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.
