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“A Perilous Venture for Democracy”: Soldiers, Sexual Purity, and American Citizenship in the First World War1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2014

Kimberley A. Reilly
Kimberley A. Reilly*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Green Bay
*
[email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

This essay examines the influence of the social purity movement on the U.S. government's campaign to protect servicemen from the temptations of drink and illicit sex during World War I. This influence had been forged in the context of U.S. imperialism in the two decades prior to American entry into the war, as purity reformers linked the sexual morality and temperance of soldiers serving in occupied territories overseas to racial purity and national character at home. War Department policymakers who were allied with the purity movement likewise understood male moral restraint and sexual self-control to underpin democratic self-governance. This linkage between civic virtue and moral virtue was especially problematic at the outset of the war, as many native-born Americans (progressive policymakers included) questioned whether all members of the ethnically and racially diverse nation had the capacity for self-government. The goals of social purity and wartime policymakers were thus aligned as the War Department launched its crusade against liquor and sexual vice within the military. Government officials required moral sobriety of servicemen in order to remake the body politic. But even as they demanded virtuous conduct from the man in uniform, they simultaneously infantilized the “soldier lad” in their effort to safeguard him.

Type
Theme: Women's and Gender History in Global Context
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 223 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2014 

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Footnotes

1

For their comments on and criticism of earlier drafts of this essay, I would like to thank Linda Janke, Matthew Lindsay, and the anonymous reviewers of the journal—particularly reviewer one, whose insights were invaluable.

References

2 Daniel A. Poling, “Physically Competent and Morally Fit: A Report from an Eye-Witness at the Front,” Outlook, July 10, 1918, 416, 417. On reports of drunkenness and debauchery among U.S. servicemen stationed abroad, see, for example, “Vice and the Soldier,” Bellman, Dec. 8, 1917, 621–22; “Drink Charges Anger Americans in London,” New York Times, Jan. 10, 1918, 4; “Exaggerated Reports of the Depravity of Our Soldiers in France,” Current Opinion, Mar. 1918, 197–98; “‘They Say’: But They Lie,” Ladies' Home Journal, July 1918, 4, 76.

3 “Our Troops to Have Hot Drink Stations,” New York Times, Mar. 4, 1918, 4.

4 Shah, Courtney Q., “‘Against Their Own Weakness’: Policing Sexuality and Women in San Antonio, Texas, during World War I,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19 (Sept. 2010): 458–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Capozzola, Christopher, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (New York, 2008), 131–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clement, Elizabeth Alice, Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 114–43Google Scholar; Pivar, David J., Purity and Hygiene: Women, Prostitution, and the “American Plan,” 1900–1930 (Westport, CT, 2002), 201–37Google Scholar; Odem, Mary, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995), 121–27Google Scholar, 186–87; Hobson, Barbara Meil, Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American Reform Tradition (New York, 1987), 165–83Google Scholar; Connelly, Mark Thomas, The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980), 137–50Google Scholar; Rosen, Ruth, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900–1918 (Baltimore, 1982), 33–37Google Scholar; Pivar, David J., “Cleansing the Nation: The War on Prostitution, 1917–1920,” Prologue 12 (Spring 1980): 29–40.Google Scholar

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6 “Mr. Bok ‘Butts In,’” Saturday Review (London), Oct. 5, 1918, 909. For similar observations by the French, see Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 104–06.

7 On the American social purity movement, see Pivar, Purity and Hygiene; Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 8–37; Pivar, David J., Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1869–1900 (Westport, CT, 1973).Google Scholar

8 “Barring Sex Disease from the American Army,” New York Times (Sunday Magazine), Oct. 28, 1917.

9 Frank Parker Stockbridge, “The Cleanest Army in the World,” Delineator, Dec. 1918, 8; Bristow, Making Men Moral, 1–3; Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 57.

