OLD NEWS

'Prepare for war' cry on the rise in 1916

Excerpt from Page 4 of the Arkansas Gazette published at LIttle Rock on June 27, 1916.
Excerpt from Page 4 of the Arkansas Gazette published at LIttle Rock on June 27, 1916.

From reading old newspapers, I know that in June 1916 Arkansans were still picking sides in the Great War that was devastating Europe, but support for Germany really had gone down with the Lusitania.

East Coast advocates of "preparedness" hounded President Woodrow Wilson to beef up the military, but there were plenty of naysayers.

This continent had its own, mildly alarming conflict -- six years of violent revolution in Mexico in which the United States quietly favored first this rebel and then that while officially standing neutral. But in 1916, Wilson switcheroo'd his support from the "bandit soldier" Gen. Pancho Villa to Venustiano Carranza, head of an increasingly stable, pro-constitution government; and the Villista guerrilla army killed a trainload of Americans inside Chihuahua and then crossed the border to plunder and burn Columbus, N.M.

Wilson sicced Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing and a force of "U.S. Army regulars" on Villa. Carranza read this as the North invading his nation. By June, he was talking war.

On June 18, the Arkansas National Guard was called up to join Pershing's regulars.

War must have looked exciting to Arkansans. On Page 2 of the June 27 Arkansas Gazette, a two-column ad teased "WAR DECLARED" ... against trees and brush, by a chemical manufactured in Ozark and costing $1.50 a gallon. And on Page 9, Pfeifer's Men's Dept. at Sixth and Main streets proclaimed, "Extra! An Army of World's Leader Clothes to repel the advancing heat!"

Diplomacy appeased Carranza, and by July 4 the border crisis was back on simmer. But its sudden ferocity had shown the nation -- and Arkansas -- how unprepared we were. As unit after unit of "boys" arrived at Camp Pike in North Little Rock, their leaders promptly failed fitness tests.

MEANWHILE ...

War was front-page news. On Page 4 of the June 27 Gazette, the Fourth of July parade committee was having a hard time.

"Wanted -- Little Rock women to march in the Preparedness Parade," the Gazette reported. "And they are wanted badly,' a member of the Publicity Committee of Women's Section said last night. 'We had 40 enlistments yesterday, and we should have had a thousand, but we will get them as soon as they understand about the recruiting.

"They understand how necessary it is to foster preparedness, but when suddenly confronted at the recruiting stations in the stores, the first thought is that the 'recruiter' wants to sell something. Hundreds of them yesterday didn't sign."

(And I'm thinking, "Hundreds of shoppers in downtown Little Rock!")

"Then there's the hesitancy that's always met," the recruiter continued. "Many of the women preferred to wait, seemingly unwilling to be the first to sign and afraid of notoriety. But when we get the first 100 there'll be more."

Readers would find Misses Gertrude Watkins and Josephine Miller stationed at the Blass store, Mrs. O.F. Ellington at Pfeifer's store, Mrs. Thomas T. Cotnam (see her face at bit.ly/28WiWei) at the Cohn's store and Mrs. C.B. Sloat at Hamilton's store.

The weather box on Page One reported a local record had been set the day before, 99 degrees, and so I'm imagining heat and humidity also might have had something to do with the reluctance of ladies who wore hats, ankle-skimming dresses and all of that pre-flapper underwear.

FORWARD, MARCH

Sprawled across four columns to the right of the parade recruiters was a celebrity interview, which I deduce the Gazette picked up from the New York Evening World. The reporter, Marguerite Mooers Marshall (1887-1964) would go on to write "The Woman of It" column syndicated in 60 newspapers as well as popular romance novels like Wilderness Nurse. But in June 1916, she was a 29-year-old newlywed with a bachelor of arts from Tufts College (now a university).

Under the headline "Woman Can Work Out Her Own Happiness If She'll Only Forget Her Girlish Dreams" she described her chat with Thomas W. Churchill, a lawyer who had not been re-elected as president of the New York City School Board. She found him "plump, practical, genial." He was no fan of women's suffrage, but he did advocate higher education for women -- a progressive view then. He approved of hands-on vocational training for boys and girls, but thought women who were teachers should quit their jobs as soon as they had children.

Marshall wrote: "And Mr. Churchill, conservative although he be on subjects of suffrage and of teacher mothers, is thoroughly of the moment in perceiving the personal and social handicaps of the unemployed, unemployable girl."

"I still feel," he admitted at the outset, "that in a truly ideal world every woman would be in her own home and every man would be working for some woman. There was an attempt at something like that in the days of chivalry. Yet I have sometimes wondered what happened even then to the girls who weren't attractive enough to find men to work for them, or to those whose men died. Nowadays plenty of men are too selfish to marry. Others die or lose their money, and therefore leave unprotected women who have been dependent on them."

Women should be prepared to support themselves, he insisted, just in case.

PROPER TRAINING FOR GIRLS SOLVES THE PROBLEM

"Why, it's a crime to make a girl sit around the house all day with nothing to do except to play the gramophone for an hour or so!" exclaimed Mr. Churchill. "Any girl -- I don't care if she's the daughter of a Carnegie or a Rockefeller -- should be taught how to do something, some worthy work which will give her an interest in life and prove her support should she ever need it. Such work -- the profession of nursing, for example -- will develop a girl physically, mentally and spiritually, even if she never has occasion to make practical use of it."

Women had a duty to be happy, he added.

"A woman can be happy if she is poor. She can even be happy if she is ill. She needs merely the right philosophy -- the understanding that she's playing a game, that it's up to her to be sensible, good-natured, cheerful and, if necessary, a good loser."

Marshall objected that "if a girl is trained for anything but drudgery she is likely to become really interested in her work, really fond of it for its own sake. Then when she marries and you and all the other good people tell her she should stay home and be a combination of hostess and housemaid, she says, 'No, thank you!' And then you don't approve of her, do you?"

"You know, I suppose you could interview yourself on that better than you could interview me," observed Mr. Churchill, with a smile so broad it was dangerously near a chuckle.

Next week: Falls From Free Bridge to Death

ActiveStyle on 06/27/2016

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