Josephus Daniels: His Life and Times

9. To the Bitter End

331 9. To the Bitter End For all its agony of carnage and destruction, the Great War of 1914–1918 settled little. —DAVID KENNEDY, Freedom from Fear As the Great War ground on, it disrupted Josephus Daniels’s usually quiet domestic life. Following America’s entry, his most acute personal concern was the appropriate role in the war effort for his two eldest sons, both of whom wereold enough to perform military service.When theUnited States entered the war, Joe Jr. was twenty-­ two years old and serving his apprenticeship at the News and Observer. The second son, Worth, had just turned eighteen and was completing his first year at the University of North Carolina . The Old Man, as Daniels was often called to avoid confusion with his oldest son, was quietly agonizing over what to do about his sons when the Greensboro (N.C.) News settled the matter for him. Having taken an antiwar position during the diplomatic crisis with Germany, the paper, in an article Daniels labeled a “vicious, dirty” piece, published only two weeks after the United States entered the war, noted correctly that none of Daniels’s four sons had yet enlisted. As Jonathan was only fifteen and the youngest, Frank, was thirteen at the time, the challenge was clearly meant for Joe Jr. and Worth. The oldest boy, physically frail and possessing poor eyesight, took the adverse publicity very hard. The Old Man noted in his diary that after the article was published, he and his eldest son “had a heart to heart talk and a cry.” Joe Jr.’s “heart [was] in the paper,” his father wrote, meaning the boy wanted to stay at the N&O, but yielding to pressure, much of which was self-­ generated, Joe Jr. joined the U.S. Marine Corps within the week.1 In his capacity as secretary of the navy, Daniels had to exempt Joe Jr. from the rigorous physical and eye exams, and concerns about his son’s health caused the Old Man to suffer more than a little anxiety. In his diary the father confided that the boy “loves to be with me & all the time I am yearning to take his place & help him. The saddest thing about being a father is that striving to help a boy grow to age and not be able to do it.” He added that the boy “isn’t very strong. I had to waive defect in eyes for him to To the Bitter End 332 enter & feared he would not be able to stand it; & that sleeping in room with 30-­ 40 other men (etc.) would go hard with him.” Despite these concerns, Daniels noted that Joe Jr. “takes it all bravely and cheerfully.”2 By February of the following year, Joe Jr. had earned a commission as a second lieutenant , and eventually he was sent to France. There he was subsequently promoted to first lieutenant while serving in a regiment commanded by his father’s gunboat paladin,Colonel Smedley Butler. Although having a father who, as navy secretary, was nominally his superior probably did not hurt Joe’s chances for a commission, the son made his own way in the corps, and though never a frontline solder, he became a solid marine. In the fall of 1918, Colonel Butler, never one to dissemble, wrote to Addie from France, noting that “Josephus is doing splendidly [as a marine].”3 As the oldest son, and thus least protected from combat, Joe Jr. was his father’s biggest concern , and the Old Man must have sighed in relief as his son managed to serve his country well without getting killed. Daniels had hoped that Joe Jr. would be the only sacrificial lamb to come from his family. His hopes were dashed through the impetuosity of Worth. Of Daniels’s four sons, unquestionably the one with whom he had the most conflict was Worth. Hardheaded and independent, Worth would be the only son who never worked at the News and Observer for any length of time, the only one who would not make the newspaper business his trade, and the only one who would not spend his adult life in Raleigh. From a young age, Worth sought his own way in the world, and with the country’s entry into the Great War, he grew restless at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Sometime late in 1917 or early 1918, he approached his father about an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy...