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Mobilizing the Spiritual Resources of the Nation: The 1918 United War Work Campaign

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2022

Jeanne Petit*
Affiliation:
Hope College, Holland, Michigan, USA
*

Abstract

On September 3, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson released a letter praising organizations that had provided services for soldiers, including the Young Men's Christian Association, the National Catholic War Council, and the Jewish Welfare Board. Through the work of these groups, the president declared, “the moral and spiritual resources of the nation have been mobilized.” Wilson then asked that, instead of the individual fundraising drives they were planning, the groups instead have single drive during the week of November 11, 1918, what he called a “united war work campaign.”

The United War Work Campaign provides a window into understanding how a more pluralistic United States emerged through a process that involved competition and sacrifice as well as cooperation. The YMCA leadership fought to have a separate campaign, but they were forced into accommodating the changing religious dynamics of the nation. The Catholic and Jewish groups confronted Protestant establishment assumptions as they offered their own takes on how to appeal to a diverse American public. All the religious groups found themselves in situations where they had to downplay their faith commitments to ensure the campaign's success, and this led to tensions within the organizations and struggles with their co-religionists. Overall, the United War Work revealed the challenges of church-state collaboration and the compromises that were necessary for the emergence of a tri-faith nation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History

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References

1 Woodrow Wilson to Raymond Fosdick, September 3, 1918, collection 4588, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington DC (hereafter WWP). This letter was widely publicized.

2 Schultz, Kevin, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Post-War America to Its Protestant Promise (New York, 2013), 7Google Scholar. There is little scholarship on the United War Work Campaign, and most of what exists is from the perspective of a specific religious group. See Cooperman, Jessica, Making Judaism Safe for America: World War I and the Origins of Religious Pluralism (New York: NYU Press, 2018), 137156Google Scholar; McKeown, Elizabeth, “The National Bishops Conference: An Analysis of Its Origins,” The Catholic Historical Review 66, no. 4 (October 1980): 571574Google Scholar; Hopkins, Charles Howard, John R. Mott, 1865–1955: A Biography (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979), 539544Google Scholar.

3 Schultz, Tri-Faith America, 16–67. See also Wall, Wendy, Inventing the American Way: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York, 2008), 63101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greene, Alison Collis, “The End of ‘the Protestant Era’?Church History 80, no. 3 (September 2011): 600610CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Polk, Andrew, “‘Unnecessary and Artificial Divisions: Franklin Roosevelt's Quest for Religious and National Unity Leading up to the Second World War,” Church History 82 (September 2013): 667677CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moore, Deborah Dash, “GI Jews and the Creation of the Judeo-Christian Tradition,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 8, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 3153CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on the founding of the National Conference for Catholics and Jews, see Sussman, Lance J., “‘Toward Better Understanding’: The Rise of the Interfaith Movement in America and the Role of Rabbi Isaac Landman,” American Jewish Archives 34, no. 2 (1982): 3551Google Scholar; Hayes, Patrick J., “J. Elliot Ross and the National Conference of Christians and Jews: A Catholic Contribution to Tolerance in America,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 37, no. 3/4 (2000): 321332Google Scholar.

4 See Jessica Cooperman, “The Jewish Welfare Board and Religious Pluralism in the American Military of World War I,” American Jewish History 98, no. 4 (October 2014), 237–261; Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Penguin Random House, 2012), 233–291; Jonathan H. Ebel, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 47–78; Andrew Preston, “To Make the World Saved: American Religion and the Great War,” Diplomatic History 38, no. 4 (September. 2014): 816–818.

5 Ronit Stahl, Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 15–43; Jessica Cooperman, “Unintentional Pluralists: Military Policy, Jewish Servicemen, and the Development of Tri-Faith America during World War I,” in World War I and the Jews: Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle East, and America, ed. Marsha L. Rozenblit and Jonathan Karp (New York: Berghahn, 2019), 263–278; David Mislin, “One Nation, Three Faiths: World War I and the Shaping of ‘Protestant-Catholic-Jewish’ America,” Church History 84, no. 4 (December 2015): 828–862.

6 Stahl, Enlisting Faith, 17.

7 Christopher Capozolla, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (New York: Oxford, 2010), 3–8, 55–82; Joseph Kip Kosek, Acts of Conscience: Christian Non-Violence and Modern American Democracy (New York: Columbia, 2011), 16–48; Jörg Nagler, “The Mobilization of Emotions: Propaganda and Social Violence on the American Home Front during World War I,” in Emotions in American History, ed. Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht (New York: Berghahn, 2010), 78–80; James Juhnke, “Mob Violence and Kansas Mennonites in 1918,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 43, no. 3 (Autumn 1977): 334–350; Gregg Mitman, The State of Nature: Ecology, Community, and American Social Thought, 1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 52–58; Robert F. Piper Jr., The American Churches in World War I (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985).

8 Wilson to Fosdick, September 3, 1918.

9 Kallen originally articulated this way of seeing religious pluralism in a 1915 article challenging the idea of “melting pot” assimilation. Horace Kallen, “Democracy versus the Melting Pot,” The Nation, February 18–25, 1915, 190–94, 217–220. See also David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic, 1995, 2000), 85–95; William Toll, “Pluralism and American Jewish Identity,” American Jewish History 85, no. 1 (March 1997): 57–74.

10 Thomas M. Camfield, “‘Will to Win’: The U.S. Army Troop Morale Program of World War I,” Military Affairs 41 (October 1977): 125; Edward M. Coffman, The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1968, 1998), 77–81. There was also a Navy CTCA, but this committee was much less active and most of the major decisions were made by the War Department's CTCA.

11 Douglas B. Craig, Progressives at War: William G. McAdoo and Newton D. Baker, 1863–1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 78–93. Much of the recent scholarship on the CTCA focuses on its role of controlling prostitution and sexual behaviors. See Nancy K. Bristow, Making Men Moral: Social Engineering during the Great War (New York, 1996); Courtney Q. Shah, “‘Against Their Own Weakness’: Policing Sexuality and Women in San Antonio, Texas, during World War I,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19, no. 3 (September 2010), 458–482; Nancy Gentile Ford, “‘Mindful of the Traditions of His Race’: Dual Identity and Foreign-Born Soldiers in the First World War American Army,” Journal of American Ethnic History 16, no. 2 (Winter 1997): 35–57; Weldon B. Durham, “Big Brother and the ‘Seven Sisters’: Camp Life Reforms in World War I,” Military Affairs 42, no. 2 (April 1978): 57–58.

12 Bristow, Making Men Moral, 4; Durham, “Big Brother and the ‘Seven Sisters,’” 58–60.

13 Emerson Fosdick started as a supporter of the US presence in the war, but by the end had embraced pacifism. See David P. King, “Harry Emerson Fosdick's Role in the War and Pacifist Movements,” Baptist History and Heritage 41, no. 3 (Summer/Fall 2006): 99–108.

14 Bristow, Making Men Moral, 5–6; Helke Rausch, “The Birth of Transnational U.S. Philanthropy from the Spirit of War: Rockefeller Philanthropists in World War I,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17, no. 4 (October 2018): 654–655.

15 Minutes of the CTCA, April 26, 1917, box 2, entry no. 403, NM 84, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park, MD (hereafter “NA”).

16 Jeffrey C. Copeland and Yan Xu, “Introduction,” The YMCA in War: Collaboration and Conflict during the World Wars, eds. Jeffrey C. Copeland and Yan Xu (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2018), 2–4; James Morehead, American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War, 1860–1869 (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1978), 65–67; Service with Fighting Men: An Account of the Work of the American Young Men's Christian Associations in the World War (New York, 1924), 57–58. For more on the YMCA work among the British in World War I, see Michael Snape, God and the British Soldier: Religion and the British Army in the First and Second World Wars (London: Routledge, 2005), 206–212. For Mott's work in the International Student Movement, see Robert, Dana L. “The Origin of the Student Volunteer Watchword: ‘The Evangelization of the World in This Generation,’” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 10 (October 1986): 146–149. For more on Mott's relationship with the YMCA, see Charles Howard Hopkins, John R. Mott, 1865–1955: A Biography (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979).

17 David M. Hovde, “YMCA Libraries on the Mexican Border, 1916,” Libraries and Culture 32, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 113–124.