10 Hilton Howell Railey, “Your Boy in Camp,” Independent, Aug. 11, 1917, 220. In the Independent, see Railey, “Your Boy in Camp,” 219–21; Railey, “With the Boys in Camp,” Oct. 6, 1917, 16–17, 44–45; Railey, “Making Over Men,” Feb. 2, 1918, 176, 212. In Outlook, see Joseph H. Odell, “The New Spirit of the New Army: Democratizing the Army to Save Democracy,” Nov. 14, 1917, 414–15; Odell, “The New Spirit of the New Army: Making Democracy Safe for the Soldier,” Nov. 28, 1917, 496–97; Odell, “The New Spirit of the New Army: The Men Behind the Men Who Fight the Huns,” Dec. 12, 1917, 604–06; Odell, “The New Spirit of the New Army: The Soul of the Soldier,” Dec. 26, 1917, 679–81; Odell, “The New Spirit of the New Army: The Miracle of Democracy,” Jan. 23, 1918, 140–42.

11 Railey, “Your Boy in Camp,” 219.

12 “Making Vice Unattractive in Soldiers' Camps,” New York Times (Sunday Magazine), May 20, 1917.

13 Kramer, Paul A., “The Military-Sexual Complex: Prostitution, Disease and the Boundaries of Empire during the Philippine-American War,” Asia-Pacific Journal 9 (July 25, 2011)Google Scholar, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Paul_A_-Kramer/3574; Tyrell, Ian, “The Regulation of Alcohol and Other Drugs in a Colonial Context: United States Policy Toward the Philippines, c. 1898–1910,” Contemporary Drug Problems 35 (Winter 2008): 539–71Google Scholar; Tyrell, Woman's World/Woman's Empire: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), 191–220Google Scholar; Briggs, Laura, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley, 2002), 46-73Google Scholar; Hoganson, Kristin, “‘As Badly Off as the Filipinos’: U.S. Women's Suffragists and the Imperial Issue at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Women's History 13 (Summer 2001): 9–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, CT, 1998), 180–93Google Scholar; Renda, Mary A., Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001), 62–74Google Scholar, 169–71, 215–16.

14 Pivar, Purity and Hygiene, 34–35, 204–05; Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 98, 114. Chemical prophylaxis was a treatment that was applied to a soldier's genitals after sexual intercourse to protect him against venereal infection. For a description, see Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 111.

15 Kramer, “Military-Sexual Complex”; Tyrell, Woman's World/Woman's Empire, 213–17; Briggs, Reproducing Empire, 46–49; Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 190–91. The results of the WCTU's campaigns were mixed. In the Philippines, the military stopped issuing “health certificates” to prostitutes but continued to inspect them. In Puerto Rico, officials ended regulation in favor of incarcerating all prostitutes suspected of harboring venereal disease—a policy that mirrored its approach on the mainland. Briggs, Reproducing Empire, 30, asserts that policies regulating prostitution have been “reliably instituted” in all U.S. colonial possessions.

16 Tyrell, “The Regulation of Alcohol and Other Drugs in a Colonial Context,” 539–71; Pivar, Purity and Hygiene, 204–05.

17 Kramer, “Military-Sexual Complex”; Tyrell, Woman's World/Woman's Empire, 212–19.

18 Kramer, “Military Sexual Complex”; Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 180–93.

19 Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 23–37, 47–51; D'Emilio, John and Freedman, Estelle B., Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York, 1988), 150–56Google Scholar, 173–78, 203–08; Pivar, Purity Crusade, 204–54.

20 “Moral Prophylaxis in the Army,” Literary Digest, Sept. 15, 1917, 34; “Zones of Safety,” Survey, July 21, 1917, 350.

21 Exner, M. J. M.D., “Prostitution in Its Relation to the Army on the Mexican Border,” Social Hygiene 3 (Apr. 1917): 205–20Google Scholar; Briggs, Reproducing Empire, 31–32; Bristow, Making Men Moral, 5–7; Clement, Love for Sale, 117; Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 54–55.

22 “A Warning Cry for Our Troops on the Border,” Literary Digest, July 29, 1916, 254.

23 “Mr. Fosdick Denies Favoring Beer and Wine for United States Troops,” Union Signal, Jan. 24, 1918.

24 Lieut. Anderson, George J., “Making the Camps Safe for the Army,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 79 (Sept. 1918): 143–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bristow, Making Men Moral, 11. According to Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 101, by the time the American Expeditionary Forces arrived in 1917, the French military had recorded over one million cases of syphilis and gonorrhea. The British fared little better, with an average of 23,000 soldiers convalescing with venereal infections throughout the war.

