worldwars

ARIZONA'S PART IN THE WORLD'S WAR
(The Story Of Arizona by William Henry Robinson 1919)

The people of Arizona may well be proud of their state's record in the World's War. Not only has its achievements, according to the percentage of its population in comparison with other states, in Liberty loan subscriptions, in Y. M. C. A. donations and in Red Cross work, been conspicuous in the nation, but in addition it has contributed the largest percentage of soldiers and sailors to the war, per capita of male citizens, of any state in the Union.

The population of Arizona, according to the census of 1910, was 204,354; its population for 1917, as estimated by the Census Bureau, was 263,788. Deducting from that 105,551 Indians and aliens (mostly Mexicans), leaves a remainder of 158,237. Arizona's draft was on a supposed population, estimated in the provost marshal general's office, of 409,230.

At the beginning of the war the Arizona National Guard contributed over 1,000 men to the army, but when a new oath was required of the militiamen, only something over 600 re-enlisted, although most of them joined the service later.

In addition to this, over 800 of Arizona's young men voluntarily enlisted in the navy and the marines. Statistics are not available, at this time, giving the number of commissioned officers that went into the service from the state, but in proportion to Arizona's population, the number is large. The estimate made by the state's adjutant general's office for army and navy enlistment's and officers commissioned is 895.

Up to June 1, 1918, the number of men contributed by the different counties in the draft was as follows:

Cochise	1,154
Maricopa	1,328
Gila	1,037
Yavapai	825
Pima	736
Greenlee	625
Pinal	462
Coconino	427
Yuma	371
Mojave	320
Navajo	262
Santa Cruz	197
Not identified	17
Apache	148
Total	8,355

These figures, which were later increased to 10,000, added to voluntary enlistment's and commissioned officers, brings the total number of men going into service from Arizona as not far from twelve thousand out of an available population of 158,237 people.

With but few exceptions the men composing the Arizona contingent went not only willingly but eagerly, and the demonstrations, made at their departure, from different centers of population showed how sincerely the "folks at home" were ready to "back them up." Receptions, parades, picnics, banquets and balls were given in their honor; speeches wishing them Godspeed were made by officials from the governor down; flags were flown, bands played their most martial music, all to the end that honor might be shown those who gallantly stood ready to pledge their lives that the world might still be kept a fit place to live in.

The one conspicuous case of attempt at draft evasion in Arizona was made by Tom and John Powers, who not only did not register, but, in company with Tom Sissons, an ex-convict, shot to death Sheriff Frank McBride, under Sheriff Mart R. Kempton, and Deputy Sheriff Kane Wootan, of Graham County, when they came to arrest them at the Powers home in Rattlesnake Canyon.

So outraged were the people of Arizona over the crime that special rewards were offered by both state and county for the apprehension of the criminals, and practically every peace officer in that section of the state, aided by hundreds of civilian posse men, hunted the men for weeks, when they were finally apprehended and taken into custody by United States soldiers a few miles below the Mexican line.

America entered the World's War April 6, 1917. That same month the obvious necessity for unity and cohesion in the many branches of work that must be undertaken in this state was met by the formation of the Arizona Council of Defense. The organization had its birth April 17, at a meeting of fifty prominent citizens of the state, who were called together by Governor Thomas E. Campbell. A day later the machinery of the Council was put in motion with Dwight B. Heard, chairman, and George H. Smally, secretary.

An executive committee of twelve was appointed, and fourteen sub-committees arranged for, officered by efficient and well known citizens.

One of the first things undertaken by the Council, through its various committees, was the gathering of statistics concerning the state's resources and cataloguing the same.

The information thus obtained concerned crops, railroads, automobiles, auto trucks, mining production, labor conditions and other matters. Plans for the production and conservation of food supplies were entered into, the sub-committee with this in charge co-operating with the various county agents acting under the State Experimental Station. A committee on relief worked with a Red Cross committee to assist families, the heads of which were in military service; the committee on military training encouraged enlistment's and aided in organizing forces for home defense, while other departments assisted in mobilizing boys for farm labor, in organizing Papago, Apache and Navajo labor, and secured a modification of the immigration law that would permit cotton growers to import pickers from Old Mexico.

These are but hints of the many activities undertaken by the Council and successfully carried through. When Governor Hunt again assumed the duties of governor on December 23, 1917, he became the official head of the Council of Defense, and ex-Governor Campbell took a place in the executive committee.