18 Minutes of the CTCA, April 27, 1917.

19 Minutes of the CTCA, May 26, 1917. For more on the hostess houses, see Cynthia Brandimarte, “Women on the Home Front: Hostess Houses during World War I,” Winterthur Portfolio 42, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 201–222.

20 For overviews of these pressures on Protestants, see David Mislin, Saving Faith: Making Religious Pluralism and American Value at the Dawn of the Secular Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 2–9; Jon Butler et al., Religion in American Life: A Short History (New York: Oxford, 2011), 262–306; George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Christian Smith, “Introduction: Rethinking Secularism and American Public Life,” in The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 1–96; Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, Volume 1: The Irony of It All, 1893–1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); William R. Hutchison, “Protestantism as Establishment,” in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in American, 1900–1960, ed. William R. Hutchison (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 3–18; James Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1985), especially chapters 6–9. For more on how Protestant churches dealt with secularization, see William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge: Harvard, 1976); Roger Fink and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776–1990 (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1992), 145–198.

21 Robert A. Schneider, “Voice of Many Waters: Church Federation in the Twentieth Century,” in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in American, 1900–1960, ed. William R. Hutchison (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 99–101.

22 Minutes of the First Meeting of the War Work Council, April 28, 1917, folder: Minutes of the National War Work Council, 1917, box 1, Y.USA.4, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota (hereafter YMCAA); “Statement of Policy, Religious Work Bureau,” folder Mott, John R.: Correspondence and Materials, R. P. Wilder, 1917–1918, box 7, Y.USA.13, YMCAA.

23 Raymond Fosdick, A Chronicle of a Generation: An Autobiography (New York: Harper, 1958), 148–49. Jessica Cooperman discusses Fosdick's “inability to perceive the sectarian character of the YMCA's work.” Cooperman, “The Jewish Welfare Board and Religious Pluralism,” 257.

24 Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley, eds., The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 1520; Nancy Gentile Ford, Americans All! American Foreign-born Soldiers in World War I (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2001), 37.

25 Thomas J. Rowland, “Irish-American Catholics and the Quest for Respectability in the Coming of the Great War, 1900–1917,” Journal of American Ethnic History 15, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 15–18; Dean R. Esslinger, “American German and Irish Attitudes toward Neutrality, 1914–1917: A Study in Catholic Minorities,” The Catholic Historical Review 53, no. 2 (July 1967): 200–201.

26 Quoted in Christopher J. Kauffman, Faith and Fraternalism: A History of the Knights of Columbus, 1882–1982 (New York, 1982), 194.

27 William McGinley to Woodrow Wilson, May 23, 1917, File SC-16-1-0009, box 319, KCWWIR. For more on the Knights's service on the Mexican Border, see Kauffman, Faith and Fraternalism, 190–192.

28 Memorandum Regarding Meeting at Washington, DC, Monday, June 11, 1917, file SC-16-1-0015, box 319, Knights of Columbus World War I Records, Knights of Columbus Museum, New Haven, CT (hereafter KCWWIR). See also James Flaherty to Thomas Lawler, June 15, 1917, File SC-16-1-0017, Box 319, K. of C. War Records.

29 Minutes of the CTCA, June 19, 1917.

30 Minutes of the CTCA, June 19, 1917. The insistence on keeping religion out of the Knights’ work echoed broader concerns emerging in the early twentieth century as the Protestant majority became more concerned about protecting government institutions from non-Protestant sectarian influence. See Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 192–251; John McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: Norton, 2003), 91–105; Kraig Beyerlein, “Educational Elites and the Movement to Secularize Public Education: The Case of the National Education Association,” in The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life, ed. Christian Smith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 160–196.

31 For discussions about complaints of Fraternal orders, see Minutes of the CTCA, November 21, 1917; P. H. Callahan to Raymond Fosdick, September 12, 1917, file SC-16-1-0025, box 320; Memo about the Meeting of the Committee on War Activities Supreme Board of Directors, September 16–17, 1917, file SC-16-1-0026, box 320, KCWWIR. See also, Kauffman, Faith and Fraternalism, 203–205.

