The War at Home: Perspectives on the Arkansas Experience during World War I ed. by Mark K. Christ (review)

The one-hundredth anniversary of World War I has fostered numerous re-examinations of a conflict that shaped the modern world. Among these studies is The War at Home: Perspectives on the Arkansas Experience during World War I, a volume that contains the proceedings of two seminars sponsored by the Arkansas World War I Commemorative Committee and the Old State House Museum in Little Rock. While many retrospectives highlight the diplomatic and military aspects of the "War to End All Wars," this one wisely focuses on the home front, in a state that was 80 percent rural in 1918. The War at Home is inclusive in its content, paying special attention not only to military enlistments and industrial mobilization but also to women, common laborers, and African Americans during a time of rapid social, economic, and racial transformation. The authors, all of whom are prominent historians of Arkansas's past, present a cohesive and compelling story that links the World War I experience to the present. Especially powerful in this regard are the essays "Soldiers and Veterans at the Elaine Race Massacre" and "The Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918 and Its Legacy for Arkansas." Other fascinating entries focus on the woman suffrage crusade and on the rapid construction of Camp Pike and Little Rock's Picric Acid Plant.

What is especially compelling is that matters of race and gender suffuse each essay and are integral to the stories told. Certain themes dominate. For many, service in the Great War became "a means to defend the valor of Confederate veterans and a way to defend the Lost Cause" (p. 12). Such a view makes clear the continuation of racial tensions in a heightened era of Jim Crow. Yet the efforts of all citizens of Arkansas, both Black and white, to win the war are integral to the volume. While hundreds of Arkansas men gave their lives in the conflict, women also made sacrifices. Women of all races assisted in the war effort whether through voluntary food conservation or through more formal Home Demonstration, Red Cross, and other work. Such efforts at times were stymied by anxious husbands who did not desire their wives to sign documents committing themselves to possible federal oversight or in support of a woman suffrage amendment. Tensions long evident in the South against the intervention of the federal government in state affairs remained. Yet the people of Arkansas proved themselves activists in their own right, be it through ingenious cantonment construction or labor agitation. On the latter topic, several essays provide confusing information on the resolution of the laundry workers' strike carried out by Black women workers during the war. Careful editing to eliminate possible contradictions in interpretation would have been helpful.

The volume ends with a compelling essay titled "Paris to Pearl in Print." It is an astute examination of what Arkansas newspapers had to say about world affairs in the years between the Treaty of Versailles and the American entrance into World War II. Ignorance of world events seemed to be a key characteristic, as did pacifism and isolationism. Such a close reading of relatively rural media sources provides evidence of the prevailing views of many in the United States who hoped to remain free of foreign entanglements. Citizens of Arkansas had given their all to winning World War I and had little desire to be asked to do so again, an ultimately hopeless wish. In 1917–1918, they had answered the call of a nation they had once fought to break apart. As The War at Home makes clear, they did so with dedication and enthusiasm.