25 Grayzel, Susan R., Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999), 140–56Google Scholar; Rhoades, Michelle K., “Renegotiating French Masculinity: Medicine and Venereal Disease during the Great War,” French Historical Studies 29 (Spring 2006): 293–327CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Under the Defence of Realm Act (DORA), Regulations 35C and 40D, the British government revived provisions of the repealed Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864 that reformers regarded as tantamount to state-regulated prostitution. Grayzel, Women's Identities at War, 140–52.

26 Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You, 131–36; Clement, Love For Sale, 114–25; Pivar, Purity and Hygiene, 201–37; Odem, Deliquent Daughters, 121–27.

27 Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 52–121, provides the most comprehensive, authoritative account of the War Department's campaign against venereal disease and prostitution. For a contemporary account, Buchanan, John G., “War Legislation against Alcoholic Liquor and Prostitution,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 9 (Feb. 1919): 520–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Letter of Baker to the Governors, in Snow, William F., “Social Hygiene and the War,” Social Hygiene 3 (July 1917): 434–35Google Scholar; What the War Has Done to Stamp Out Venereal Disease (New York, 1919)Google Scholar, 3; Clement, Love for Sale, 114–43; Pivar, “Cleansing the Nation”; Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 71–77.

29 “Making Vice and Drink Tabu among Soldiers,” Literary Digest, June 16, 1917, 1852.

30 Baker's speech was reprinted in a number of popular sources, including Allen, Edward Frank and Fosdick, Raymond B., Keeping Our Fighters Fit for War and After (New York, 1918), 206–07Google Scholar; and “Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, Speaks on War Camp Community Recreation Service,” American City 17 (Nov. 1917): 403.

31 Joseph Lee, “The Training Camp Commissions,” Survey, Oct. 6, 1917, 4; “Making Vice Unattractive in Soldiers' Camps.”

32 Major-General Leonard Wood, “Heat Up the Melting Pot,” Independent, July 3, 1916, 15; “Citizen Soldiery,” Outlook, Feb. 9, 1916, 304. Wood counted among the most prominent proponents of universal military training. On the Plattsburg idea and movements for universal military training, see Clifford, John Garry, The Citizen Soldiers: The Plattsburg Training Camp Movement, 1913–1920 (Lexington, KY, 1972)Google Scholar; Finnegan, John Patrick, Against the Specter of a Dragon: The Campaign for American Military Preparedness, 1914–1917 (Westport, CT, 1974)Google Scholar; Pearlman, Michael, To Make Democracy Safe for America: Patricians and Preparedness in the Progressive Era (Urbana, IL, 1984), 128–29Google Scholar; and generally, Kennedy, David M., Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, 1980), 17–18.Google Scholar

33 Jacobson, Matthew Frye, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA, 1998)Google Scholar, 6; Major Granville Fortescue, “Training the New Armies of Liberty,” National Geographic Magazine, Nov.–Dec. 1917, 429. Between 1880 and 1920, 23 million immigrants—largely from southern and eastern Europe—arrived on U.S. shores. On immigrants' fitness for citizenship, see Jacobson, Whiteness, 75–83; Gerstle, Gary, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2001), 44–47Google Scholar, 50–54, 83–95; Slotkin, Richard, Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality (New York, 2005), 4–11Google Scholar, 72–111; Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, 2nd ed. (New York, 1969), 137–40.Google Scholar

34 “Wilson Approves Staff's Army Bill,” New York Times, Apr. 7, 1917, 3; Kennedy, Over Here, 29–30; Bristow, Making Men Moral, 139–41, 176; Barbeau, Arthur E. and Henri, Florette, The Unknown Soldiers: African-American Troops in World War I, 2nd ed. (New York, 1996), 6–8.Google Scholar

35 Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers, 38–39, 42–44; Kennedy, Over Here, 158–62; Slotkin, Lost Battalions, 237–38.