32 The organizations were Young Men's Hebrew and Kindred Associations, the United Synagogue of American, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Agudath Ha-Rabbonim, and the Jewish Publication Society. Minutes Special Conference, April 9, 1917, box 12B, Series III: World War I Records, Jewish Welfare Board Archives, American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY (hereafter “JWBA”). For discussion of other Jewish organizations of this era, see Diner, The Jews in the United States, 182–189.

33 For more on the ways Jewish leaders sought to assert American identity, see Mislin, Saving Faith, 69–70; Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Cult of Synthesis in American Jewish Culture,” Jewish Social Studies 5, no. 1/2 (Fall–Winter 1999): 52–79.

34 See the minutes of the JWB meetings for May and June, 1917, box 12B, JWBA. For more on these divisions, see Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer, Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration (New York: NYU Press, 2012), 73–101; Jonathan Sarna, Jews in the United States: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2004), 135–207; Diner, Jews in the United States, 117–133.

35 Stanley Abrams, “Harry Cutler: An Outline of a Neglected Patriot,” Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes 9 (November 1984): 127–140.

36 Minutes, Jewish Board for Welfare Work in the United States Army and Navy, August 9, 1917, box 12B, JWBA. For more on the JWB's struggle to get recognized by the CTCA, see Cooperman, Making Judaism Safe for America, 43–56.

37 Memorandum of Conferences of Committee of Jewish Board for Welfare Work in the United States Army and Navy, no date, but included in the minutes of the Jewish Board for Welfare Work in the United States Army and Navy, August 9, 1917, box 12 B, Series III: World War I Records, Jewish Welfare Board Archives. For more on the JWB's struggle to get recognized by the CTCA, see Cooperman, Making Judaism Safe for America, 43–56.

38 Cooperman, “The Jewish Welfare Board and Religious Pluralism,” 243–246.

39 Press Release from the Committee for Public Information, September 22, 1917, file SC-16-1-0027, box 320, KCWWIR.

40 John Rockefeller, “Service to our Soldiers and Sailors,” Salvation Army World War I Collection, The Salvation Army National Archives and Research Center, Alexandria, VA. For more on JWB work in Camp Upton, see Christopher M. Sterba, Good Americans: Italian and Jewish Immigrants during the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 122–123.

41 Ian Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America's Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 198–200. See also Cara Lee Burnidge, A Peaceful Conquest: Woodrow Wilson, Religion, and the New World Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Preston, “To Make the World Saved,” 821–822.

42 Tyrrell, Reforming the World, 168–169; C. Howard Hopkins and John W. Long, “American Jews and the Root Mission to Russia: Some New Evidence,” American Jewish History 69, no. 3 (March 1980): 342–354.

43 Charles Harvey, “Speer Versus Rockefeller and Mott, 1910–1935,” Journal of Presbyterian History 60, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 284; William Leary Jr., “Woodrow Wilson, Irish Americans, and the Election of 1916,” The Journal of American History 54, no. 1 (June 1967): 63.

44 Minutes of the First Meeting of the War Work Council, April 28, 1917, folder: Minutes of the National War Work Council, 1917, box 1, Y.USA.4; “Outline of Religious Work Program of the Association Work at Camps,” folder Mott, John R.: Correspondence and Materials, R. P. Wilder, 1917–1918, box 7, Y.USA.13.

45 Thomas Lawler to William McGinley, June 12, 1917, file SC-16-1-0015, box 319, KCWWIR.

46 Minutes Jewish Board for Welfare Work in the United States Army and Navy, April 24, 1918, box 12 B, Series III: World War I Records, JWBA.

47 Harry Cutler to Raymond Fosdick, April 13, 1918, Doc. 23873, Box 48. See also Harry Cutler to John R. Colders, May 31, 1918, document 31439, box 72, CTCA General Correspondence.

48 See, for instance, Minutes of the Conference on War Work in Cities, Friday, August 24, 1917, file: Minutes of the National War Work Council, 1917, box one, Y-USA.4.1, YMCAA; P. H. Callahan, “‘Everyone Welcome: Why Knights of Columbus Are Engaged in War Work,” Good of the Order, January 1, 1919, 6, file: “Good of the Order” Knights of Columbus, 1919, box 58, Y-USA.4.1, YMCAA; John Mott to Chester Teller, June 25, 1918, folder: YMCA, 1917–1920, box 343, Series XIX: Harry Cutler Subject Files, JWBA.

