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James J. Martin
RM
Ralph Myles Publisher, Inc.
COLORADO SPRINGS
BOOKS by JAMES J. MARTIN —
Men Against the State: The Expositors of
Individualist Anarchism in America (1953, 1970)
American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931-1941
(2 Volumes, 1964)
Revisionist Viewpoints: Essays in a Dissident
Historical Tradition (1971, 1977)
The Saga of Hog Island and Other Essays in
Inconvenient History (1977)
Beyond Pearl Harbor: Essays on Some Consequences
of the Crisis in the Pacific in 1941 (1983)
The Man Who Invented ‘Genocide’:
The Public Career and Consequences of
Raphael Lemkin (1984)
An American Adventure in Bookburning,
In The Style of 1918 (1989)
An American
Adventure
“An
~ Bookburning
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martin, James Joseph, 1916-
An American adventure in bookburning in the style
of 1918.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. World War, 1914-1918—Censorship—United States.
2. Soldiers’ libraries—Censorship—United States—
History—20th century. I. Title.
D632.M37 1988 303.3'76 89-3246
ISBN 0-87926-024-6
First Edition
Typesetting and design by UniverCity WorDesign, Portland, Oregon.
This book was created on a Macintosh Plus computer with
QuarkStyle™ desktop publishing software.
©1988 by James J. Martin
Ralph Myles Publisher, Inc. x
Post Office Box 1533
Colorado Springs, CO 80901 U.S.A.
An American Adventure in Bookburning,
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Appendix:
A Beginner’s Manual
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An American Adventure:
in Bookburning
Origins of the Action & Some Related Considerations
On August 31, 1918, a little over two months before the end of the
war in Europe, Newton Diehl Baker, Secretary of War in the cabinet
of President Woodrow Wilson,! issued a directive ordering the
removal from U.S. Army camp libraries of 31 publications, most of
them published books. Secretary Baker classified these as undesirable
reading matter for America's mainly conscripted armed forces located
at these posts, forts and other installations large enough to boast a
camp library. The vague instructions to camp librarians left it in doubt
whether these works by more than 30 authors were to be destroyed or
simply removed from the shelves and sequestered from circulation.
The explanation as to why they were considered unsuitable reading for
the country's soldiery was that they were “German propaganda.”
Nothing was said about collaboration from the Navy on the applica-
tion of this prohibition to U.S. naval bases or ships at sea with compa-
rable library facilities.
The interest of the wartime government of President Wilson in the
possible reading matter of the citizenry at large had been made very
obvious within just a few weeks after Congress put the country at war
with Imperial Germany and its allies of the Central Powers on April 6,
1917. It will be shown later that this interest and interference began
long before this date, but with belligerence, formal involvement
became a matter of official policy. Various classes of internal “subver-
sion” became objects of intense scrutiny, following the enactment by
if
AN AMERICAN ADVENTURE IN BOOKBURNING
Congress of the Espionage Act on June 15, 1917, and about nine
months later the Sedition Act, passed after an unrecorded vote on
March 4, 1918. (Both these actions had additional state supplementa-
tion of sorts.) But special attention was devoted to what might be read
by the armed forces.
Among the many bureaucracies which were quickly constructed
and made operative in the United States upon entering the war as a
formal belligerent on April 6 was an elaborate control system over the
reading matter of the people who were to do the fighting. It was struc-
tured within the American Library Association, and was called the
War Library Service (WLS).? It had its own staff but came under the
authority of the Director of this Service, who was also the Librarian of
Congress, Dr. Herbert Putnam, and was based in the Library of
Congress, its operational headquarters. The announcement of the sup-
pressed books by order of the Secretary of War came from this head-
quarters address in the form of a circular letter addressed to all camp
librarians.
In actuality, the list of forbidden books had been anticipated about
three weeks earlier by the announcement of the banning of five titles,
and a directive to Army camp librarians from the WLS head, Dr. Put-
nam, on August 9, alerting them that “pacifist pamphlets” were being
left around at random on library premises. It ended by urging the
librarians to “please watch for them and destroy them.” The original
five titles were added to the bottom of the list issued August 31, and
which was ultimately to be expanded with an amended list 3-1/2
weeks later, as will be seen.
A full column story with four separate headlines greeted this
action by the War Department in the New York Times on September
1.3 It also included the complete list of the books and authors, includ-
ing the mistakes in both titles and names of authors, but without any
details as to publishers and dates of publication, in actuality omissions
of critical importance. Following is the list as it appeared in the Times
story, which was subsequently reproduced about the country far and
wide in other newspapers:
E.G. Balch — Approaches to the Peace Settlement
Alexander Berkman — Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist
John W. Burgess — America’s Relation to the Great War
