 |
Photograph from the WWI Exhibit: from left to right, standing,
Herbert Hoover, Food Administrator; Edward N. Hurley, Chairman
of the Shipping Board; Vance McCormack, Chairman of the War
Trades Board; Dr. Harry Garfield, Fuel Administrator. Sitting,
Benedict Crowell, Assistant Secretary of War; William G. McAdoo,
Secretary of the Treasury and Railroad Administrator; President
Woodrow Wilson; Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy; and
Bernard Baruch, Chairman of the War Industries Board.
This winter a
new exhibition opened in the Gunlocke Room of Lauinger Library:
From The Hilltop to the Marne: A Selection of World War
I Materials.
The extensive display, drawn from the University archives,
manuscript collections and rare book holdings, commemorates
the 88th anniversary of the conclusion of World War I. Archival materials illustrate the reaction of Georgetown University
(commonly called “The Hilltop”) students, faculty,
and alumni to World War I, as well as their contributions to
the war effort. Archival items include: an August 12, 1918
telegram from the Adjutant General to the President of the
University, activating the Students’ Army Training Corps;
photographs of combat practice on campus, 1918; material about
Lt. Dennis P. Dowd, Jr. (C’1908), the first American
to travel to Europe to enlist in World War I, who sailed for
France six days after the War began; and a letter written by
Lieutenant W.G. McNulty (C’1914) from “Somewhere
in France,” October 12, 1917, which was published in
the Georgetown College Journal and describes, among other things,
the troops’ interest in the 1917 World Series.
Drawn from the manuscript collections are letters from the
French front: a series of nearly two hundred (1914-1916) from
cavalry officer Count André de Limur to his parents,
and a large group from Royal Fusiliers battalion commander
Lt. Col. George Richey, including one dated 11 July 1917, in
which he exults from the battlefield at news of the birth of
his son Michael, who later in life would become a famous long
distance sailor. There are items about poet Joyce Kilmer from
his archives; wartime letters by novelist John Dos Passos;
editorial cartoons by “Cesare” about the War; and
materials about the peace negotiations from the papers of American
jurist James Brown Scott, who helped draft the Conditions of
Peace. In addition, photographs show conditions at the front
as well as some of the War’s more noted protagonists:
Marshall Ferdinand Foch, General John J. Pershing, President
Woodrow Wilson, Kaiser William II, and Count Felix von Luckner.
From the Library’s rare book collections come many war-related
works by Hilaire Belloc, Arnold Bennett, Laurence Binyon, G.
K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, T. E. Lawrence,
John Masefield, Robert Nichols, Ernest Rhys, Siegfried Sassoon,
and Edith Wharton, to name just a few. Printed ephemera include
a facsimile of a lottery number from The National Draft Bowl
(relating to the draft of Americans) and sheet music for George
M. Cohan’s “Over There”. The posthumously
published collected poems of young Wilfrid Owen and John McRae’s
famous “In Flanders Fields,” first published in
the December 8, 1915 issue of Punch, are included.
|
|
