press.13

  Although he could relax with close friends and make dramatic gestures, such as kissing a French flag, for photographers or admiring crowds, the one thing Pershing could not do was inspire soldiers or civilians with a ringing phrase. He was keenly aware of his limitations as a speaker. His staff wrote a speech for him to make at Lafayette’s Tomb on July 4, 1917. The closing line hit an oratorical high note: “Lafayette we are here!” Pershing crossed it out and wrote: “Not in character” beside it. He assigned the speech to a staff colonel who spoke good French.

  The scene at Lafayette’s Tomb was the climax of a parade through Paris by the Sixteenth Infantry, one of the regiments of the First Division that had arrived at Saint-Nazaire on June 28. Pershing had told Marshal Joffre that these first arrivals would be regulars, the best soldiers in the American army. The AEF commander was horrified by what he saw marching past the reviewing stand. Rank after rank was out of step, their uniforms a mess, their rifles held at all sorts of weird angles.

  The Sixteen
th Infantry were regulars in name only. Most of the veteran noncoms and officers had been kept in the States to train the army’s burgeoning horde of conscripts. These marching men were largely volunteers with only a few weeks’ training. One American overheard a French soldier say, “And they sent that to help us?” But the Parisians did not care how unmilitary the Americans looked. The march was a replay of Pershing’s arrival. A huge crowd screamed and wept. Women kissed the flank marchers and hung wreaths of flowers on their hats and rifles.

  At Lafayette’s Tomb, Colonel Charles E. Stanton gave a stem-winding speech worthy of William Jennings Bryan. He damned the kaiser and prophesied glorious victory before reaching his famous announcement to Lafayette. The line became inextricably attached to Pershing, no matter how often he denied saying it. On the historic day, he was persuaded to add a few terse remarks, which one American listener praised as “precisely the right thing, in perfect taste.”14

  V

  Back in Washington, Woodrow Wilson was putting in place the men who would run the home front. Herbert Hoover was an almost inevitable choice for food administrator. A wealthy former mining engineer, he had made a worldwide reputation as the man who headed an immense effort to feed captive Belgium in spite of the British blockade. General George Goethals, builder of the Panama Canal, took command of a vast shipbuilding program. A staggering $649 million was committed to producing an American air fleet, under the guidance of automobile executive Howard E. Coffin and Major General George O. Squier. Bernard Baruch, who had made millions on Wall Street speculating in copper and other raw materials, was put in charge of marshalling these resources for the war effort. Within nine months, Wilson would make this tall decisive South Carolinian head of the War Industries Board, in virtual command of the entire economy.

  Reports from Europe generated a crisis atmosphere. On June 28, Ambassador Walter Hines Page warned from London that “financial disaster to all the European allies is imminent” unless there was another huge infusion of U.S. cash. From now on, along with sustaining France and Italy, His Majesty’s cabinet hoped Washington would undertake to pay “all purchases made by the British government in the United States.” otherwise there was going to be “a general collapse.” early in July, Pershing said it was imperative to have 1 million trained men in France by May 1918. Around the same time, Admiral Sims cabled Secretary of the Navy Daniels:“At the present moment we are losing this war. This is due to the success of the enemy submarine campaign.”15

  VI

  Instead of inspiring all concerned to pull together for victory, these seismic shocks from abroad only made Congress more critical of the administration’s lack of preparation to wage war. Unquestionably, they had a point. Wilson’s 1916 preparedness program had been mostly cosmetic, to fend off Theodore Roosevelt and other Republican advocates of seriously arming the United States for war. The president had met strong resistance inside the Democratic Party and accepted a woefully inadequate compromise.

  Meanwhile, other players on the national scene revealed that George Creel had not yet created the war will that inspired universal self-sacrifice. Farmers, alerted to the serious grain shortage, began hoarding their crops while the price of wheat and other grains spiraled upward. Others in the food business consigned huge amounts of eggs, meat and similar perishables to cold-storage warehouses to make a similar killing. Screams of distress from angry consumers assailed the White House. The only answer seemed to be price controls, but Congress refused even to consider them. A Food Control Bill submitted by the Department of Agriculture went nowhere. Hours were wasted on oratory about the greatness of the free-enterprise system.

  Next, a new fly got into the political ointment: prohibition. The idea that the United States, as a God-fearing, Christian nation, should ban alcoholic beverages had been working its way around Protestant America for years. One of its biggest supporters was William Jennings Bryan. By now the so-called drys had a substantial following in Congress, and they suddenly emerged from cover to attach a ban on beer and wine as a rider to the House of Representatives Food Control Bill.