Early in 1918 the Council increased its zone of usefulness by organizing county councils to work in connection with the state organization. Some of the benefits of this extension work are expressed in a letter from President Wilson to the state chairman under date, March 13, 1918. "

Your state, in extending its national defense organization by the creation of community councils, is, in my opinion, making an advance of vital significance. It will, I believe, result, when thoroughly carried out, in welding the Nation together as no nation of great size has ever been welded before "

A woman's committee of the Arizona division of the National Council of Defense was organized with Mrs. Pauline M. O'Neill as state chairman. This body also had county committees which did not so much plan to organize new work as to assist existing agencies.

The zeal displayed by the people of Arizona in the purchase of Liberty bonds and thrift stamps and in contributing to the Red Cross and kindred organizations was in no wise behind its other war activities. In this work men and women co-operated. In the largest cities there would be usually a man for chairman, but women took an active part in organizing the work, in receiving contributions and making house-to-house canvasses. In the smaller towns women would often have tables in the post office and other public places where every person who passed would be given a chance to contribute.

In the sale of thrift stamps, school children took a very active part. As an example of this, in the agricultural district of Chandler, where the school enrollment, including the children of Mexican laborers, was five hundred, in twenty three days in May, 1918, the children bought with their own money $1,155 worth of stamps. Most of this was earned by personal labor, the children hoeing weeds, milking cows, collecting and selling bottles, running errands and the like.

The sale of the first three issues of Liberty bonds in the state was as follows: First issue, $6,703,400; second issue, $12,092,450; third issue, $11,382,200; fourth issue, $15,222,200. All of these amounts largely exceeded Arizona's quota.

The same spirit of service was shown in Arizona's response to the Red Cross drives. The first subscription reached $131,490.84. Arizona's allotment for the second drive made in May, 1918, was $200,000. Arizona "went over the top" with $459,- 195.92. In the purchase of bonds and in making of subscriptions, all classes in Arizona seemed to join with equal heartiness. Not only did the rich and well-to-do contribute, but railroad foremen, managers of stores and superintendents of mining companies would often report that every man in their employ had participated in the various drives.

In the manufacture of hospital dressings and various garments the Arizona Red Cross is said to be one of the best examples of efficiency in the entire country. No rural district was too isolated, no mining camp too remote, but what knitting needles were plied and sewing machines kept busy to serve the boys at the front and provide garments for the destitute in the battle scarred regions across the Atlantic. Schoolboys as well as schoolgirls, from the grammar grades up, knitted.

Arizona had its chapter of the United States Boys' Working Reserve, and its leader, Lindley B. Orme, in May, 1918, reported: "I am proud to say that the boys of Arizona are responding with true patriotism for enrollment in the Boys' Working Reserve."

The nation-wide organization, known as the Four Minute Men, where speakers briefly address audiences in theaters and other places on patriotic subjects, had its organization in Arizona under the direction of George J. Stoneman, state chairman. Capable work was done not only in the cities and towns, but even in the most remote portions of the state forest supervisors, rangers and superintendents of Indian schools were enlisted either as speakers or as agencies for the distribution of patriotic literature.

The restrictions in food consumption required by war's necessities were accepted with willingness by Arizona's people. M. T. Grier, State Hotel Chairman, reports in April, 1918, that over 63,000 pounds of flour were saved in Arizona for the month of March, 1918, and that many of the public eating houses in the state were using no wheat at all. In May, 1918, bread cards were issued, limiting each person to six pounds of flour a month.

To increase Arizona's grains the committee on production of the Council of Defense made special efforts to increase the production of milo, kaffir and feterita, which were formerly used as forage grains, but under war necessities were found to make very good bread.

No chapter on Arizona's part in the world's war would be complete without mentioning what the University of Arizona has done. Since its inception the university has been a military school. All male students are required to take two years in military sciences and tactics. A majority of the graduates have taken four. "

Almost to a man," says President von Klein- Smid, "have the students of the university qualified and enlisted in Government service, some as officers and some as engineers and in ambulance corps." Forty of the boys were excused from school work for service to the Nation along agricultural lines.

Among the women, twenty two graduates not only volunteered their services as members of the Red Cross, but completed a course in "first aid" training that would qualify them for service.

In no wise behind the other activities of the university has been the work of its agricultural extension service, whose staff of workers include agricultural and live stock specialists, organizers of boys' and girls' agricultural clubs, and agents in each county, who advise farmers as to the best methods of crop production.

In the Arizona State Bureau of Mines Director Charles F. Willis compiled statistics concerning the mineral resources of the state, and, in different ways, tried to stimulate the production of not only such staples as copper, lead and zinc, but rarer minerals, including chromite, manganese, graphites, etc., needed in the war.

During the summer months of 1918 the faculty of the university remained on duty instructing two companies of selected men from the new National army in mechanic arts; and a Students' Army Training Corps was organized in the fall of 1918.

