The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America's Future - Hardcover

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Neil Lanctot is an award-winning historian and author. He has written several books, including Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella and Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution. He lives with his wife in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

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Chapter 1

A More Complicated World

July 1-October 4, 1914

We are a very short-sighted and ignorant people in international affairs.

-Theodore Roosevelt, September 1914

America had changed dramatically in the two decades before the archduke's assassination in Sarajevo. The United States was now the wealthiest nation in the world, and its 100 million citizens enjoyed a standard of living inconceivable to the older generations, including the now elderly Civil War veterans who still marched each year in Decoration Day parades. The simpler Currier-and-Ives-postcard lifestyle of the United States that TR, Addams, and Wilson knew during their childhoods was gone forever, replaced by a sometimes frightening, sometimes exhilarating modern America that traditionalists strongly resisted at every turn.

The changes were most apparent in the major cities of the East and "Middle West," as it was called in those days. There, millions of recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe now walked the streets, many still conversing in their native tongues, a threatening presence to some natives who questioned their desire to assimilate. And a new strain of secularism in urban centers was increasingly unavoidable. That May of 1914, the dean of the Yale School of Religion lamented declining church attendance, "commonplace" divorces, "greed for gain," and, worst of all, the "overemphasis upon and a strained self-consciousness of the matter of sex."

The "new" American woman generated similar controversy, especially concerning her desire to vote. "Women as a class have neither leisure opportunity nor inclination to take up the grave study of governmental problems which should occupy men," scoffed one female antisuffragist. "The present electorate is bad enough . . . and its quality, not its quantity, needs improving." Female smoking was another battleground. The once shocking sight of a woman lighting up in a restaurant or hotel became common, much to the horror of society's moral guardians such as the Chicago Tribune's advice columnist Doris Blake. "No decent man could seriously entertain the hope of finding lovely womanhood and divine motherhood in a female cigarette smoker," she wrote. "A self-respecting, nice, girl would scorn to pollute her lips with the taint of tobacco." The growing prohibitionist movement was just as committed to ensuring that her lips should never taste alcohol either.

To a Frenchwoman visiting America, the "audacity" of young women in New York was especially startling. "They paint too much," she lamented. "A little powder, yes; that I do not mind, but the red, the white, the eye black, it is silly, very silly. . . . Then there are the short skirts. They show their stockings. Their skirts are so short, so very short." But she admired the fast pace of American life. "I like the way you jump and run and hurry about. Every one seems to have hope and ambition."

New entertainment options further accelerated America's social transformation in the second decade of the twentieth century. Cheaper models of the Victrola, introduced just eight years earlier, allowed middle-class families the once unimaginable pleasure of hearing stars like Enrico Caruso and John Philip Sousa in the comfort of their own homes, although they could still journey to the nearest big city to see legends such as Houdini ("The Man Who Breaks All Bonds") and Al Jolson.

The booming motion picture industry was also reshaping the nation's leisure patterns. Religious leaders not only fretted over whether the powerful lure of the "picture show" might thin out their congregations each Sunday but also feared the impact of immoral content. Throughout America, local censorship boards carefully scrutinized films for anything remotely objectionable, although standards differed wildly from community to community. A Pennsylvania censor decided that no on-screen kiss should last longer than thity-six seconds, while Chicago authorities snipped out scenes showing counterfeiters and "an immoral woman and the ruses she employs to seduce men."

But it was the emergence of the motorcar that truly reflected the new modern America, replacing the sleepy horse-and-buggy pace of yesteryear. By 1914, the automobile was no longer a toy for the rich but a valuable addition to modern living that drastically widened personal and professional horizons for anyone who could afford one (Addams did not own a car and never learned to drive; Roosevelt and Wilson had chauffeurs). Less enthusiastic observers believed the automobile was a sinister force in modern life, especially for young people. "In the last ten years," claimed the president of Brown University, "probably as many students in American colleges have been demoralized by the automobile as by alcohol. The dazzling attractions of a luxury-loving age constitute the greatest possible danger to American education."

Technology, industrialization, and immigration had wrought permanent changes to the American scene. Life was no longer quite so simple nor as orderly as it had once seemed, even a few years earlier, nor would it ever be again. "The world is becoming more complicated every day," Wilson had warned in a July 4 speech. "Therefore, no man ought to be foolish enough to think he understands it." It was about to grow much more complicated than Wilson or any other American ever imagined.

The developments in Sarajevo did not attract more than the usual press attention throughout much of July. The joint funeral and burial, the grieving royal family, and photographs of the assassin were all deemed newsworthy, but few grasped that a world tragedy was about to unfold. Even fewer had even the most basic comprehension of European affairs and alliances or the smoldering jealousies, fears, hatred, and greed pulsating throughout the Continent. Nor did most understand that Germany had been preparing for war, a war that might not only bring new colonies to match the British and French possessions but also neutralize the perceived threat of ÒencirclementÓ from the west and especially from the east. ÒThe future lies with Russia, she grows and grows, and lies on us like a nightmare,Ó lamented the German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg.

It was not until July 23, when Austria-Hungary issued a harsh ultimatum insisting that Serbia yield to a series of humiliating demands, that the words "European war" began to appear with alarming frequency on the front pages of American newspapers. "War between Austria and Servia would almost certainly embroil all the great European powers and develop into the most colossal struggle in history," The Washington Post editorialized, using the then-common spelling for the nation that Austria-Hungary blamed for the assassination. "Apparently the world is on the eve of witnessing a collision destined to set all thrones a-trembling and to abruptly change the course of events throughout Europe."

The Post proved remarkably prophetic. Austria-Hungary's July 28 declaration of war on Serbia, encouraged by her ally Germany, set off a chain reaction that entangled Europe's two major alliances. Russia soon began to mobilize its forces in support of its Slavic brothers and sisters in Serbia, prompting Germany to declare war on Russia on August 1. Since France, allied to Russia since 1894, now posed a serious threat, Germany declared war on its hated neighbor two days later.

The German military had long believed a two-front war of this kind could be won by defeating France quickly and then turning their attention to Russia. The main attack on France would come through the north by way of Belgium,...