American Identity, Youth, and World War I

In December 1918, a local Georgia journalist looked back at the participation of American children in the war effort and concluded that for the first time in the history of the United States, had “a government turned to its school children and asked them to mobilize for war.” Months before US intervention, humanitarian organizations had launched large-scale national appeals to American youth to participate in war relief. Children knit, sewed, and collected money and became part of the financial and humanitarian force that sent aid to the war-ravaged European continent, relief that helped beleaguered civilian populations. In 1914, when Lillian Bell organized a Christmas ship for Europe’s children, American youth loaded it with gifts, food, and clothing. When Paris-based American women established the American Fund for French Wounded (AFFW) in New York City in 1915, American children raised funds to collect blankets, pillows, clothes, and food for hospitalized French soldiers. When the Fatherless Children of France Society was organized in Paris in 1915, American youngsters and their families supported French children whose fathers had been killed while in service, sending a stipend of $36.50 a year, along with parcels of clothing, books, and toys. Children even petitioned for their country’s intervention in the war: in December 1916, eight “junior cops” from the New York City’s Junior Police Force presented a petition to the White House and demanded to be received by President Wilson. In this presentation, I want to show that youth organizations and educationalists infused American youth with patriotism and progressive ideals of cooperation, brotherhood, and order thanks to which children learned they had an obligation as young citizens to protect the nation and rescue foreign destitute civilians. World War I turned into an opportunity to Americanize youth and participate in the identity-making process.