A special session of the Third State Legislature, to consider various measures made urgent by war conditions, was called by Governor Hunt to meet May 21, 1918. When the law-makers convened there were two empty seats in the House, those of Harold Baxter and C. C. Faires, both in military service abroad, and during the session Ernest Hall,
of the Senate, also left for the front. Their vacant places were marked by the display of American and service flags.

Although factional politics for a time seemed to threaten the serious purpose of the session, when the test came, most of the legislators gave evidence of appreciating the grave responsibility that rested upon them, and bills, although some of them were perhaps impaired by a necessity for compromise, yet meeting the most pressing of the hour's necessities, were passed.

Chief among these enactment's was a bill providing for the formation of a legally authorized and empowered council of defense to take the place of the emergency body created by Governor Campbell. Under this law the council was to consist of the governor, acting as chairman, and fourteen members, one to be appointed by the governor from each of the fourteen counties in the state, each appointee to receive ratification from the board of supervisors acting in his county. Among other functions the council was given power to initiate all necessary measures to coordinate the state's war activities with those of the national Government, to supervise the solicitation of funds for patriotic purposes, and to enlist the co-operation of officials and private citizens in carrying on war work within the state. It was also given wide investigational powers.

A popular enactment was one granting citizens of the state in military service, no matter where they might be, the right to vote, the ballots after being filled out by the soldiers to be mailed back to the proper official in Arizona.

Other bills passed include the following: Defining the crime of sabotage and fixing the penalty; prohibiting the giving of aid or employment to draft evaders or deserters; an Americanization bill providing for night schools for the instruction, in the English language and in American ideals, of non speaking aliens; a bill granting to the members of the National Guard credit for the time engaged by them in the federal service; an anti- vagabond age bill, and a bill making it a special crime to give false affidavits to secure an improper classification for registration under the selective draft.

After all, if there were some heated discussions indulged in during the session, the cause of it need not necessarily be laid entirely to politics. It was Arizona in June, and during the time the salons sat, under the droning electric fans, wiping the legislative brow, and, sans coats, pulling apart the collars of the senatorial toga, the mercury, even in the louver sided instrument box on top of the weather bureau office, registered 113 3-5, breaking the record for eight years. When on June 19th the session adjourned, with one accord all legislators living in the cool, mountainous parts of the state stayed not on the order of going, nor tarried by the wayside, but with one accord, suitcases in hands and with nostrils already sniffing highland breezes, made a bee-line for the railroad station.

The State Council of Defense, as provided for under the new law, completed its organization in July, 1918, with an executive committee as follows:

Gov. George W. P. Hunt, Phoenix, chairman; C. E. Addams, vice chairman, Ray, Pinal County; Mrs. Theodora Marsh, Nogales; W. D. Claypool, Claypool, Gila County; Homer R. Wood, Prescott; Dwight B. Heard, Phoenix; D. T. MacDougal, Tucson.

The first native Arizonan to give up his life for his country in the World War in France was Matthew R. Rivers, a Pima Indian, who had been educated at the Sherman Institute, California. Like many other Arizona Indians, he had shown his patriotism by early enlisting in the army. However, with most of the Indians of the state the navy was the favorite branch of service, although many of them had lived on the desert all their lives and had never seen the ocean until they enlisted.

The armistice which brought the World's War to an end was signed on the private railroad train of Marshal Foch at Rethondes, France, at five o'clock on the morning of November 11, 1918; in Arizona, on account of the difference in time, it was ten o'clock p.m., November 10th.

The news for which all were waiting with such eagerness reached our cities soon after midnight, when bells were rung and whistles blown to express the joy of those who had stayed up to wait the tidings, as well as to apprise the minority who had gone to bed that peace had come at last.

As was the case with much of America, Arizona was in the midst of a visitation of the ubiquitous "Spanish" influenza. Churches, schools and theaters had been closed and public meetings forbidden since early in October, and, as it turned out, the ban was to remain in force until nearly the end of the year; nevertheless, the enthusiasm of the people was too great to be refused communal and gregarious expression, even by quarantine regulations, and on the morning of the 11th the streets of towns and cities were soon filled with young and old, radiant of face and with shining eyes, who made the air vocal with enthusiastic expressions of joy and relief. In the hour the austere forgot their dignity and the most incorrigible pessimists played the part of Sunny Jim.

Those whose near and dear were in their country's service, said in varying words but with common thought, 'The boys are coming back!" Those whose beloved had paid the supreme price, smiled through tears with the bravery of sacrifice to a high and noble cause, and in their bereaved hearts had the consolation of knowing that those who had laid down their lives had not "died in vain." Women cried, "We've won! We've won!" and all the ages of man, from schoolboy to "slippered pantaloon," chortled in common and commendable atavism, in all the keys of human expression, "B'gee, we've licked 'em!"