This is not correct. The post WW I anti-war movement was simply an affirmation of pre-war opposition. War had lost its glamour BEFORE WW I, and in the uS there was widespread opposition to entering. Woodrow Wilson won election for his neutral stance. Eugene V. Debs opposed the war, was jailed, ran for President from his jail cell polling nearly a million votes; not because he was a socialist but because he championed the movement against the war and was a hero. There was opposition to WW I conscription with large numbers of military age men refusing to register. Opposition easily compares with that against the Vietnam War.....VERNON SMITH
I should have differentiated between the U.S. and Europe. Although any country that can produce Theodore Roosevelt is hardly pacifist, the experience of the Civil War stripped a lot of glamour off war for Americans, and it was only 40 years before World War I. If Europeans had paid more attention to the toll of that war, the horrors of large-scale modern warfare wouldn't have been as surprising for them.
For those interested in American pacifism, my friend Dan Akst has a new book called War by Other Means, on pacifists of the World War II generation.
And as I wrote recently, one of Warren Harding’s early acts was to commute Debs’s sentence and to invite him to the White House, saying, “I’ve heard so damned much about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now glad to meet you personally.” https://graboyes.substack.com/p/woodrow-the-terrible-warren-the-good
Thank you. WWI is part of my next Pollyanna post. The book sold millions beginning in 1914. Its success could have been due, in part, to War losing its glamour? Pollyanna offered a way to find hope in the devastation.
I grew up amongst pacifist/socialists. My mother cast her first vote for Debs in 1920, and my first was for Norman Thomas in 1948. He was a founder of the Fellowship for Reconciliation. But we, or at least I, switched to support WW II after Pearl Harbor. I was at Eleven worth, KS getting my physical in August, 1945 when the first bomb was dropped. After the second I registered as a pacifist. J.R. Oppenheimer lectured in my freshman physics class at Caltech, we loved him as a great physicist but especially for his personal integrity. I had Linus Pauling for freshman chemistry, the only winner of two undivided Noble prizes--chemistry and peace. Citizen dissent on war was and is central to the American Experiment.
This is not correct. The post WW I anti-war movement was simply an affirmation of pre-war opposition. War had lost its glamour BEFORE WW I, and in the uS there was widespread opposition to entering. Woodrow Wilson won election for his neutral stance. Eugene V. Debs opposed the war, was jailed, ran for President from his jail cell polling nearly a million votes; not because he was a socialist but because he championed the movement against the war and was a hero. There was opposition to WW I conscription with large numbers of military age men refusing to register. Opposition easily compares with that against the Vietnam War.....VERNON SMITH
I should have differentiated between the U.S. and Europe. Although any country that can produce Theodore Roosevelt is hardly pacifist, the experience of the Civil War stripped a lot of glamour off war for Americans, and it was only 40 years before World War I. If Europeans had paid more attention to the toll of that war, the horrors of large-scale modern warfare wouldn't have been as surprising for them.
For those interested in American pacifism, my friend Dan Akst has a new book called War by Other Means, on pacifists of the World War II generation.
Here's the Amazon link: https://amzn.to/3qmGzYw
Here's a writeup in the LAT: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2022-12-08/are-you-brave-enough-to-be-a-pacifist-one-historians-portraits-in-true-courage
And as I wrote recently, one of Warren Harding’s early acts was to commute Debs’s sentence and to invite him to the White House, saying, “I’ve heard so damned much about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now glad to meet you personally.” https://graboyes.substack.com/p/woodrow-the-terrible-warren-the-good
Thank you. WWI is part of my next Pollyanna post. The book sold millions beginning in 1914. Its success could have been due, in part, to War losing its glamour? Pollyanna offered a way to find hope in the devastation.
Very discerning article.
Your cultural essays hold up so well. This one rhymes with our current era more rhythmically than I would like.
I grew up amongst pacifist/socialists. My mother cast her first vote for Debs in 1920, and my first was for Norman Thomas in 1948. He was a founder of the Fellowship for Reconciliation. But we, or at least I, switched to support WW II after Pearl Harbor. I was at Eleven worth, KS getting my physical in August, 1945 when the first bomb was dropped. After the second I registered as a pacifist. J.R. Oppenheimer lectured in my freshman physics class at Caltech, we loved him as a great physicist but especially for his personal integrity. I had Linus Pauling for freshman chemistry, the only winner of two undivided Noble prizes--chemistry and peace. Citizen dissent on war was and is central to the American Experiment.