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Chapter I By Any Means Necessary P lans for war defined the waves of national enthusiasm that swept over the European peoples during the summer of 1914. Soon after the events at Sarajevo, governments mobilized their massive military resources and prepared to defeat their respective enemies. Most Europeans thought the conflict would be over in a matter of months; almost none foresaw a struggle that would drag on for four long years, that emperors and kings would be dethroned or that millions of lives would be sacrificed on the battlefield. The handful of Americans living in France found themselves in a precarious situation. Notwithstanding the fact that they were surrounded by an enthusiastic French citizenry, it was clear that their lives might be at risk if they remained in the country. Their dilemma was underscored when the United States government issued a formal statement outlining its policy of neutrality and encouraging American citizens living in Europe to return home. The issue was, however, a simple one for the French government; young foreign males living in that country were given a choice; they could leave France or they could join the French Foreign Legion.l One enterprising young American thought of an alternative. Norman Prince, who happened to be vacationing in Paris when the war came, petitioned the French government for the establishment of an American squadron within the French Flying Corps. Prince, the son of a wealthy businessman, was a student pilot and viewed fighting for the French as both romantic and a payback for help France gave to the United States in the Revolutionary War. According to Arthur Whitehouse, author of The Yean ofthe Sky King.5,2 Prince recruited all of the American men he could find, including two African Americans, 5 6 Double V Eugene Bullard and Robert Scanlon. When Prince first approached the French authorities with his plan and a list of volunteers, the government officials rejected the idea of an American squadron, citing the American policy of neutrality and the lack of flying experience among some of the volunteers. Prince was told that individuals with enough flight experience could volunteer for service in the French Flying Service, and that he should return to the United States for more civilian flight training. All of the other men on the list who had little or no flying experience were given the option of returning to the United States orjoining the French Foreign Legion.3 Prince returned to Boston to continue his flight training. All of the other white men on Prince's volunteer list, Victor Chapman, William Thaw, Kiffin Rockwell, Bert Hall, and Elliot Cowden, joined the Foreign Legion.4 These men were, for the most part, adventure seekers and romantics. The war, and the impending danger, attracted them, and service in the Foreign Legion was their right of passage. If some of these men had chosen to return home, they could have led productive and successful lives. For the two African Americans, however , the options offered to them were as attractive as playing Russian Roulette. Both options-life in America or life in the Foreign Legion-offered little consolation. Either choice could result in death for both men. At the start of World War I, African Americans in the United States had little protection from unscrupulous whites in the executive, judicial , and legislative branches of the federal, state, and local governments . Although African Americans had a right to protection and fair treatment from the three branches of government, as stipulated in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Cnited States Constitution, oftentimes they were denied that protection.5 From the end of the Reconstruction period to the beginning of the new century, over 2,450 Mrican Americans were lynched in the United States, most under the suspicion of committing a crime, or tried and convicted by biased and hostile all-white juries. According toJohn Hope Franklin, in From Slavery to Freedom, over 1,I00 Mrican Americans were murdered by white mobs in the first thirteen years of the twentieth century . Very few of the organizers of these mob murders were ever arrested or convicted by the judicial systems in the areas where the lynchings occurred.6 Eugene Bullard and Bob Scanlon both realized that America in 1914 was not a healthy place to be if you were a young, ambitious, African-American male, striving to participate in all of the liberties granted to American citizens. Both had ventured to Paris to escape [18.221.187.121...

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