36 Odell, “Miracle of Democracy,” 142.

37 Odell, “Miracle of Democracy,” 140.

38 Quoted in “Zones of Safety,” 350.

39 Exner, “Army on the Mexican Border,” 207.

40 Harris Dickson, “An American by the Grace of God,” Ladies' Home Journal, June 1918, 88; “War's Strange Tentmates in the Camps,” Literary Digest, Nov. 17, 1917, 76; “Vice and the Soldier,” 621.

41 Donald Wilhelm, “Shoot Straight and Live Straight,” Independent, Dec. 15, 1917, 516; Fortescue, “Training the New Armies of Liberty,” 431; Allen and Fosdick, Keeping Our Fighters Fit, 160–62; “Giving the Rookies a Liberal Education,” World Outlook, Apr. 1918, 11. On Americanization during the war, see Higham, Strangers in the Land, 216; and Gerstle, American Crucible, 83–95. By contrast, Ford, Nancy Gentile, Americans All! Foreign-Born Soldiers in World War I (College Station, TX, 2001)Google Scholar, contends that Americanization campaigns during World War I provided an atmosphere in which some immigrant groups could lay claim to an “Americanness” that preserved important cultural and religious customs.

42 Allen and Fosdick, Keeping Our Fighters Fit, 158.

43 Fortescue, “Training the New Armies of Liberty,” 435.

44 Dickson, “American by the Grace of God,” 88. See also Fortescue, “Training the New Armies of Liberty,” 435; Odell, “Making Democracy Safe,” 497; Frances Fisher Byers, “Camp Upton—The Melting Pot,” World Outlook, Apr. 1918, 15; “War's Strange Tentmates in the Camps.”

45 Paul Woolman, “We Who Are Drafted,” Bellman, Oct. 27, 1917, 462; Railey, “Your Boy in Camp,” 221; Odell, “Democratizing the Army,” 415.

46 On nineteenth-century manliness and twentieth-century masculinity, see Pettegrew, John, Brutes in Suits: Male Sensibility in America, 1890–1920 (Baltimore, 2007)Google Scholar; Bederman, Gail, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rotundo, E. Anthony, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from Revolution to the Modern Era (New York, 1993), 10–30Google Scholar, 222–83.

47 War Department Commission on Training Camp Activities, Keeping Fit to Fight (New York, n.d.), 4; Exner, M. J. M.D., Friend or Enemy? To the Men of the Army and Navy (New York, 1916), 3–4Google Scholar; Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 62. Friend or Enemy was originally written for the YMCA's program of sex education on the Mexican border but was reprinted and distributed to soldiers during World War I at the request of the CTCA. See Exner, M. J. M.D., “Social Hygiene and the War,” Social Hygiene 5 (Apr. 1919): 280–81.Google Scholar

48 Exner, Friend or Enemy, 30, 28.

49 Keeping Fit to Fight, 4, 15, 14; Exner, Friend or Enemy, 10, 17.

50 CTCA, Keeping Fit to Fight, 8; “Camps' Tremendous Social Problems Attacked by a Protecting Legion,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 26, 1917.

51 Fosdick, Raymond B., “The War and Navy Departments Commissions on Training Camp Activities,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 79 (Sept. 1918): 135–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Camps' Tremendous Social Problems Attacked.”

52 CTCA, Keeping Fit to Fight, 5.

53 Dr. Max Exner's analysis of sexual exposure and the use of chemical prophylaxis at the Mexican border concluded that chemical treatments had proven 98.6 percent effective in preventing the transmission of venereal disease when soldiers were required to report for treatment within six hours of sexual intercourse. Exner, “Army on the Mexican Border,” 215–17; Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 111, 114.

54 CTCA, Keeping Fit to Fight, 5; Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 115.

55 Spingarn, Arthur B., “The War and Venereal Disease among Negroes,” Social Hygiene 4 (July 1918)Google Scholar: 338. See also Bristow, Making Men Moral, 163; Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 116; Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers, 55.

56 Spingarn, “War and Venereal Disease among Negroes,” 336. On the unequal treatment of black soldiers more generally, see Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers; Bristow, Making Men Moral, 137–78.

