The document summarizes the tragic loss of life experienced by young men during World War I. It describes how a young American fighting with the French Foreign Legion wrote of meeting his death "at some disputed barricade;" "on some scarred slope of battered hill;" "at midnight in some flaming town." The document conveys that youth and love and life perished in senseless battles over unnamed places, and questions what it was all for. Nearly a century later, it says there is still no satisfactory answer.

2.  The First World War represented a terrifying waste of
youth and potential, a cruel squandering of the
positive forces of our planet. The poetry of that era has
a special significance for me because I first read it at a
time when I was the same age as many of those young
men who had to face the prospect of withering before
they had barely blossomed. A young American
fighting with the French Foreign Legion wrote before
he was killed in action in 1916 that he would meet his
death: “at some disputed barricade;” “on some scarred
slope of battered hill;” “at midnight in some flaming
town.” Youth and love and life perishing forever in
senseless attempts to capture nameless, unremembered
places. And for what? Nearly a century on, we have yet
to find a satisfactory answer.

3.  1. What is liberal internationalism?
 2. What was war socialism?
 3. What was the Red Summer of 1919?

5. April 2, 1917 congress declared war on the Axis Powers.

6.  It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the
Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you.
There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice
ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful
people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all
wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the
right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the
things which we have always carried nearest our hearts --
for democracy, for the right of those who submit to
authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the
rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal
dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall
bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world
itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives
and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything
that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day
has come when America is privileged to spend her blood
and her might for the principles that gave her birth and
happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God
helping her, she can do no other.

12. “THIS, THEN, MY FRIENDS, IS THE SIMPLE MESSAGE THAT I BRING TO
YOU. LIFT YOUR EYES TO THE HORIZONS OF BUSINESS; DO NOT LOOK
TO CLOSE AT THE LITTLE PROCESS WITH WHICH YOU ARE
CONCERNED, BUT LET YOUR THOUGHTS AND YOUR IMAGINATIONS
RUN ABROAD THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE WORLD, AND WITH THE
INSPIRATION OF THE THOUGHT THAT YOU ARE AMERICANS AND ARE
MEANT TO CARRY LIBERTY AND JUSTICE AND THE PRINCIPLES OF
HUMANITY WHEREVER YOU GO, GO OUT AND SELL GOODS THAT WILL
MAKE THE WORLD MORE COMFORTABLE AND MORE HAPPY, AND
CONVERT THEM TO PRINCIPLES OF AMERICA”

13.  US Exports to England and France
 1914 $753 million
 1916 $2.75 billion
 US Exports to Germany
 1914 $345 million
 1916 $27 million
 US Loans to Europe in 1917
 England and France, $2.3 billion
 Germany, $27 million

14. U-boat