Soldiers of America, Unite! You have nothing to lose.1
At the same moment at all-female Vassar College, the Association of Gold Star Mothers of Veterans of Future Wars was chartered to gain support for sending young women to Europe to view the future graves of their sons—a spin on the practice of sending boatloads of real Gold Star mothers to Europe to visit the burial grounds of their fallen sons. The name was so offensive to many, including the Gold Star mothers of World War I, that the collegians almost immediately changed it to the Home Fire Division—a play on the notion that women would remain behind to keep the “home fires” going.
The groups at Princeton and Vassar formed an immediate alliance and began working in concert to establish eight regional commanders for both groups and to set up chapters on all American campuses. The idea spread swiftly, thanks to the well-connected Princeton students, who among them harbored stringers for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Times, and the Associated Press. Within ten days after the release of the Princeton group’s manifesto, the movement had swelled across the country. By the end of March, 120 college chapters had been established from coast to coast, as well as many non-collegiate units, and the group had a paying membership of more than 6,000 that included a number of faculty members and a small number of politicians, including a former U.S. senator.2
In New Jersey, Drew University’s chapter created a fabricated cemetery displaying the names of students who would fall in future conflicts and called for a Tomb for the Future Unknown Soldier. B. H. Berman, a student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., penned an anthem for the future warriors, sung to the tune of “Over There.”
Fall in line—fall in line,
Now’s the time—now’s the time.
To collect our bonus
That Franklin D. will loan us
So we won’t fight him over here,
So raise your glasses and give three cheers
For the war that’s comin’ to take us hummin’
And we won’t be there ’til it’s over, over here.
Satellite groups—such as the Chaplains of Future Wars, organized among divinity students, and the Correspondents of Future Wars, among aspiring journalists—were soon collecting dues and giving the official salute of the Veterans of Future Wars: the right arm held out, palm up, beggar style. The Correspondents of Future Wars, founded at City College of New York, demanded training in “the writing of atrocity stories and garbled war dispatches for patriotic purposes.” The group offered honorary membership to anyone who could come up with a motto for the next war as misleading as “Make the World Safe for Democracy,” President Woodrow Wilson’s exhortation to Congress in 1917, when he sought a declaration of war against Germany.3
A major force spurring the movement’s growth was the ire it invoked in its first days. A Texas Democrat, Representative William D. McFarlane, said the Princeton group “ought to be investigated,” and the real VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) put out a statement in which it “wonder[ed] what Hobey Baker and Johnny Poe, as well as other alumni of Princeton who died in France, might say to this apparent insult to their service.”4 James E. Van Zandt, head of the VFW, said the students were “a bunch of monkeys . . . too yellow to go to war,” who deserved a good spanking. Representative Claude Fuller of Arkansas said the group was “saturated with communism, foreign influence and a total disregard for American patriotism.” The Red-baiters and sputtering patriots had a field day, and the college students responded: Gorin insisted that Van Zandt was himself a Red and offered to debate him on national radio.5
One of the few voices of assent was that of Representative Maury Maverick of Texas, a wounded and decorated veteran who thought the scheme was “swell” and asserted that if the United States paid for wars in advance, it wouldn’t have any more wars. Maverick had spent a year in hospitals after sustaining a spine injury from a German bullet and, having lost parts of five vertebrae, was rarely free from pain. He had recently introduced legislation that would take the adoration of war (he called it “martial sex”) out of ROTC by mandating the reading of antiwar material.6
Eleanor Roosevelt also came down on the side of the students: “I think it’s just as funny as it can be! And—taken lightly, as it should be—a grand pricking of lots of bubbles.” She thought the name Gold Star Mothers of Veterans of Future Wars had been ill advised but found the idea of a women’s auxiliary in itself “very amusing.”7
A reporter working for William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers was sent to Princeton to “expose” the latest maneuver from Moscow. There was a growing tendency among many American leaders to take such movements as a serious threat, as the mood among students became increasingly antiwar, a category into which the Veterans of Future Wars fit. A poll of Columbia University seniors, published when the Veterans of Future Wars was only a few weeks old, revealed that a majority would refuse to fight in a war conducted outside the United States.8
Spring break occurred at the beginning of April for the Princetonians, and one of the founders, Thomas Riggs Jr., son of the former governor of Alaska, returned to his home in Washington, D.C. On April Fool’s Day, he announced that he was going to register as a lobbyist and ask for $2.5 billion for his “pre-vets.” Informed that he did not have to register, he met with a number of members of Congress and walked away with support from eight of them, including Maury Maverick, who said he was willing to give them $10 billion “any old day.”9
Suddenly the movement, now 20,000 strong, was big enough to prompt a counter-movement of sorts. In late April, the American Legion opened up a “first aid station and supply depot” in Washington, staffed by World War I vets pretending to be members of the Gimme Bita Pi fraternity, who offered diapers and rubber pants to the students, whose behavior it regarded as infantile. The legion met its match in the students, who responded to an invitation to an open house at the mock first aid station by telegram: “Appreciate kind invitation STOP . . . Unfortunately pressure of real business prevents acceptance of any purely social engagements STOP When we get our bonus we can play too.”10
Members of the Princeton group appeared on the radio, wrote articles, and were interviewed by reporters. Their pictures ran, according to one account, in thousands of newspapers. When a March of Time newsreel crew arrived on the Princeton campus to document the movement, more than 400 students (hired by the newsreel company) made the movement look larger than it actually was.11
Less than a week after the American Legion held its annual convention that September, Lewis Gorin’s book, Patriotism Prepaid, was published.* It was billed as the basis for “one of the most powerful youth movements America had ever witnessed!” Reviewers seemed split on whether the book, written in academic style, was satire or serious social criticism.12 The New York Times thought it was satire, but the Wall Street Journal thought Gorin was arguing that the next war would be so colossally expensive that after adding the money being demanded for future wars to the amount necessary to pay veterans of past wars, nothing would be left in the national till. This, said the Journal, was nothing less than “superb financial idealism.”13
The Veterans of Future Wars had one more arrow in its quiver: the fact that the actual World War I bonuses would be paid on June 15. In late May, the Princeton group sent out invitations to a “Treasury Raid,” which would feature dancing in the street on the day the bonuses would be paid. President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, among other politicians and celebrities, were invited.
On May 31, with a membership of close to 50,000, the Veterans of Future Wars