49 Aaron Robisen to Harry Cutler, September 4, 1918, folder 1 Reports 1917–18, box 337, Cutler Subject Files, JWBA.

50 For more on JWB work in Camp Upton, see Sterba, Good Americans, 122–123.

51 P. H. Callahan to James E. Finnegan, September 1, 1917, file SC-16-1-0025, box 320, KCWWIR.

52 James Marous to the Knights of Columbus, no date, (circa September of 1918) file SC-16-1-0079, Box 323, KCWWIR.

53 Aaron Robisen to Harry Cutler, September 4, 1918, Box 337, Folder 1 Reports 1917-18, Cutler Subject Files, JWBA.

54 Wilder to Mott, May 21, 1918, Folder: Mott, John R.: Correspondence and Materials, R. P. Wilder, 1918, Box 8, Y.USA.13, YMCAA.

55 See John Mott, “Criticisms about the YMCA War Work and Answers,” File 3147, John R. Mott Papers, Yale Divinity Library, New Haven, CT (hereafter “MP”). For more on the canteen work of the YMCA, see Joel R. Buis, “The Damn Y Man in World War II: Service, Perception, and Cigarettes,” in The YMCA in War: Collaboration and Conflict during the World Wars, eds. Jeffrey C. Copeland and Yan Xu (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2018), 17–33

56 See letters in folder: Mott, John R. World War I Work, box 5, Y.USA.13, YMCAA.

57 Raymond Fosdick to F. P. Keppel, September 13, 1918, Doc. 38630, Box 100, entry 393: Commission on Training Camp Activities General Correspondence, NM-84, RG 165, NA.

58 Raymond Fosdick to F. P. Keppel, December 26, 1918, Doc. Doc 49877, box 149, CTCA Correspondence. For more on the Knights' boxing program in Europe, see Mark T. Hauser, “‘A Violent Desire for the Amusements’: Boxing, Libraries, and the Distribution and Management of Welfare During the First World War,” Journal of Military History 86, no. 4 (October 2022): 883–913.

59 Cranston Brenton to Raymond Fosdick, June 23, 1918, Document 37286, box 94, CTCA Correspondence.

60 George Bellamy to Malcolm McBride, June 7, 1918, doc 36786, box 91, CTCA Correspondence. Bellamy reported to McBride that over four hundred War Chest cities had objected to multiple drives.

61 Minutes of the CTCA, February 21, 1918.

62 John D. Rockefeller Jr. to John Mott, July 18, 1918, File 1365, Box 74, MP. For more on John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s view of a more inclusive Christianity, see Charles E. Harvey, “John D. Rockefeller and the Interchurch World Movement: A Different Angle on the Ecumenical Movement,” Church History 51, no. 2 (June 1982): 202–204.

63 General War Time Commission of the Churches to the War Work Commission of the YMCA, April 25, 1918, Folder: Mott, John R.: Correspondence and Materials, R. P. Wilder, 1918, Box 8, Y.USA.13, YMCAA.

64 Form letter from John R. Mott to members of the General Wartime Commission of the Churches, Folder: Mott, John R.: Correspondence and Materials, R. P. Wilder, 1918, Box 8, Y.USA.13, YMCAA.

65 D. E. Luther to John Mott, February 20, 1918, file: Matters relating to the Merger Negotiation of Campaigns-United War Work Campaign, 1918, box 13, Y-USA.4.1, YMCAA.

66 This series of events was recorded in untitled handwritten notes, document 36784, box 91, CTCA Correspondence.

67 P. H. Callahan, “Origin, Conduct and Culmination of the United War Work Campaign,” Good of the Order, January 15, 1919, 3–4, Folder: “Good of the Order” Knights of Columbus, 1919, Box 58, Y-USA.4.1, YMCAA.

68 P. H. Callahan, “John Mott,” Good of the Order, March 15, 1919, 3–5, Folder: “Good of the Order” Knights of Columbus, 1919, Box 58, Y-USA.4.1, YMCAA.

