On May 29, 1917, Mrs. E. M. Craise, citizen of Denver, Colorado,
penned a letter to President Woodrow Wilson, which concluded, We
have surrendered to your absolute control our hearts' dearest
treasures--our sons. If their precious bodies that have cost us so
dear should be torn to shreds by German shot and shells we will try
to live on in the hope of meeting them again in the blessed Country
of happy reunions. But, Mr. President, if the hell-holes that
infest their training camps should trip up their unwary feet and
they be returned to us besotted degenerate wrecks of their former
selves cursed with that hell-born craving for alcohol, we can have
no such hope. Anxious about the United States' pending entry into
the Great War, fearful that their sons would be polluted by the
scourges of prostitution, venereal disease, illicit sex, and drink
that ran rampant in the training camps, countless Americans sent
such missives to their government officials. In response to this
deluge, President Wilson created the Commission on Training Camp
Activities to ensure the purity of the camp environment. Training
camps would henceforth mold not only soldiers, but model citizens
who, after the war, would return to their communities, spreading
white, urban, middle-class values throughout the country. What
began as a federal program designed to eliminate sexually
transmitted diseases soon mushroomed into a powerful social force
intent on replacing America's many cultures with a single,
homogenous one. Though committed to the positive methods of
education and recreation, the reformers did not hesitate to employ
repression when necessary. Those not conforming to the prescribed
vision of masculinity often faced exclusion from the reformers'
idealized society, or sometimes even imprisonment. Social
engineering ruled the day. Combining social, cultural, and military
history and illustrating the deep divisions among reformers
themselves, Nancy K. Bristow, with the aid of dozens of evocative
photographs, here brings to life a pivotal era in the history of
the U.S., revealing the complex relationship between the nation's
competing cultures, progressive reform efforts, and the Great War.
Nancy K. Bristow is Assistant Professor of History at the
University of Puget Sound.
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