Wilson
Woodrow Wilson. (Ir a Personas.)
Aconsejado por el general Peyton March, envió tropas enfermas a Europa.
The death toll mounted at home through September and October even as President Woodrow Wilson was faced with General Pershing’s demands for more soldiers. Through the summer, Americans were being sent to Europe at the rate of 250,000 a month. But flu was running rampant on troopships, and those who survived the interminable voyage simply spread the disease to frontline staging areas. Wilson was urged by several advisers not to dispatch additional troops until the epidemic had been contained. The president consulted with his chief of staff General Peyton March, who conceded that conditions on the overseas transports were hardly ideal. He would not, however, concede anything that might stand in the way of winning the war.Every such soldier who has died [on a troopship], said March,just as surely played his part as his comrade who died in France. Wilson relented. The transports continued.
Wilson had won a second term in 1916 because he had kept the United States out of the war. Once war was declared in 1917, however, he could not afford to waver in his commitment to seeing the conflict through to Allied victory. To shore up public support, Wilson created the Committee on Public Information a week after declaring war on Germany. (One of its lasting contributions was the Uncle SamI want you recruiting poster.) The CPI’s news division issued thousands of press releases and syndicated features about the war that made their way, often unedited, into newspapers across the country. The CPI also had a pictorial publicity division, an advertising division and a film division. In short, it used every possible media source to influence public opinion.
Wilson’s zeal for advancing democratic ideals abroad was secured by his willingness to suppress them at home. Dissent was not tolerated. Under the 1917 Espionage Act, roundly criticized as being unconstitutional, Socialist leaders Eugene Debs and Victor Berger were sentenced to a combined 30 years in prison for their antiwar protests. The act also gave the postmaster general the right to determine what constituted unpatriotic or subversive reading material and ban it from the U.S. mail. The Justice Department authorized the 200,000 members of a volunteer group called the American Protective League to report on suspected spies,slackers who didn’t buy war bonds and anyone who voiced opposition to the government.
(Ir a Personas.)
