Sold – With World War I Raging in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson is Improving the U.S.’s Defenses

World War I broke out on August 1, 1914. Quickly the war became enormous, involving millions of men under arms. On September 5, in the First Battle of the Marne, the French attacked German forces nearing Paris. Over 2 million fought (with 500,000 killed/wounded) in the Allied victory. War on this scale riveted all eyes. On October 3, 33,000 Canadian troops departed for Europe, the largest force to ever cross the Atlantic Ocean at the time. In early November, the conflict spread to the Ottoman Empire, miring the Middle East in what had been a mainly European war.    

The United States was a declared neutral, but many Americans worried that the United States would inevitably become involved. In 1914, the U.S. had just over 120,000 men in its armed forces, hardly enough to defend itself no less take part in a global conflict. Thoughtful Americans began considering bolstering the national defense, and President Wilson was foremost of these.   

Thomas Dixon, a North Carolinian transplanted to New York, wrote a series of best-selling novels that  glorified the antebellum South and were instrumental in creating the myth of a romantic land of cotton and cavaliers. One of his novels, entitled “The Clansman”, inspired filmmaker D.W Griffith to contact him. Dixon then wrote the photoplay for Griffith’s opus “The Birth of a Nation”, which was filmed in 1914 and opened February 8, 1915. Late in 1914, he wrote Wilson on the subject of defense.   

Typed Letter Signed on White House letterhead, November 24, 1914, to Dixon. “Thank you for your letter of November twenty-first, for its generous words about myself and for its frank counsel. I think I feel as deeply as you do the necessity for national defense, and for well-considered action in that direction. Just how the thing should be guided is a question which is holding my thought very constantly.”   

The War Department was strengthened by the President and the U.S. Army increased. By the end of World War I, there would be over three million men in the American military.