This article analyzes Woodrow Wilson's view of the First World War's implications for U.S. national security and the way in which he related the balance of power between the belligerents at different points in time to his diplomatic objectives. It approaches this topic, which is a subject of much debate among historians, by comparing Wilson's view of the war from late 1914 to early 1915 with that of his secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, and by examining how those perceptions shaped the response of the two leaders to the sinking of the Lusitania. Bryan and Wilson both wanted the United States to stay out of the war, both wanted the United States to mediate an end to it, and both of them saw mediation as a doorway to reforming international politics. Unlike Bryan, however, Wilson saw Germany as a potential threat to the United States and paid close attention to the balance of power between the Allies and Central Powers; he specifically believed that the Allies were likely to win the war. These views led Wilson to reject Bryan's advice to de-escalate the Lusitania crisis and to adopt a much more confrontational policy toward Germany, one of the most consequential decisions Wilson made in the neutrality period.

This paper reassesses American opinions and sentiments during the period of neutrality in light of the one endeavor that involved millions of Americans in the European conflict long before official U.S. belligerency: war relief. Tracing some of the “humanitarian narratives” employed in the relief campaigns for the Central Powers, the Allies, and neutral Belgium, humanitarian involvement, it will be argued, not only expressed prevalent ethnic, cultural, and political affinities, but shaped American attitudes toward the different belligerents. Contrary to contemporary claims, humanitarian pursuits were never even remotely impartial, but drew Americans onto the different sides of the war like few other endeavors. Indeed, relief work must be taken serious as a force of “cultural mobilization” (Horne), which affected American “visions of the war and its outcome.” By involving Americans actively on the different sides of the European war, it helped forge discrete moral and emotional alliances across the Atlantic. In trying to understand the complicated and acrimonious process by which Americans moved from peace to war, their relief work thus deserves attention.

This essay investigates the motives by American volunteers during the neutrality period between 1914 and 1917 who decided to go to the war zone in Europe. Thousands of American men and women supported the Allies as nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, soldiers, or fighter pilots. Even though they had chosen to support one side in the war, however, even avid and well-connected supporters of the Allies rarely called for U.S. intervention. The absence of a political perspective was tied to peculiar personal motives. Calling for intervention in the war would have turned the fight into a national cause and public duty, reducing the value of a personal decision to go to war. When the United States entered the war in 1917, some volunteers joined the American war effort to support their flag, whereas others abandoned a war they no longer considered interesting. These responses were part of a significant shift in the role of American government.

World War I significantly impacted U.S. society and politics long before the United States officially entered into the war's frontlines in 1917. Even as historians have begun to pay closer attention to this process, they have until now largely failed to notice a particular group of colorful and highly emblematic public elite actors: charitable foundation philanthropists. With the soon-to-be globally active Rockefeller Foundation a cohort of ambitious U.S. progressives and social engineers—later ardent supporters of global science funding during the interwar years and beyond—utilized their war experiences to shape the wartime philanthropic agenda. This article focuses on the Foundation officers’ profiles and the beginnings of their more concerted engagements during World War I in order to show how, in their mindsets and tactics, Rockefeller philanthropists disregarded American neutrality. From the outbreak of the war in 1914, they mobilized themselves to the point of pleading for and entering into direct commitments at home and abroad, especially in the European war zone. With the official entry of the United States into war in early April 1917, Rockefeller officials and collaborators became openly “combat” philanthropists, resolutely assisting the moral stabilization efforts of the U.S. military and conducting support campaigns to bolster, most notably, the American alliance with France. The incubation and infancy period of Rockefeller philanthropy as a subsequently ubiquitous phenomenon of the American twentieth century is inseparable from the impact of the Great War.

Civilian societies advocating a bold defense program were arguably the most visible manifestation of the American preparedness campaign in World War I. Though historians have acknowledged the significance of the broader preparedness movement in a number of studies, they have often marginalized its civilian branch in general and defense societies in particular. This article examines the structures, activities, and objectives of two major organizations active in the movement in order to challenge historiography's traditional view on preparedness. Exploring the key role of the National Security League and the American Defense Society between 1914 and 1920, the article presents two main arguments: First, civilian societies were not merely the appendix to a centralized campaign dominated by military professionals and politicians associated with the defense cause but acted as principal agents of preparedness. Second, the historiographic time frame of preparedness cannot be limited chronologically to America's years of neutrality but must include the period after April 1917.

If World War I has interested historians of the United States considerably less than other major wars, it is also true that children rank among the most neglected actors in the literature that exists on the topic. This essay challenges this limited understanding of the roles children and adolescents played in this transformative period by highlighting their importance in three different realms. It shows how childhood emerged as a contested resource in prewar debates over militarist versus pacifist education; examines the affective power of images of children—American as well as foreign—in U.S. wartime propaganda; and maps various social arenas in which the young engaged with the war on their own account. While constructions of childhood and youth as universally valid physical and developmental categories gained greater currency in the early twentieth century, investigations of young people in wartime reveal how much the realities of childhood and youth differed according to gender, class, race, region, and age.

The early decades of the twentieth century proved pivotal for defining academic freedom in America. The challenges of World War I ultimately strengthened the use and understanding of the concept specifically for the U.S. context. During the last third of the nineteenth century, a number of developments in higher learning had converged, bringing academic independence urgently to the forefront. Growth and professionalization meant a new role for universities in American society; big-business philanthropy saw sciences flourish, but it also introduced a new market-orientated organization to college administration. Gilded Age and Progressive Era debates over individual rights, social responsibilities, and public and political capital caused much controversy on campuses across the country. German academic institutions, long cherished models in U.S.-reform-rhetoric, had begun to lose their appeal, and by 1914, they were fully discredited. Hence, even before the United States entered into the conflict, World War I forced the academic community to define their position between society, government, and professional ethos. During this process, two very different notions of academic freedom emerged: one favoring individual liberties, the other one prioritizing institutional integrity. These distinctive and potentially adverse interpretations continued to function as the basis for legal and public arguments as the twentieth century progressed.

This essay investigates how the repressive wartime political and social environment in World War I encouraged three key American social justice movements to devise new tactics and strategies to advance their respective causes. For the African American civil rights, female suffrage, and civil liberties movements, the First World War unintentionally provided fresh opportunities for movement building, a process that included recruiting members, refining ideological messaging, devising innovative media strategies, negotiating with the government, and participating in nonviolent street demonstrations. World War I thus represented an important moment in the histories of all three movements. The constructive, rather than destructive, impact of the war on social justice movements proved significant in the short term (for the suffragist movement) and the long term (for the civil rights and civil liberties movements). Ultimately, considering these three movements collectively offers new insights into American war culture and the history of social movements.