57 Roper, Michael, “Maternal Relations: Moral Manliness and Emotional Survival in Letters Home during the First World War” in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, ed. Dundink, Stefan, Hagemann, Karen, and Tosh, John (Manchester, 2004), 295–315Google Scholar; Tosh, John, “Domesticity and Manliness in the Victorian Middle Class” in Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800, ed. Roper, Michael and Tosh, John (London, 1991), 44–73Google Scholar; Rhoades, “Renegotiating French Masculinity,” 296–99.

58 Mrs. Robert E. [Emma] Speer, “Boy in Camp and the Girl in Town,” Ladies' Home Journal, Sept. 1917, 33.

59 See, for example, Railey, “Your Boy in Camp”; Dickson, “American by the Grace of God”; Poling, “Physically Competent and Morally Fit”; William C. Gorgas, “Is My Boy Really Healthy in Camp?” Ladies' Home Journal, Oct. 1918, 27; Stockbridge, “Cleanest Army in the World.”

60 Allen and Fosdick, Keeping Our Fighters Fit, 127–28; Arthur E. Whitney, “The Ally of the Kaiser—The Foe of America,” Union Signal, July 4–11–18, 1918, 9; “Wartime Service of the Women's Christian Temperance Union,” Union Signal, Aug. 29, 1918, 4; Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 123–24. See also “Hostess Houses: Oases in the Desert of Army Discipline,” Independent, Mar. 16, 1918, 453; “Official Chaperon Boon to Soldiers,” Washington Post, Feb. 13, 1921.

61 Baker quoted in Snow, “Social Hygiene and the War,” 433; Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 118–22. On servicemen as adolescents, see “Moral Prophylaxis in the Army,” 34; “Cleaning Up the Camp Cities,” Survey, June 23, 1917, 273; W. T. Walsh, “Keeping the Soldier Fit,” Illustrated World, July 1917, 806.

62 Lee, Joseph, “War Camp Community Service,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 79 (Sept. 1918)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 190; Exner, “Social Hygiene and the War,” 283; Odell, “Democratizing the Army,” 414–15.

63 Railey, “Your Boy in Camp,” 219; “Making Vice Unattractive to Soldiers,” Current Opinion, July 1917, 41; Speer, “Boy in Camp and the Girl in Town,” 33.

64 Zinsser, William H., “Social Hygiene and the War I: Fighting Venereal Disease—A Public Trust,” Social Hygiene 4 (Oct. 1918): 502Google Scholar; Lee, “War Camp Community Service,” 191; Odell, “Making Democracy Safe,” 497.

65 Quoted in Bristow, Making Men Moral, 204.

66 “An American Editor's Indictment” Times (London), Sept. 24, 1918; “London Street Women: An American Editor's Reply,” Times (London), Sept. 25, 1918; Grayzel, Women's Identities at War, 136–39.

67 “Soldiers Want No Chaperons,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 3, 1917; “Soldiers' Morals,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 4, 1917.

68 “Camps' Tremendous Social Problems Attacked”; Mrs. Henry [Belle] Moskowitz, “To Guard Our Soldiers and Our Heedless Girls,” Atlanta Constitution, Aug. 19, 1917, 10 J; William Frederick Bigelow, “We Don't Believe It,” Good Housekeeping, Jan. 1918, 4; Edward Bok, “The Girl and the Man in Uniform,” Ladies' Home Journal, Jan. 1918, 26; “Drink Charges Anger Americans in London.”

69 Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 121–27; Bristow, Making Men Moral, 123–25; Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 80–86.

70 Bristow, Making Men Moral, 123–25; Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 85–86; Alexander, Ruth M., The “Girl Problem”: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900–1930 (Ithaca, NY, 1995), 47–59Google Scholar, 175n75; Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 124.

71 Timothy Newell Pfeiffer, “Social Hygiene and the War,” Social Hygiene 4 (July 1918): 426–27; Cobb, W. Bruce, “The Woman's Court in Its Relation to Venereal Diseases,” Social Hygiene 6 (Jan. 1920): 87–88Google Scholar. In Nakano v. United States, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the presence of venereal disease was admissible evidence in determining whether a woman was a prostitute. The court asserted, “We think it not beyond the proper range of proof to show, for the value which it might have, that the women [suspected of prostitution] had acquired the maladies common to prostitution.” The case concerned the 1918 prosecution of a brothel owner who was charged with keeping a “house of ill fame” within five miles of a military post. Nakano v. United States, 262 F. 761 (Cal., 9th Circuit, 1920), 762.

