Communication

Wartime Communication from 1914-1918

Written by: Kim Cox

I keep asking myself how people communicated or learned of what was happening on the war front in the early 1900s (1914-1918) when there wasn’t television or radio.

Television wasn’t invented until the 1920s. In 1923 Vladimir Zevorykin (Russian but in the United States at the time) applied for electronic patent—invented the iconoscope and the electronic camera pickup tube. So television wasn’t a resource to civilians until long after the war had ended.

Radio: The first regular radio station wasn’t established until 1920 although Lee De Forest (1906), an American engineer (called “father of radio”), invented the three-element vacuum tube or triode. It enabled broadcast signals, such as voice or music to be detected and amplified by a radio receiver. Also Edwin H. Armstrong, another pioneer in the development of radio, an electrical engineer and inventor devised the basic circuitry used in radio receivers and later introduced the frequency modulation (FM, system of static-free radio). Now there’s more than 10,000 radio stations in the United Stated, but still radio wasn’t an immediate resource for civilians during the First World War.

So what do we have left? Letters, telegraph, telephone and newspapers were the only possible means of communication during this time.

Letters from home kept the soldiers apprised of what happened back home, but did their letters inform the civilians of what took place on the battleground. Somewhat maybe they did. Letters could take months to get to loved ones. The next few sentences are only speculation on my part and from reading some correspondence between a World War II soldier and his family posted online in “Private Art”. The actions of soldiers wouldn’t be much different during this earlier war. I think on the most part, soldiers wouldn’t tell their loved ones everything. They wouldn’t want them to worry about their welfare. The only letter I read on the “Private Art Homepage” only mentioned one thing about the fighting, and that was the destruction he found when he first arrived in France. So where does that leave the civilians? How did they know what was happening?

The Wireless Telegraph: An instrument for sending and receiving code signals through space by means of electromagnetic (or radio) waves. Guglielmo Marcoroni, an Italian scientist in 1896 perfected the wireless telegraph. This enabled transmission from ship to ship, ship to shore and transoceanic communication without the use of cables. In 1902 an American physicist, Reginald A Fessenden showed that voice messages could also be broadcasted via radio waves. Another opinion here: However this still didn’t give civilians knowledge of war activities or enable communication with loved ones unless it was a dire emergency. This device more than likely was saved for the delivery commands to troops and from spies to their officers on what enemy movements took place.

Telephone: Although the first telephone was publicly exhibited for the fist time at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, world wide telephone service didn’t become a reality until the second half of the 20^th century. So this wasn’t much help to civilians either.

Newspapers and Journalist: In my opinion this was the place where civilians got the most information. Journalist were sent to rub elbows with the troops, to learn all they could about the war and the condition in order to inform Americans of the wins and loses as well as the destruction of Europe. Ernest Hemingway I thought was one of those journalist, but I was wrong. Hemingway was a correspondent in other wars after this period and it seems some of his stories and books were written about war times.

Here’s a little information on Hemingway. 1917 - Graduates high school; reporter for the Kansas City Star. 1918 - World War I ambulance driver for the American Red Cross; wounded on July 8 on the Italian front near Fossalta di Piave; had an affair with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky 1920 - reporter for Toronto Star 1921 - married to Hadley Richardson; moves to Paris, France on Sherwood Anderson's advice 1922 - correspondent for Toronto Star covering Greco-Turkish War 1923 - Three Stories and Ten Poems published by Robert McAlmon in Paris; birth of son John. I’m not saying that in 1917 he wasn’t a correspondent for the Kansas City Star, but if he was there was no mention of it.

Journalist: One journalist who wrote articles about the war lived in Mansfield, Missouri. Her name was Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the famous “Little House” books. Like many other Americans, she felt a strong sense of moral outrage about the war, particularly against Germany who was guilty of many moral wrongs in the eyes of Laura. Then when America declared war, war took precedence over farm work which was the articles she usually wrote. Her articles were Published in the Missouri Ruralist. She talks about the war and its effects on farmers, Mansfield, America and the world.

Titles of the articles she wrote were: Victory May Depend on You (February 20, 1918), What the War Means to Women (May 5, 1918), How About the Home Front? (May 20,1918), Are you Helping or Hindering? (July 5, 1918), Keep the Saving Habit (March 20, 1919), Who’ll Do the Women’s Work? (April 5, 1919). So where did Laura get her information? Probably from other newspapers and journalist. She wrote about how the war affected us and what we could do to help as American Citizens. Her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane was also a journalist during this period.

Rose accepted a job at the San Francisco Bulletin in January, 1915, working on their recently created women's page. She wrote serial stories and fluff columns for the Bulletin When Fremont Older, editor challenged her to do better, Rose's occupation as a serious reporter and writer began.

Between 1915 and the 1940s Rose sold many stories and articles to major magazines such as: Sunset, Ladies Home Journal, Harper's Monthly, Asia, Country Gentleman, and Saturday Evening Post.

It wasn’t until after the war, she traveled to France, working for the American Red Cross. Rose reported and wrote about the conditions in war-tattered countries.

But overall, these ladies weren’t war correspondents. I found one man who was, Randolph Bourne 1886-1918. Here are some of his quotes about the war.

“We of the middle classes will be progressively poorer than we should otherwise have been. Our lives will be slowly drained by clumsily levied taxes and the robberies of imperfectly controlled private enterprises. But this will not cause us to revolt. There are not likely to be enough hungry stomachs to make a revolution. The materials seem generally absent from the country, and as long as a government wants to use the war-technique in its realization of great ideas, it can count serenely on the human resources of the country, regardless of popular mandate or understanding... We are learning that war doesn't need enthusiasm, doesn't need conviction, doesn't need hope, to sustain it. Once maneuvered, it takes care of itself, provided only that our industrial rulers see that the end of the war will leave American capital in a strategic position for world-enterprise.” A War Diary, The Seven Arts, Sept. 1917

“Country is a concept of peace, of tolerance, of living and letting live. But State is essentially a concept of power, of competition; it signifies a group in its aggressive aspects. And we have the misfortune of being born not only into a country but into a State, and as we grow up we learn to mingle the two feelings into a hopeless confusion...”

and—

War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense...the nation in war-time attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war...The State is intimately connected with war, for it is the organization of the collective community when it acts in a political manner, and to act in a political manner towards a rival group has meant, throughout all history - war...

The last two paragraphs are a couple of quotations from the first draft of an essay, "The State", left unfinished by Bourne at the time of his death. The quotations can now be found in the Bourne MSS, Columbia University Libraries.

Sources:

Online Sources

Letters:

Private Art, http://www.private-art.com — Letters of WW2 soldier

Telephone, Telegraph & Radio Sources:

Rural Telephone Co-ops, http://www.ncb.com/day/a10a.htm

Early Telephone Companies, http://www.cobleskill.edu/schools/mcs/csbest/phone2.htm

Alexander Graham Bell’s Path to the Telephone

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/albell/introduction.html

History of Telecommunications from 1874-1930

http://www-stall.rz.fht-esslingen.de/telehistory/1870-.htm

A History of the Telephone