Commission on Training Camp Activities

The Department of War established the Commission on Training Camp Activities on April 17, 1917, less than two weeks after the U.S. entered World War I.[1] Secretary of War Newton D. Baker appointed Raymond B. Fosdick to lead the new agency.[3] Fosdick was the author of an August 1916 report which found that problems with alcohol and prostitution were rife at the military training camps on the Mexican border during the Mexican Expedition. To improve the moral aspects of camp life, Fosdick had recommended public condemnation of the "illicit trades" and making alternative forms of recreation available to soldiers.[1]

Both President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary Baker sought to build support for American entry into World War I by defining the objectives of the war in terms that appealed to progressives.[1] In the international sphere, Wilson had argued that Americans would be making the world "safe for democracy" and that the U.S. was "but one of the champions of the rights of mankind".[1][4] Domestically, American soldiers would be part of a reform program that would fight the forces of degradation that had traditionally plagued military training camps.[1] Wilson sought to reassure the public that they could entrust their young men to the military,[5] stating:

The Federal Government has pledged its word that as far as care and vigilance can accomplish the result, the men committed to its charge will be returned to the homes and communities that so generously gave them with no scars except those won in honorable conflict.[1]

By keeping alcohol and prostitutes away from soldiers, the CTCA aimed to cultivate the "man-power and manhood" of the American troops.[6]

A "twin" Commission on Training Camp Activities was later created for the Department of the Navy at the request of Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels.[6][7]

The CTCA's primary objective from the start was to prevent the spread of venereal disease among American soldiers.[1][5][3] To address this, it introduced programs in social hygiene, education, recreation, law enforcement, and prophylaxis.[1]

Tasked with raising the morals and the morale of troops in military training camps across the U.S., the CTCA sponsored activities, including athletics, singing, movies, theatre, libraries, and lectures, as well as sex education.[8][9][5]

The agency's ideology was characterized by the Progressive Era, which strived against prostitution, alcoholism, "social diseases", and poor sanitary conditions in major cities. While attempting to eradicate these problems from training camps, the CTCA also aimed to "socialize and Americanize" native-born and foreign-born soldiers to meet the expected level of social standards and to integrate them into the armed forces. However, sources found that ethnic organizations and community leaders from these groups pushed back and attempted to preserve their own cultures.[3]

World War I propaganda poster for enlistment in the U.S. Army.

For native-born and foreign-born troops, the result was portrayed as allowing these citizens to retain their cultures while integrating into American culture.[3] Although a stated aim of the CTCA was to establish adequate recreational facilities for troops in camps, studies have demonstrated its programs sought to control soldiers' and women's sex lives to prevent venereal diseases and to uphold social morality.[10] The CTCA has been portrayed as "one of the last stands of an older generation of moral reformers against the onrush of a liberalizing sexual culture".[10] Historian Eric Wycoff Rogers, however, argues the agency used sexuality and sexual denial to motivate soldiers to fight harder.[2][10] Their efforts have been described as both altruistic and propagating conservative social ideology.[11]

• Chamberlain–Kahn Act
• History of the United States (1865–1918)
• John T. McCutcheon
• Kate Waller Barrett
• Library War Service
• Paul Popenoe
• Peter W. Dykema
• United States in World War I

• Bristow, Nancy K. (1997). Making Men Moral: Social Engineering During the Great War. NYU Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-8623-9.
• Bristow, Nancy K. (1989). Creating crusaders: The Commission on Training Camp Activities and the pursuit of the progressive social vision during World War One (PhD thesis). University of California, Berkeley.
• Collins, Sue (2014). "Film, Cultural Policy, and World War I Training Camps: Send Your Soldier to the Show with Smileage". Film History. 26 (1): 1–49. doi:10.2979/filmhistory.26.1.1. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 10.2979/filmhistory.26.1.1. S2CID 144635122.
• Morgan-Ellis, Esther M. (2018). "Warren Kimsey and Community Singing at Camp Gordon, 1917–1918". Journal of Historical Research in Music Education. 39 (2): 171–194. doi:10.1177/1536600616677995. ISSN 1536-6006. S2CID 164781503.
• Olund, Eric (2017). "Multiple racial futures: Spatio-temporalities of race during World War I". Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 35 (2): 281–298. doi:10.1177/0263775817696499. ISSN 0263-7758. S2CID 151313126.
• Rogers, Eric Wycoff (May 1, 2022). "The Men behind the Girl behind the Man behind the Gun: Sex and Motivation in the American Morale Campaigns of the First World War". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 31 (2): 218–250. doi:10.7560/JHS31204. ISSN 1043-4070. S2CID 250137615.

Primary sources

• Allen, Edward Frank; Fosdick, Raymond B. (1918). Keeping our fighters fit for war and after. The Century Co., New York.
• Fosdick, Raymond B. (1918) “The Commission on Training Camp Activities.” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 163–70.
• Fosdick, Raymond B. (1918). The War and Navy Departments Commissions On Training Camp Activities. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 79(1), 130–142.
• Raycraft, Joseph E. (1918). "III. Training Camp Activities". American Physical Education Review. 23 (3): 143–150. doi:10.1080/23267224.1918.10650699.
• The War Department, Commission on Training Camp Activities (PDF)
• Commission on Training Camp Activities (1918). The War Department Commission on Training Camp Activities. Forgotten Books. ISBN 978-1331055242.
• Commission on Training Camp Activities (1918). "War Songs in the Schools". Music Supervisors' Journal. 5 (2): 24–28. doi:10.2307/3382358. ISSN 1559-2472. JSTOR 3382358. S2CID 221071986.
• Commission on Training Camp Activities, Smash The Line! (PDF)
• American Social Hygiene Association (1918). Keeping Fit to Fight. Commission on Training Camp Activities.

• Online Books by United States Commission on Training Camp Activities
• C.T.C.A [Commission on Training Camp Activities] #13 digital file from original photo