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Why We Are Not Interested in World War I and Should Be Among Americans the First World War ranks high on the list of forgotten subjects. The few of us who have written about that war have all experienced the blank looks which reflect most people’s lack of interest and profound lack of knowledge when the subject rarely comes up. Then, those of us who have visited the huge American battlefield cemeteries on the Western Front are also impressed by how few of our countrymen have signed the visitors’ books over the years. In the 1950s, a friend of mine, Gil Fite, took a book-length manuscript to the University of Oklahoma Press in the hope of getting it published. The director of the press asked him what it was about and Gil replied that it was about the people who had opposed theAmerican entry into World War I. Without even looking at the manuscript, the director said: “Gil, you couldn’t sell a book on World War I for $4.95 if you slipped a $5 bill inside the cover.” Eventually the book (Gilbert Fite and H. C. Peterson, Opponents of War, 1917–1918) did find a publisher, but, as one who has published two books on World War I topics, I can testify that the situation has not changed much since then. In 1987, the French government wanted to commemorate appropriately the seventieth anniversary of the American entrance into the war. The French issued a stamp and a medal embellished with images of General Pershing and the doughboys. They also tried to engage the official American history community in this commemorative effort. That spring, the French ambassador invited representatives of the various federal history programs for a lunch during which he broached the topic. He was stonewalled as all indicated that there was no interest in this country about World War I. I should say, however, in their behalf, that at that time the federal history agencies were deeply involved in the celebration of the bicentennial of the Constitution in addition to their regular duties, so the last thing they wanted was another project. So the French carried 100 THE EMBATTLED PAST on a very limited one-sided effort which, to my knowledge, consisted of having a small program at the French Institute in New York City and hosting a handful of World War I veterans in Paris for a couple of days. This lack of interest was certainly not what I had experienced as a boy growing up in Western Kentucky in the thirties. My father and other veterans and their organization, the American Legion, were a prominent part of town life. And the captured German field piece that graced the courthouse yard was a magnet for small boys. I know that I sent a few imaginary rounds downrange myself. When I went to church, in the vestibule, there was a large panel with the names of all of the members who had served in the war with the names of the two who had died lettered in gold. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, Armistice Day—which we now call Veterans Day— there was a minute of silence in the schools. We dutifully memorized “In Flanders Fields.” General Pershing, Eddie Rickenbacker, and Sergeant York were names I learned at a very young age. One of my first memories was seeing the wartime Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels come to town for a lecture. Back then, on the streets, in that time of Depression, one saw veterans wearing their uniform coats. World War II quickly changed this. The German gun went into the scrap drive; there was no longer in the schools a minute of silence on 11 November; and the panel in my church disappeared into storage while virtually everyone we knew of military age went into the service. This much greater war, from the standpoint of the United States, eclipsed what then became known as World War I. How important was the American effort? What effect did it have on the war? In the past, American academic historians have tended to ignore that question and to concentrate on the developments that got us into the war and the negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference. In more recent years, their emphasis has been on the social aspects of the war. These are interesting and worthwhile topics, but they do not answer the question. An incident at a scholarly...

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