A French officer charging into battle in a watercolor by Fernand Rigouts. The original watercolor on deckle-edged watercolor paper is signed F. R. 1917, and addressed to Mademoiselle Henriette Dangon.
Image text: Signed F. R. 1917Reverse:Addressed to Mademoiselle Henriette Dangon
A woman munitions worker carrying a shell apparently drops another one on the foot of a frightened man who clearly does not realize, as she does, that they are not in danger. No doubt his foot hurt.
Image text: La Femme et la Guerre.Leroy - Aux munitions.Women and the WarTo the munitions.Signed: FFLeroy?Reverse:No. 139 - P, J. Gallais et Cie, éditeurs, 38, Rue Vignon.Paris, Visé no. 139.No. 139 - P, J. Gallais and Company, publishers, 38 Rue Vignon.
Re-elect President Woodrow Wilson! An October 18, 1916 cartoon from the British magazine Punch. The German sinking of ships that killed American citizens and sabotage such as the July 30, 1916 attack that destroyed the Black Tom munitions plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, were not enough to make Wilson call for a declaration of war on Germany, much to the distress of Great Britain and the other Entente allies. The date on Wilson's desk calendar is October 8, 1916, a day on which German submarine U-53 sank five vessels — three British, one Dutch, and one Norwegian — off Nantucket, Massachusetts. One of the British ships was a passenger liner traveling between New York and Newfoundland.
Image text: Re-elect President Woodrow Wilson! An October 18, 1916 cartoon from the British magazine Punch. The German sinking of ships that killed American citizens and sabotage such as the July 30, 1916 attack that destroyed the Black Tom munitions plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, were not enough to make Wilson call for a declaration of war on Germany, much to the distress of Great Britain and the other Entente allies.Text:Bringing it home.President Wilson. 'What's that? U-boat blockading New York? Tut! Tut! Very inopportune!'Vote for Wilson who kept you out of the War![Calendar date:] October 8, 1916
The American cruiser Brooklyn in Vladivostok harbor, Russia in a 1919 Czech Legion photograph. The Legion consisted of Austro-Hungarian Czechs taken prisoner by the Russians, then organized to fight for Czech independence. With peace on the Russian front, they went east to leave Russia from Vladivostok, sometimes fighting their way through the Red Guard defending the Revolution. The Americans, British, and Japanese had forces in the city.
Image text: Text, in Czech:Americký křižník BrooklynAmerican cruiser Brooklyn
"By April 1915 the villagers of Nanteuil-de-Bourzac, and, indeed, the women of France in general, had plenty that might make them susceptible to depression. Victory was nowhere in sight, and casualties were already in excess of half a million men killed or wounded. It was evident that the short and victorious war to which their sons and husbands had so resolutely set off was not within reach. . . . 'There are so many dying now that it makes you tremble,' Marie [Pireaud] confessed, and she begged her husband, 'Oh do all that you can to avoid all danger because your death would be mine.'" ((1), more)
"On April 2, an accidental explosion at a munitions factory at Faversham in Kent killed 106 munitions workers, many of them women. By April 1916 almost 200,000 women were being employed in war industries." ((2), more)
"With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war." ((3), more)
"We are in Vladivostok! We arrived early this morning. It is 2nd April 1918, and exactly 27 days since we boarded our goods-train in Moscow. It is wonderful that we are really here — at last! But what makes it all the more wonderful is that when we steamed slowly into the station, Vladivostok's magnificent harbour was spread before our eyes. In that harbour four large cruisers were anchored, and one of them was flying the UNION JACK! Oh! The joy! The relief! The comfort! The security! Who will ever know all that this glorious flag symbolised for us travel-stained, weary refugees? It was as though we had heard a dear, familiar voice bidding us 'Welcome home!'" ((4), more)
(1) The letters of a young French couple from the Dordogne, Paul and Marie Pereaud, are in the French military archives in Vincennes. Paul fought at Verdun, the Somme, in the Nivelle Offensive, and in northern Italy. Marie tended the family's farm with her parents and in-laws. The couple corresponded through the five years the war kept them apart.
Your Death Would Be Mine; Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War by Martha Hanna, page 72, copyright © 2006 by Martha Hanna, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2006
(2) As the need for men at the front continued to grow, women filled positions formerly held only by men. The Virago Book of Women and the Great War includes contemporary newspaper accounts that marvel at women working as messengers, currency runners for banks, streetlamp lighters, transport workers, handy women, the stage manager, scene-shifters, and limelight workers for a new play, bridge builders, welders, and workers in munitions and ironwork factories. The work could be dangerous. In the United Kingdom, 41 women died of T.N.T. poisoning in six months of 1916, those under 18 being particularly susceptible.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 238, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(3) The paragraph from President Woodrow Wilson's April 2, 1917 address to the Congress of the United States in which he asks it to declare war on the German Empire in response to that nation's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and the American lives that policy had taken, property it had destroyed, and rights it had restricted. In the next paragraph Wilson summarizes what 'all its power,' 'all its resources' will entail: cooperation with and financing for those governments at war with Germany, the organization and mobilization of material resources of the Unites States, 500,000 or more men raised by conscription, and government funding by 'the present generation,' that is, to the extent possible, by taxation rather than borrowing. Wilson stresses that Germany has struck at all nations, and that America will fight as one among the many nations of the world, and for democracy.
World War I and America by A. Scott Berg, page 315, copyright © 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, publisher: The Library of America, publication date: 2017
(4) Florence Farmborough, an English nurse serving with the Russian Red Cross, on her arrival in Vladivostok, on Russia's Pacific coast, after a 27-day journey by train from Moscow. It would be over three weeks before Farmborough and other refugees would board the Sheridan, a United States transport. Among her fellow passengers was Yasha Bachkarova, former leader of the Russian Women's Death Battalion. Farmborough's unit had been with the Russian Army in Romania when the Bolshevik Revolution brought Vladimir Lenin to power. He had consistently called for an immediate end to the war, and Russia had agreed an armistice on December 15 with the Central Powers. On December 26, Farmborough's unit received orders to make their way to Moscow as best they could. She traveled first to Odessa on the Black Sea before going on to Moscow, finally reaching it after a journey of 13 days.
Nurse at the Russian Front, a Diary 1914-18 by Florence Farmborough, page 402, copyright © 1974 by Florence Farmborough, publisher: Constable and Company Limited, publication date: 1974
