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113 13 sacred space and strife Within weeks of the ABMC’s founding, the secretary of war relinquished chairmanship over the new commission and named General Pershing in his place. The intention may have been at least partially calculated to foster public support by separating the agency from the War Department’s direct control. regardless, Pershing and his secretary, Major Xenophon H. (X. H.) Price, were the only military members of the new governing body.1 once it became clear that Pershing’s other duties (he was still the chief of staff, for example) would prevent him from attending regular meetings, senator reed assumed an increasingly prominent role as “acting chairman,” leaving Major Price as the lone military representative. The decision to appoint senator David Aiken reed, a lawyer by profession , to such a key role undoubtedly proved a crucial factor in determining America’s commemorative legacy overseas. No individual exerted more influence than reed over the shape and intention of the nation’s memorialization efforts; consequently, the senator’s personality, biases, and political leanings, as well as his extravagant, grandiose architectural schemes, are still apparent across the battlefields today. David reed was born into a wealthy Pittsburgh family, educated at “expensive private schools,” graduated Princeton in 1900, and entered his father’s law firm in 1903. His practice dealt chiefly with corporations and public utilities, interests that Time magazine claimed were closely associated with his friend and mentor, Andrew W. Mellon. reed was commissioned a major in the First World War and won several medals in the Argonne campaign. Following his overseas service, he returned to his law office in Pennsylvania until he was appointed senator in 1922.2 The Time article described reed as a “thin, lean, wiry man of medium stature” who possessed a “supercilious” manner and walked very rapidly in expensive cut suits, swinging his arms with an “air of great preoccupation .” His unsmiling eyes, set in a long and deeply lined face, gave him the appearance of a man well beyond his years. With his thin brown hair 114 Sacred Space and Strife slicked back across his head, he spoke with a “vibrant intensity” on the senate floor while leaning forward, every muscle taut.3 Politically, reed was known as a “vigorous republican partisan” who voted for tax reductions , farm relief, and increased prohibition penalties. More significant, in 1923, he voted against the soldier Bonus bill, which would have authorized adjusted pay benefits and insurance for veterans. For that reason, war veterans were reportedly suspicious of reed, making him the government ’s “man of the hour” but certainly no friend to the “common man.”4 reportedly, the senator maintained his aristocratic airs and made no effort to appeal to average Americans. senator reed later claimed that President Harding “really exercised very little choice in making the [ABMC] selections, because . . . [they] were practically forced upon him by the decision of these various organizations that everybody wanted recognized.”5 Warren G. Harding, the first American president to take office after the First World War, is remembered mainly for the scandals that clouded his administration, which lasted barely two and a half years. By midterm, Harding’s popularity had greatly diminished due to the collapse of the war boom, wage cuts, unemployment , distress among farmers, and urban resentment of prohibition.6 Thus, the president might have viewed the ABMC appointments as an opportunity to appease special interests. reed’s comment hints at raised public expectations that greater civic participation on the commission would lead to an enhanced public voice in the outcome. if so, these hopes were soon dispelled. The passage of the ABMC legislation unarguably moved control of the nation’s war remembrance out of the hands of the War Department into the laps of public representatives; however, it is unclear whether this action reflected narrow political calculation by the Harding administration or was a genuine attempt to give the public a stronger voice in commemorative policy. The months between the ABMC’s creation in March and Harding’s death in August 1923 (just before the first ABMC meeting in september) were tumultuous ones in Washington. Corruption, political disgrace, and subsequent investigations (particularly those concerning the veterans Bureau ) plagued the administration, and “for a time it was not clear that the President’s death . . . would be sufficient to save his party from the feared political consequences.”7 senator reed’s participation in the veterans’ Bureau investigations were said to have “helped expose graft” that ultimately sent the...

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