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Chapter Three: A Nation Rises Up
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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Chapter Three A Nation Rises Up Rather than knowingly wrong a man to the value of a penny, we would let ourselves be robbed of a hundred gulden. Rather than strike our worst enemy with our hand—to say nothing of spears, swords, and halberds such as the world uses—we would let our own lives be taken. —Jakob Hutter Nation Shows Patriotic Colors Flags across the nation flew as if on full alert in 1918. Tacoma felt more than the stirring breeze that visited many towns; this was a community of powerful gusts, where patriotism billowed up as Patriotism. The publisher of the Daily News launched a campaign to plant the largest American flag in the world on the grounds of Camp Lewis. As donations from readers poured in to the paper’s offices at the Perkins Building, the publisher contracted with the American Flag Company of New York to build a champion banner, measuring sixty feet by ninety feet and weighing in at 257 pounds. Each of the thirteen stripes, made of the finest grade bunting, was nearly five feet wide. The paper announced the flag’s arrival in a photo headlined with a folksy touch of pride: “Here Is the Big Camp Lewis Flag. Is ‘Six Stories ’ Long. If It Were Hung from the Topmost Cornice of the Perkins Building It Would Drag on the A Street Pavement. Some Flag, Eh?”1 In the winter of 1918, the newspaper had foresters searching the woods of western Washington, looking for a suitable pole on which to mount the 50 Pacifists in Chains flag. The pole could then be placed at Camp Lewis and rise at least 314 feet, well above the reigning record holder in England, at 215 feet. (Tacoma was not the only city to measure its patriotism by the yardstick. National Geographic magazine published a photo in late 1917 of a 200-pound flag manufactured in Manchester, New Hampshire. Measuring 50 feet by 95 feet, the Manchester challenger came within 650 square feet and 57 pounds of the Tacoma contender). The Tacoma flag was to be dedicated in May, but the commissioners of the flag had not fully anticipated the challenge of finding and securing a pole that would be able to support a flag of those dimensions . Memorial Day came and went that year without the flag on display.2 Even absent the banner, Camp Lewis found suitable ways to contribute to the national outpouring on a day devoted to the memory of soldiers who had died in service. A band of more than a hundred soldier musicians , billed as the largest group ever to make music on the Pacific Coast, furnished the entertainment, complemented by a twenty-one-gun salute at noon. In New York City, a woman named Rosie Rosenberg, who may have set her own record by having six sons simultaneously fighting for the nation , joined more than twenty thousand other marchers in a parade across Manhattan. Neighboring Philadelphia halted all business for two minutes at eleven o’clock on that day. Down in Washington, D.C., President Woodrow Wilson called on Americans to pay homage to past defenders and to devote themselves to a day of prayer on behalf of the soldiers. Solemnity was in the air. The New York Times reported that there were “probably fewer sporting and athletic events than in other years, but greater attendance at churches and larger crowds at the cemeteries.”3 The president himself attended Central Presbyterian Church in the morning and then went to Arlington National Cemetery in the afternoon. In the valleys of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri , the paper said, a “more martial spirit and a greater reverence” were apparent. A Wary Onlooker at the Outset of War The evidence in every town and city of unbridled support for the war on that Memorial Day would have been inconceivable only a year or two ear- [54.235.6.60] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 04:56 GMT) A Nation Rises Up 51 lier. Many Americans had been hard-pressed both to grasp the underlying causes of the war and to offer convincing reasons why the nation on this side of the Atlantic should become involved; the territorial and economic rivalries among the great foreign powers ran deep. That the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of AustriaHungary , on June 28, 1914, served as a flashpoint was common enough knowledge, as was the subsequent decision...