72 These figures on apprehension and detention are derived from contemporary accounts. See, for example, Pierce, C. C., “The Value of Detention as a Reconstruction Measure,” American Journal of Obstetrics 80 (Dec. 1919)Google Scholar: 630; Storey, T. A., “The Work of the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board,” Social Hygiene 5 (Oct. 1919)Google Scholar: 445; Dietzler, Mary Macy, Detention Houses and Reformatories as Protective Social Agencies in the Campaign of the United States Government Against Venereal Disease (Washington, DC, 1922)Google Scholar, 69. Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 89 and Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 126, also cite these figures. Pivar, “Cleansing the Nation,” 18, puts the figure of apprehended women at 35,000. Linda S. Janke suggests that the number of women examined and detained may have been significantly higher, however, since many women were incarcerated without documentation; see Janke, “Prisoners of War: Sexuality, Venereal Disease, and Women's Incarceration During World War I” (PhD diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 2006), 7n15.

73 Rhoades, Michelle, “‘There Are No Safe Women’: Prostitution in France during the Great War,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 27 (1999): 43–50Google Scholar; Grayzel, Women's Identities at War, 121–52; Woollacott, Angela, “‘Khaki Fever’ and Its Control: Gender, Class, Age and Sexual Morality on the British Homefront in the First World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 29 (Apr. 1994): 325–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levine, Philippa, “Battle Colors: Race, Sex, and Colonial Soldiery in World War I,” Journal of Women's History 9 (Winter 1998): 104–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howe, Glenford D., “Military-Civilian Intercourse, Prostitution and Venereal Disease among Black West Indian Soldiers during World War I,” Journal of Caribbean History 31:1/2 (1997): 88–102Google Scholar. In a wartime policy that was comparable to those of the Allied nations, Germany defined all extramarital sexual activity as “prostitution” whether or not it involved financial compensation. Commercialized prostitution had been regulated before the war, but the conflict extended the reach of the Morals Police into the lives of a broader range of women. New laws penalized those who knowingly spread venereal disease, and made vulnerable to arrest “any woman who had sexual relations with a man who was not her husband.” Lisa Marie Todd, “Sexual Treason: State Surveillance of Immorality and Infidelity in World War I Germany” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2005), 104–35, quotation 109. See also Allen, Ann Taylor, “Feminism, Venereal Disease, and the State in Germany, 1890–1918,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 4 (July 1993): 27–50Google Scholar; and Evans, Richard J., “Prostitution, State and Society in Imperial Germany,” Past and Present, 70 (Feb. 1976): 106–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 Edith Picton-Turbervill, “America and the Social Evil,” Nineteenth Century and After, July 1919, 161. On Allies' shifting characterizations of their servicemen, see Rhoades, “Renegotiating French Masculinity”; Hall, Lesley, “‘War Always Brings It On’: War, STDs, the Military, and the Civilian Population in Britain, 1850–1950” in Medicine and Modern Warfare, ed. Cooter, Roger, Harrison, Mark, and Stury, Steve (Amsterdam, 2000)Google Scholar, 212.

75 Taylor, J. S., “The Social Status of the Sailor,” Social Hygiene 4 (Apr. 1918)Google Scholar: 178.

76 “Raid Open Dives Run for Soldiers,” New York Times, Dec. 3, 1917; “Where Is Mother? Pasadena Question,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 1, 1918.

77 Frank Tannenbaum, “The Moral Devastation of War,” Dial, Apr. 5, 1919, 333–36.

78 “Mother's Day in Training Camp and Trench,” Union Signal, May 2, 1918; “We, Too, Battle,” Union Signal, Aug. 28, 1918. On political participation and the martial ideal, see Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood, 15–42, 107–32; Kerber, Linda K., No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York, 1998), 236–51.Google Scholar