  A huge uproar erupted, much of the cry led by German-American beer drinkers, whose enthusiasm for the war was lukewarm at best. Wilson urged Democratic senators to detach the rider from their version of the bill. For his efforts, he was snidely informed that very few members of his own party felt “well enough disposed” toward him to do the job.

  When the president tried to get the public involved by throwing Herbert Hoover into the fray, he discovered that the food administrator was a man without a party. No one even knew whether he was a Democrat or a Republican. This encouraged many senators to make him their favorite political target. Senator James Reed of Missouri, the same gentleman who had predicted blood in the streets on draft registration day, descanted on Hoover’s hunger for power. He called him a market manipulator in a class with Jay Gould and other discredited nineteenth-century tycoons.16

  Senator Gore of Oklahoma, angry at the president because no new army camps had been built in his state, announced his indifference to the Food Control Bill. Senator George E. Chamberlain of Oregon, a Democratic progressive, struggled to keep it alive, while the politicians began horse trading over whose crops and products would be controlled and whose would escape the regulatory net. Eventually, wheat and coal, two fundamentals in every citizen’s budget, were regulated but cotton escaped, thanks to the preponderance of Southerners in the Senate’s Democratic majority—a compromise that would cause Wilson much future political pain.

  As a climax to this legislative auto-da-fé, the Senate Republicans attached yet another rider on their version of the Food Control Bill—again calling for a Committee on the Conduct of the War. Another Democratic senator from disgruntled Oklahoma, Robert I. Owen, sponsored the measure, supposedly to demonstrate his nonpartisan spirit. The president denounced the idea of subjecting him to “daily espionage,” but 14 Democrats joined the Republicans in a 53 to 31 vote in favor of creating the watchdog panel.

  The maneuver could not have come at a worse time. General Goethals and another member of the Shipping Board, William Denman, had gotten into an argument about whether the United States should build wooden ships or steel ships to meet the challenge of German submarines. A lot depended on the decision. The British were building only 100,000 new tons per month and were losing nine times that amount. General Goethals, who favored steel, did not disagree agreeably. He took the dispute public. Though hopelessly outgunned, Denman volleyed back. The Hearst papers reported that Denman stood to profit from certain connections with California timber interests. The ballooning brawl-cum-scandal forced Wilson to ask both men for their resignations.17

  Meanwhile, the president was rallying Democratic support in the House of Representatives to eliminate if not kill the Committee on the Conduct of the War. When Republican minority leader James R. Mann put up a fight, Democratic newspapers recalled earlier gibes from Theodore Roosevelt and others about Mann’s patriotism and the discomfited Chicagoan abandoned the effort. Mann’s capitulation did not stop the Senate from trying to bulldoze the idea through the conference committee that met to harmonize the two versions of the Food Control Bill. But Senator Frances E. Warren of Montana, General Pershing’s father-in-law, voted with the Democrats, and once more, to Wilson’s vast relief, the Committee on the Conduct on the War was deep-sixed. Warren had made a similar switch to kill Theodore Roosevelt’s volunteer division. The choice of Pershing was turning out to be one of Wilson’s better political moves, even though the results were largely coincidental. The president’s chief motivation had been his detestation of General Leonard Wood.18

  Undiscouraged, Senator Weeks announced his determination to attach Conduct of the War Committee resolutions to every bill brought to the floor for the rest of the decade, if necessary. The president grimly told his supporters in the House of Representatives that he was depending on them to frustrate this Republican attempt “to get their hand on the steering apparatus of t
he Government.”19

  VII

  The Washington summer weather was more beastly than usual, adding to Wilson’s woes in this pre-air-conditioning era. If the critical shouts and murmurs emanating from the Capitol were not enough to drive a president to distraction, another group of critics clustered at the White House gates, day in and day out, wearing skirts. Representatives of the Women’s Party, better known as suffragettes, had been picketing the executive mansion since January, demanding the president to back votes for women by a constitutional amendment.

  On June 20, when a delegation from the new Russian republic was greeted by the president, the suffragettes saw a unique opportunity. In their rush to liberation from the czar, the Russians had given women the right to vote. As the delegation approached the White House gates, the suffragettes unfurled a big yellow banner, informing the startled Slavs: “America Is Not a Democracy. Twenty Million Women Are Denied the Right to Vote. President Wilson Is the Chief Opponent of Their National Enfranchisement.”

  Infuriated spectators ripped down the banner. Several days later, the suffragettes blocked traffic and harassed White House visitors, virtually forcing the police to arrest them.“They seem bent on making their cause as obnoxious as possible,” wilson wrote to a family correspondent. His wife, Edith, could barely conceal her detestation of the suffragettes and their goal. She loathed the idea of “masculinized” voting women. But the president portrayed himself as the soul of patience and quickly arranged for the “Suffs” to be released from jail.