Editing Preparedness Movement (section)

==Opposition==
[[File:Antipreparedness protest 1916.jpg|thumb|The Socialist Party was a bulwark of opposition to the preparedness movement. (May Day parade, New York City, 1916).]]
The [[Socialist Party of America|Socialist Party]] was a bulwark of opposition to the preparedness movement.<ref>Elizabeth McKillen, "Pacifist Brawn and Silk‐Stocking Militarism: Labor, Gender, and Antiwar Politics, 1914–1918." ''Peace & Change'' 33.3 (2008): 388–425.</ref> [[Antimilitarists]] and [[pacifists]]—strong in [[Protestant]] churches and women's groups—protested the plan would make the United States resemble [[German Empire|Germany]], which required two years' compulsory military service from every male citizen.<ref>Susan Zeiger,  "The schoolhouse vs. the armory: US teachers and the campaign against militarism in the schools, 1914–1918." ''Journal of Women's History'' 15.2 (2003): 150–179.</ref> 

Another source of criticism of the Preparedness Movement and particularly its demands for "100% Americanism" came, quite understandably, from those increasingly dubbed [[Hyphenated Americans]]; America's enormous number of [[White ethnic]] immigrants and their descendants. Criticism from White ethnic circles occasionally argued that "100% Americanism" really meant [[Anglophilia]], as particularly demonstrated by escalating demands for both the "[[Special Relationship]]" and for tolerating only the [[English language in the United States]]. In a letter published on 16 July 1916 in the ''[[Minneapolis Journal]]'', Edward Goldbeck, a member of [[Minnesota]]'s traditionally very large [[German-American]] community, announced that his people would, "abandon the [[Hyphenated American|hyphen]]", as soon as [[English-Americans]] did so. Meanwhile, Goldbeck argued, "Let the exodus of [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestants|Anglo-Americans]] start at once! Let all those people go who think that America is a new England!"<ref> Carl. H. Chrislock (1991), ''The Watchdog of Loyalty: The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety during World War I'', [[Minnesota Historical Society]] Press. pp. 21, 337.</ref>

Furthermore, in June 1917, anti-war [[essayist]] [[Randolph Bourne]] also raised the possibility that the Preparedness Movement may have been one of the multiple covert operations used by both French and [[British Intelligence]] [[British propaganda during World War I|propagandists]] in order to bring America into the war against the [[Central Powers]], "The nerve of the war feeling centered ... In the richer and older classes of the Atlantic seaboard, and was keenest where there were French or English business and particularly social connections. The sentiment then spread out across the country as a class-phenonemon, touching everywhere those upper-class elements in each section who identified themselves with this Eastern ruling group... In every community, it was the least liberal and least democratic elements among whom the Preparedness and later the war sentiment was found."<ref> Carl. H. Chrislock (1991), ''The Watchdog of Loyalty: The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety during World War I'', [[Minnesota Historical Society]] Press. p. 22.</ref>

While defenders of the Movement retorted that military "service" was an essential duty of citizenship, and that without the commonality provided by such service the nation would splinter into antagonistic ethnic groups. One spokesman promised that UMT would become "a real [[melting pot]], under which the fire is hot enough to fuse the elements into one common mass of Americanism."<ref>Chambers, ''To Raise an Army'' pp. 92–93.</ref> Furthermore, they promised, the discipline and training would make for a better-paid work force. The hostility to military service was so strong at the time it is difficult to imagine such a program winning approval; indeed, even in [[World War II]], when Stimson as [[Secretary of War]] proposed a similar program of universal peacetime service, he was defeated.<ref>John Whiteclay Chambers, ''To raise an army: The draft comes to modern America'' (1987). pp. 96–98</ref> Underscoring its commitment, the preparedness movement set up and funded its own summer training camps (at Plattsburgh, New York, and other sites) where 40,000 college alumni became physically fit, learned to march and shoot, and ultimately provided the cadre of a wartime officer corps.<ref>John Garry Clifford, ''The Citizen Soldiers: The Plattsburg Training Camp Movement, 1913–1920'' (2015).</ref><ref group=notes>Very few young men from wealthy or prominent families considered a career in the army or navy then or at any time in American history. The highest social background of cadets, exemplified by [[George Patton]], West Point 1909, and [[Lucius D. Clay|Lucius Clay]], West Point 1918, was oldest son of a locally prominent family.</ref>

Suggestions by labor unions that talented working-class youth be invited to Plattsburgh were ignored. The preparedness movement was distant not only from the working classes but also from the middle class leadership of most of small town America. It had had little use for the National Guard, which it saw as politicized, localistic, poorly armed, ill trained, too inclined to idealistic crusading (as [[Spanish–American War|against Spain in 1898]]), and too lacking in understanding of world affairs. The National Guard on the other hand was securely rooted in state and local politics, with representation from a very broad cross section of American society. The National Guard was one of the nation's few institutions that (at least in some northern states) accepted [[African-American]]s on an equal footing with whites.<ref>{{cite book|author=Robert H. Zieger|title=America's Great War: World War I and the American Experience|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dwcuHMZ1iyMC&pg=PA36|year=2001|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|page=36|isbn=978-0847696451}}</ref>