69 Joseph Lee to Margaret Cabot Lee, June 19, 1918, File: Joseph Lee Correspondence with Margaret Cabot Lee, June 1918, Carton 36, Joseph Lee Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston MA.

70 For more on the YWCA during the war, see Lynn Dumenil, The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 76–82.

71 Minutes of the CTCA, July 12, 1918, CTCA Minutes.

72 Mott to Fosdick, August 7, 1918.

73 The editor of the Masonic Observer sent Wilson protests about their involvement. H. E. Soule to Woodrow Wilson, August 3, 1918, collection 4588, Reel 370, WWP.

74 For information about the founding of the NCWC, see Elizabeth McKeown, War and Welfare: American Catholics and World War I (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1988).

75 For more on the organization of the Committee, see Mislin, “One Nation, Three Faiths,” 836–843; Stahl, Enlisting Faith, 15–43.

76 Minutes of the Executive Committee, NCWC, August 2, 1918, box 1, file 19, Records of the National Catholic War Council, The American Catholic History Research Center, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC (hereafter NCWCA).

77 Lettie Gavin, American Women in World War I: They Also Served (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1997), 209–231.

78 Evangeline Booth to Raymond Fosdick, August 5, 1918, document 37678, box 95, CTCA Correspondence.

79 “To Make Two Drives for 7 War Funds,” New York Times, August 16, 1918.

80 Evangeline Booth to Newton Baker, August 26, 1918, doc. 37978, box 97, CTCA Correspondence.

81 “To Make Two Drives for 7 War Funds.”

82 “K. of C. Oppose Plan for 2 Fund Drives,” New York Times, August 18, 1918.

83 Fosdick to Cutler, August 17, 1918, file: Col Cutler—Misc. Correspondence—File one, box 329, Cutler Subject Files, JWBA.

84 See, for instance, Grover James to Raymond Fosdick, August 12, 1918, doc. 36908, box 92; Representative Samuel Nichols to Raymond Fosdick, August 23, 1918, doc. 37682, box 95, CTCA Correspondence. Nichols sent Fosdick letters from two constituents in Greenville, South Carolina.

85 For more on this campaign, see John Burke to Bishop Peter Muldoon, March 22, 1918, file 46, box 1, NCWCA.

86 Cutler to Fosdick, August 21, 1918, doc. 37898, box 96, CTCA Correspondence. For more on War Chest campaigns that included the JWB, see “The War Chest Movement,” The Hebrew Standard, July 5, 1918, 14.

87 Cutler to Marshall, August 16, 1918, file: Col Cutler—Misc. Correspondence—file one, box 329, Cutler Subject Files, JWBA.

88 Louis Marshall to Raymond Fosdick, August 20, 1918, file: Marshall, Louis, 1917–1918, box 334, file: Col Cutler—Misc. Correspondence—file one, box 329, Cutler Subject Files, JWBA.

89 The bishops who met with Fosdick were Bishop Peter Muldoon of Rockford, Bishop Joseph Schrembs of Toledo, Bishop Patrick Hayes of New York, and Bishop William T. Russell of Charleston.

90 Handwritten Report of Meeting with Secretary Baker, August 26, 1918, file 35, box 3, NCWCA.

91 Raymond Fosdick to Joseph Schrembs, September 12, 1918, doc. 38514, Box 99, CTCA Correspondence.

92 Memo from Raymond Fosdick to Newton Baker, August 19, 1918, Doc. 37852, box 96, CTCA Correspondence.

93 Raymond Fosdick to Woodrow Wilson, August 31, 1918, Collection 4588, WWP.

94 Newton Baker to John Mott, August 29, 1918, file 95, box 5, Group 45, Series XIII, MP.

95 Ibid.

96 See notes in collection 4588, WWP.

97 James Logan, Report to the Members of the Executive Committee of the United War Work Campaign, November 8, 1918, file: United War Work Campaign, carton 18, Joseph Lee Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA.

98 John Mott to Jacob Billikopf, November 5, 1918, folder: YMCA, box 343, Cutler Subject Files.

99 Minutes of the Executive Committee, National Catholic War Council, October 18, 1918, file 19, box 1, NCWCA.

100 Daily Bulletin #12, November 1, 1918, file 4; Daily Bulletin #12, October 14, 1918, file 3, box 2, NCWCA.

101 “Organization of the City, Large or Small,” folder 3049, box 183, MP.

