Defining the spirit of an age has never been easy. Still, American historians looking at the first two decades of the 20th century have not been shy about characterizing this critical period. while the years between the Spanish American War and the end of World War I have commonly been labeled the “Progressive” era, the dominant theme of this time has also been described by historian Robert Wiebe as a “search for order” among middle-class reformers who were responding to the disruptions of the industrial age. In ontrast, Gabriel Kolko, a leftist historian, characterized the period as a “triumph of conservatism” because he believed that reform impulses were hijacked by the business community for their own benefit David Traxel’s Crusader Nation: The United States in Peace and the Great War, 1898-1920 is a welcome addition to these considerable efforts to define the character of this era.
As the title suggests, Traxel finds the idea of “Crusade” to be an appropriate lens through which to interpret the motives and actions of a wide variety of both famous and not so famous individuals from that era. They range from political figures like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to more radical visionaries such as Emma Goldman and Mother Jones, and they include lesser known figures such as Jack Reed, the itinerant journalist who eventually fled to Soviet Russia in pursuit of his own personal dream of a better world. Though diverse and indeed often sharply divided in their convictions, these individuals “had faith in their particular visions the good society and fought to establish these with a passionate intensity that often blinded them to other points of view.”
Like many historians before him, Traxel describes this post-Civil War generation as impatient “for their turn at the levers of power” to ameliorate social problems associated with industrialism and urbanization. He briefly credits religious ideals and humanitarian values as motivators, along with the “desire to organize society along rational and efficient ‘scientific’ lines, a belief that experts could bring order to the complex chaos of industrial society.” And he allows that investigative reporters or “muckrakers” did much to raise the consciousness of middle-class Americans concerning the social problems of the day.
While it’s understandable that Traxel doesn’t attempt to gather all the social crusaders from the era into his narrative, especially given his attempt to stretch our understanding of the “crusading” impulse, one does wonder about his criteria for inclusion and exclusion. For example, he pays almost no attention to Social Gospel ministers such as Walter Rauschenbusch or Washington Gladden. Yet even more conspicuous is the absence of figures like Francis Willard, who led the Woman’s Christian Temperance Movement for several decades. These exclusions are puzzling. In addition, Traxel tends to see Victorian culture simply as something that “crusaders” reacted against, and as a consequence he tends to overlook complex ways in which Victorian assumptions and goals provided idealistic notions for many reformers to “make the world a better place.” Similarly, he too easily dismisses Prohibition as the result of “small-town, selfrighteous bluenoses … . [I]t was viewed by city sophisticates as provincialism run wild.” We know too much about the complexity of Prohibition and its complicated relationship to woman suffrage to dismiss it easily as a positive social force, particularly in a book describing sources of the nation’s crusading spirit. Likewise, Traxel might have highlighted countless Progressive reform movements or crusades that emerged out of this period, such as those that resulted from the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire when 146 employees—most of them women—died.
Perhaps Traxel’s choices about which figures and movements to include and which to exclude can best be understood in light of what appears to be his real passion, for description and analysis of America’s “crusade” in Mexico and the nation’s subsequent entry into World War I. Most readers are likely to find this section of the book (which is nearly two-thirds of the text) to be the most engaging; it is rich in detail, and it points to America’s current struggles to shape the broader world through foreign policy. Traxel immerses his readers in the often overlooked 1913-14 Mexican Revolution as a way of underscoring both the appeal of the crusading spirit and the sobering results that came from applying high ideals to a complex world. Not surprisingly, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and President Woodrow Wilson emerge as idealists somewhat misplaced in a world that seemed to demand skilled realists. Expressing anger at the events that led to the Mexican coup in 1913, Wilson found quickly that moral outrage against revolutionaries was not very effective. Gradually employing more military force as well as covert strategies of engagement, Wilson still found the results to be far from satisfactory. Even with good intentions, crusaders could not guarantee a desired outcome.
Yet Wilson and Bryan remained idealists in regard toevents that unfolded in Europe. Traxel’s description of the outbreak of World War I is wonderfully detailed. He relies heavily on the perspective of Brand Whitlock, the American ambassador to Belgium, a journalist, novelist,and social reformer, to bring to life the atrocities of the German army. Through the eyes of Whitlock, readers gain a sense of the fear and trepidation that accompanied the German march through Belgium.
Moving back and forth across the Atlantic, Traxel describes American efforts to remain “neutral.” He also depicts the extensive effort that the German government made first to spy out and then to orchestrate acts of sabotage against American installations they believed to be aiding the British and the French. We meet the idiosyncratic German ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, who had a penchant for wearing pink shirts, red suspenders, and occasionally yellow shoes. But Bernstorff was no comic book character; he was a highly skilled and often effective diplomat who, according to Traxel, participated in sophisticated espionage against the United States before this nation entered the war.
Given the current global “war on terror,” this complex story of sabotage, espionage, and anti-German sentiment is all too timely. Traxel utilizes Jules Witcover’s work on German sabotage, particularly of the Black Tom munitions facility in New Jersey in 1916, to underscore the involvement of the German overnment. According to Traxel, Franklin Roosevelt, then serving as assistant secretary of the Navy, was so disturbed by the level of sabotage that it led him to agree with military leaders after Pearl Harbor who “wanted to sequester both first generation Japanese immigrants and their citizen children in camps far from industrial centers.”
Traxel also makes more understandable America’s reluctance to get involved in the Great War. Not many Americans in 2009 are aware of the degree of anti-militaristic sentiment across the country after war broke in Europe in 1914 and casualties mounted at a staggering rate. Some readers may recall that William Jennings Bryan was an avowed pacifist who ultimately resigned his post as secretary of state; few will know that Josephus Daniels, Wilson’s secretary of the Navy, and—even more stunningly—Wilson’s secretary of War, Newton Baker, were both ardent pacifists. While Henry Ford’s ill-conceived Peace Ship to Europe in 1915 might be categorized as almost quaint, the American Union Against Militarism and Women’s Peace Party were but two of countless groups dedicated to ending military conflict, reflecting the widespread belief that war could be avoided by simply refusing to fight.
Traxel brings his story to an end with the election of 1920, which he considers a reflection of an entirely different spirit. He is pretty much convinced that the combination of war weariness, Spanish influenza, and self-centeredness of spirit, particularly among the youth of America, explain why this era of crusades came to an end. America’s youth, he writes, “would not be interested in such causes for the next decade … and they … had lost their innocent enthusiasm and withdrawn from the social struggle.” Although Traxel seems a bit wistful over the end of this era of idealism, his narrative also reveals the darker side of this period and raises important questions about passion, myopia, fear, and the larger forces beyond one’s individual control. When do ends justify means? When does idealism untempered by realism become ineffective or even dangerous?
Crusades for a better world always have a certain appeal, but historical reform movements also offer cautions. It’s easy now, as it was 100 years ago, to forget that all of us see through a glass dimly. Working for the greater good, exemplified by reformers of the early 20th century, requires both passion and a vision for a better world—but it also requires intellectual humility, a virtue that would-be reformers too often lack. Crusader Nation reminds us that doing the good is not as easy as seeing the good.
Dale E. Soden is professor of history and director of the Weyerhauser Center for Christian Faith and Learning at Whitworth University. He is the author of The Reverend Mark Matthews: An Activist in the Progressive Era (Univ. of Washington Press).
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