In California at War: The State and the People during World War I, Diane M. T. North makes the basic point that California shared a similar but also a very different experience than other U.S. states in preparing to participate and fight in the Great War, as it was known.
The war began in 1914, and North opens by tracing the paths of several Californians who got into the fight well before the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. A handful joined the British Army; the French Foreign Legion; or the American Field Service, a non-governmental group that provided heroic ambulance services. After American entry, North chronicles several Californians who served in the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), such as 2d Lt. Patrick Regan, who won the Medal of Honor by facing enemy fire and capturing thirty Austrian gunners and four machine guns with his empty pistol. North laments reliance upon the letters and diaries of white officers whose education and status favored the survival of their reminiscences, but she manages to treat the role of California's minorities well in other parts of the book where attitudes regarding the state's large ethnic populations explain much about California's World War I experience.
The draft included no 1st California Volunteer Infantry units, as there had been in earlier wars. However, California supplied several National Guard units for the National Army. In their ranks was one Capt. Nelson M. Holderman of Santa Ana, who received the Medal of Honor fighting alongside other Guardsmen during the “Lost Battalion” episode. Here, North perhaps missed an opportunity to detail the role of entire units of Californians rather than to focus simply on individuals.
California women also participated in the conflict, and did so, as North states “with a fresh sense of confidence and ability based on their status as full citizens and participants in state government” (67–68). From 1911, Californian women had both suffrage and the experience of providing large-scale relief (due to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake). North traces the lives of several Californian women, including Liu Henry Hoover who, with her husband Herbert, a successful mining engineer, was living in Europe in 1914 when war broke out. Herbert's wealth and Lou's social connections helped them organize committees to assist unaccompanied American women and children and, famously, the Commission for Relief in Belgium and Northern France, which would comfort some 11 million civilian refugees and displaced persons. Less prominent humanitarians included Julie Helen Heyneman, a San Francisco writer living in London, who founded the California House, a model for providing vocational training to disabled soldiers. Other Californians served as AEF nurses or in the fabled “Hello Girls” as telephone operators. North does a good job of linking the roles of individual Californian women to the larger organizations and relief activities they were part of, although it is hard to tell if their role differed significantly from similar women from other states.
On the home front, California's women were “well ordered” through long-established civic, religious, and suffragist networks (178). They quickly mobilized to relieve the misery of the distressed both aboard and during the virulent influenza epidemic that accompanied the war. The Women's Committee of the California State Council of Defense exercised great power by linking millions of women through existing women's groups. Californian women helped raise money for the government and the American Red Cross or gave directly to aid refugees. They promoted food conservation and often tried to curb racist sentiment. Nevertheless, many also embraced misguided Americanization campaigns that sought “to make California a state of one language and one people” (193). Thus, North concludes, California's women failed during the war to impart the benefits of tolerance and diversity, especially to the state's children, vexing the future.
The war transformed California's economy. Both workers and farmers benefited as they geared up to supply and feed great armies. Unfortunately, as the author notes, the war also “brought an increase in the cost of living and accelerated corporate and agricultural consolidation” (177). There also followed labor unrest, bouts of repression, and racist fearmongering that chilled the flow of migrant labor. Nevertheless, the state's economy benefited by more centralized planning; numerous industrial improvements, including economic diversification; and the buildup of new manufacturing, transportation, energy production, and military facilities. After the war, the state's petroleum refining capacity surpassed that of both Texas and New Jersey while its growing film industry flourished producing pro-war propaganda.
No sooner had the government declared war than Congress passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts and began to crack down on civil liberties. North details odious efforts by Californians to suppress anti-war dissent and to root out perceived disloyalty. The state censored textbooks; banned the study of German language, history, and music in school; and passed new laws stifling speech. In some cities, including Berkeley, mobs used vigilante tactics to intimidate so-called “enemy aliens” or just those with German-sounding surnames. The University of California imposed loyalty oaths and dismissed professors on hearsay evidence of disloyalty. North also shows how the American Protective League (APL) worked with the Justice Department by spying upon Americans suspected or accused of disloyalty. Most of the time, the APL suppressed legitimate criticism, promoted a racist, anti-immigrant, anti-socialist agenda, and enabled personal feuds. Why was such work appealing? North explains that “in a society where young, strong, brave soldiers dominated the public imagination,” APL participation provided validation for the masculinity and social status of older white men (245).
In California at War, North crafts a clear story, built through exhaustive research that includes a lengthy chronology, eighty-four pages of endnotes, and an impressive bibliography. She draws several lessons about how California responded to the challenges of the First World War that are as relevant today as a century ago. Geography favored the state's economic expansion while demography and enduring bias tested its social cohesion and created the basis for future injustice. Individual men and women offered heroic service and selfless drive while authorities used the exigency to crack down on labor organizers or to silence constituents for reasons owing more to race, class, or ethnic identity than to the war. Surely, this is reason enough for modern leaders and citizens to study the lessons of history.