102 David Hinshaw to members of the Diocesan Campaign Committee, October 4, 1918, file SC-16-1-0090, box 323, KCWWIR.

103 Logan, Report to the Members of the Executive Committee.

104 Logan, Report to the Members of the Executive Committee. See also the Daily Bulletins sent to the NCWC about the campaign, files 3–5, box 2, NCWCA.

105 “Analysis of Reports—Weak Points,” file 5, box 2, NCWCA.

106 Luke Hart to William McGinley, September 1, 1918, file SC 16-1-0081, box 323, KCWWIR.

107 Harry Cutler to Mr. Sloan, October 3, 1918, file 11, box 5, Records of the NCCW.

108 Minutes of the Committee of Eleven, September 30, 1918, file 12, box 1, NCWCA. See also the meeting minutes for October 7, 1918 and November 6, 1918.

109 Supreme Secretary to Joseph Pelletier, October 19, 1918, file SC-16-1-0091, box 323, KCWWIR.

110 Note on an October 31 telegram from James Phelan to James Logan, file SC-16-1-0094, box 323, KCWWIR.

111 See folder Correspondence: Re: Protests against Campaign, box 13, Y-USA.4.1, YMCAA; William Knowles Cooper to John Mott, October 16, 1918, Folder: Mott, John R. World War I Work 1914–1920, box 5, Y.USA.13, YMCAA.

112 John Mott collected numerous articles in Baptist publications that criticized the YMCA. See file 3145, box 192, MP.

113 Harvey, “Speer Versus Rockefeller and Mott,” 284–286.

114 “Dr. Gramble's After Campaign Message to Southern Baptists: A Warning against Entangling Alliances,” file 3145, box 192, MP.

115 Charles Eliot to Ernest H. Wilkins, August 1, 1918, folder: Mott, John R. World War I Work 1914–1920, box 5, Y.USA.13, YMCAA.

116 See, for instance, Raymond Fosdick to Clifford Smith, August 26, 1918, doc 37865, box 96, CTCA Correspondence.

117 Jay Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to Present (New York, 1985), 353–356.

118 William Mulligan to John Agar, September 6, 1918, file SC-16-1-0080, box 323, KCWWIR.

119 Kauffman, Faith and Fraternalism, 201–202, 217–218.

120 Memorandum, April 20, 1918, file 1, box 7, NCWCA.

121 Harry G. Fromberg to Harry Cutler, August 28, 1918; Cyrus Adler to Fromberg, August 30, 1918; Harry G. Fromberg to Harry Cutler, August 28, 1918; Cutler to Fromberg, Sept. 3, 1918, file: Cooperation with Agencies, box 328, Cutler Subject Files, JWBA.

122 Jacob Billikopf to Harry Cutler, October 17, 1918, folder UWW Campaign, box 242, Cutler Subject Files, JWBA.

123 Rockefeller, “Service to Our Soldiers and Sailors.”

124 “Program, United War Work Campaign Mass Meeting, November 3, 1918, Madison Square Garden, New York,” Salvation Army Collection.

125 CTCA Meeting, December 20, 1918.

126 CTCA Meeting, December 20, 1918.

127 See, for example, Raymond Fosdick to James Brown, November 2, 1918, Document 38664, box 100, CTCA.

128 Raymond Fosdick to George Fox, September 12, 1918, doc. 38505, box 99, CTCA Correspondence.

129 Raymond Fosdick, Report to the Secretary of War on the Activities of Welfare Organizations Serving with the A.E.F., June 1919, file 2, box 13, NCWCA.

130 Memorandum of Negotiations between the War Department and the YMCA, October 27, 1919, folder: National War Work Council: Negotiation with the Armed Forces,” box 1, Y-USA.4.1, YMCAA.

131 Newton Baker to Richard Olney, November 28, 1919, file Knights of Columbus, file 2, box 2, Entry 397: Correspondence with Welfare Agencies, 1917–1919, NM-84, RG 165-Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, NA.

