FRANCIS ADAMS HALSTED & V. ADERENTE COLUMBIA CALLS. 1916

An early enlistment poster, predating the first conscription call of World War I by a year. Prior to America's entering the First World War, President Wilson had adapted an ostensibly sound isolationist policy. Yet certain factions within American society were alarmed at the growing threat of war and began to make preparations for what was seeming more and more like an inevitable American role in the global conflict. As early as the end of December 1914, "a number of prominent New York businessmen (among them Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry C. Frick and Simon Guggenheim) formed the National Security League, to press on Congress and the president the immediate need for 'preparedness'" (Rawls p. 105). The League was supported by Theodore Roosevelt, a staunch advocate of the "big stick" policy of American power. Rawls p. 52, Borkan p. 19, Theofile 4.