"Over There" and Over Here. Richard MacAlpine

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      All photos and images are either public domain, the property of the Yates County History Center and are used with their permission, or belong to the author unless otherwise noted.

       Other Books By the Author:

      

      Yates County Chronicles (The History Press, 2014)

      Steamboats On Keuka Lake (The History Press, 2015)

      coauthored with Charles R. Mitchell

      Stories From Yates Past (Infinity Publishing, 2016)

      Admiral Frank H. Schofield:

      A Portrait In Letters of An American Navy Family (1886-1942)

      (Infinity Publishing, 2016)

      © Richard S. MacAlpine, 2018

      Introduction

      The people of Yates County, New York were no different from most of the rest of America when it came to their reaction to events in Europe from the time the world war broke out in the late summer of 1914 all the way through to the Armistice in November of 1918. People were mostly unconcerned over the war at first as President Woodrow Wilson immediately declared the United States to be a neutral nation and encouraged the American people to be "impartial in thought as well as in action.”

      The flaw in American neutrality was trade. Falling back on our concept of “freedom of the seas,” we felt that as a neutral nation we had the right to trade with countries at war. The British navy stymied our attempts to trade with Germany by mining the North Sea entrances to their Baltic seaports, blockading other ports that Germany might use, and generally interfering with our shipping. The loss in our trade with the Central powers was more than offset by increased trade with Britain and France.

      Germany was then faced with a dilemma. In the case of a long war, they were cut off from outside supplies while their enemies were being well supplied by the United States. The only ships they could get past the British blockade and minefields were submarines or U-Boats. In February 1915, the German government announced a program of “unrestricted submarine warfare” in the North Atlantic. They quickly followed through with the sinking of American merchant vessels. The German campaign created a major crisis with the sinking of the Lusitania, a passenger liner, off the southern coast of Ireland in May of 1915 with numerous Americans onboard. Torn between wanting to avoid involvement in the European war and fighting to maintain our rights as a neutral, Wilson sent increasingly sternly worded notes to the German Kaiser. When another unarmed British passenger liner was sunk in August of 1915, the President threatened to cut off diplomatic relations with Germany and consider any future attacks as a possible act of war. Already involved in a two-front war with England and France on one side and the Russians to the east, the Kaiser acquiesced slightly and in late August 1915 agreed to no longer attack passenger vessels without warning, leaving the issue of unarmed merchant vessels unmentioned. Although it was a minor concession and did not eliminate the threat to our shipping, it was received with a sigh of relief by the American people.

      In March of 1916, a German U-Boat ignored the agreement and torpedoed without warning the Sussex, a passenger ferry crossing from France to England. Although no Americans were onboard, President Wilson saw the attack as a violation of the agreement that he thought he had and said we would break diplomatic relations with Germany if it happened again. Fearing American involvement in the war, the Kaiser issued in May of 1916 what was known as the Sussex Pledge. Basically, they agreed to suspend their policy of unrestricted submarine warfare by not targeting passenger vessels at all and only sinking merchant vessels carrying war material after a warning and provisions made for the safety of those onboard.

      With American public opinion overwhelmingly against getting involved in the war, that enabled Wilson to run for a second term in 1916 on the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.” Running against a popular and competent New York governor, Charles Evans Hughes, Wilson won a second term by a narrow margin. This book begins with that November election; a time when the people of Yates County and the rest of the country turned their thoughts away from war and foreign affairs and focused instead on the approaching holiday season.

      I cannot emphasize enough the role of the Yates County History Center in Penn Yan, New York for getting me into this project. In the spring of 2017, the History Center set up a major exhibit in their Oliver House Museum on “Yates County In the Great War,” to commemorate the 100th anniversary of our entrance into the European war. Along with an amazing collection of photographs, uniforms, shell casings, propaganda posters, and other artifacts of the era were individual photographs of most of the more than six hundred men who served in the military during the war. Coordinated with the photos is a book which chronicles the wartime service of each of them. That book, Yates County In the World War (1921), was put together by Emmett Harrison who worked for one of the local newspapers. It not only included military personnel, but also civilians who supported the war effort on the home front. This was a very popular exhibit as it enabled people to come in, look up someone they might be familiar with, see their photo and read a summary of their wartime service.

      In support of that exhibit, I wrote a series of Centennial articles for each issue of our bimonthly publication, Yates Past. Those articles make up the bulk of this book. The history center has bound editions of the local newspapers for that entire time period. Starting in May of 2016, I started coming into the museum on Friday mornings and pouring over the appropriate issues of both The Yates County Chronicle and the Penn Yan Democrat. I finally wrapped that up in September of 2017. Each article gave a short summary of what was happening “Over There” for the two-month time period and then a look at how our local community responded to the war and eventually became intensely involved. I also included other matters that received attention in the newspapers, advertisements from the time, and other factors of social history.

      To supplement my work with the printed copies, I have digitized copies of all those newspapers on my computer. Thanks to a generous donation that allowed the history center to purchase and set up the equipment for a digitizing center, along with the countless volunteer hours of a group that became known as the Imaging Team, I am now able to run searches on those newspapers from 1916-1919 in the comfort of my home and capture images of photos, ads, etc. to use in this project.

      This book should impress readers with the spirit of the Yates County community during those wartime years. The people of that time “did their bit” to support the war effort in various ways - the military, the Red Cross, Liberty Loan drives, meatless days. wheatless days, saving peach pits and animal fats, etc. They also experienced the fear and paranoia of those times. They grieved for the wartime casualties and cheered the heroes, and when the Armistice came, they cut loose and celebrated. As I said at the beginning, Yates County was no different from the rest of America.

      Rich MacAlpine

      Penn Yan, New York

      Spring, 2018

      1916

      By the time November 1, 1916 rolled around, the Great War in Europe had been going on for over two years. 1916 had witnessed the devastating battles of Verdun (300,000 dead), the Somme in France (310,000 dead), and the naval battle of Jutland (10,000 dead.) As the casualties increased along the Western Front in France and Belgium, the war settled into a stalemate of trench warfare. This editorial appeared in the Yates County Chronicle in late summer: “THE EUROPEAN WAR - The war news from Europe tells of terrific fighting on all sides. The long-expected offensive movement of the Allies in the west has been begun in a terrific СКАЧАТЬ