132 “K of C to Quit Camp Service,” Boston Herald, September 9, 1919, folder: Knights of Columbus, nd. 1919, box 58, Y-USA.4.1, YMCAA. See also Memorandum of Negotiations between the War Department and the YMCA.

133 Memorandum of Negotiations between the War Department and the YMCA.

134 See folder: War Department: Mott Correspondence with Keppel re: Military Intelligence, 1918–19, box 96, Y.USA.4-1, YMCAA.

135 See folder: Catholic Criticism of the YMCA, Reports and Correspondence, 1920–1921, box 87, Y-USA.4.1, YMCAA; Kauffman, Faith and Fraternalism, 224–231.

136 See Douglas Slawson, The Foundation and First Decade of the National Catholic Welfare Council (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1992), 96–122.

137 “Colonel Harry Cutler Dies in London,” New York Times, August 9, 1920.

138 The Jewish Welfare Board: Final Report of War Emergency Activities (New York: Jewish Welfare Board, 1920), 94–96.

139 Harvey, “John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the Interchurch World Movement,” 198–209.

140 Memorandum of Negotiations between the War Department and the YMCA, October 27, 1919, folder: National War Work Council: Negotiation with the Armed Forces,” box 1, Y-USA.4.1, YMCAA.

141 Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 201–249; John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, NJ: Atheneum, 1955, 1988), 195–211, 291–294.

142 George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 141–183; Sutton, American Apocalypse, 114–177.

143 P. C. Kemeny, “Power, Ridicule, and the Destruction of Religious Moral Reform Politics in the 1920s,” in The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 216–268.

144 Benny Kraut, “A Wary Collaboration: Jews, Catholics and the Protestant Goodwill Movement,” in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in American, 1900–1960, ed. William R. Hutchison (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 193–230.

145 Mislin, Saving Faith, 140–162; Borelli, “The Origins and Early Development of Interreligious Relations,” 84–86; Lance J. Sussman, “‘Toward Better Understanding,’” 35–51; Hayes, “J. Elliot Ross and the National Conference of Christians and Jews,” 321; Benny Kraut, “Towards the Establishment of the National Conference of Christians and Jews: The Tenuous Road to Religious Goodwill in the 1920s,” American Jewish History 77, no. 3 (1988): 388–412; Leonard Curry, Protestant-Catholic Relations in America: World War I through Vatican II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1972), 19–26.

146 Christine Athens, “Courtesy, Confrontation, Cooperation: Jewish-Christian/Catholic Relations in the United States,” US Catholic Historian 28, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 113; Patrick Allitt, “Carlton Hayes and His Critics,” US Catholic Historian 15, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 29.

147 Agencies to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, November 13, 1940, File: USO: Correspondence: General, Oct.–Dec 1940, Box 107, Y.USA.4-2, YMCAA.

148 Press Release from United Service Organization for National Defense, Inc., February 5, 1941, File: USO: Correspondence: General, February 1941 B, Box 107, Y.USA.4-2, YMCAA. For more on the creation of the USO, see Rosemary R. Corbett, “For God and Country: Religious Minorities Striving for National Belonging through Community Service,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 26 (Summer 2016): 235–239; Michael Snape, God and Uncle Sam: Religion and America's Armed Forces in World War II (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015), 224–229; Gretchen Knapp, “Experimental Social Policymaking during World War II: The United Service Organization (USO) and American War-Community Services (AWCS),” Journal of Policy History 12 (July 2000): 321–338.

149 Mark McCloskey to Regional Recreation Representatives, April 16, 1941, File: USO: Correspondence: General, April 1941 A, Box 108, Y.USA.4-2, YMCAA.

150 Knapp, “Experimental Social Policymaking during World War II,” 323.

151 The first mention of a partnership with Camp Shows, Inc., appears in the Board of Directors Minutes, United Service Organization for National Defense, Inc., November 13, 1941 and December 11, 1941, Box 100, Y.USA.4-2, YMCAA.

152 For more on the popular culture and recreational significance of the USO, see Sam Lebovic, “‘A Breath from Home’: Soldier Entertainment and the Nationalist Politics of Pop Culture during World War II,” Journal of Social History 47, no. 2 (Winter 2013): 263–96; Meghan K. Winchell, Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses during World War II, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 135–170.