The best way to obtain a full appreciation of the war and the perspectives of its participants is by looking at the types of sources included in "The Soldiers' Experience." This section includes memoirs, diaries and letters of soldiers, regimental histories, and photographs of the front and of a typical soldier's equipment and personal effects. These sources provide glimpses of the experiences soldiers engaged in modern warfare--infantry charges across a battle-scared "no-man's" land under withering machine gun fire; earthshaking artillery barrages; thrilling aerial combat; the terror of a poison gas attack.

From Umstead's Diary: "I sometimes think that the lives lost in war are trivial in comparison with the grief and sorrows their deaths leave in the aching hearts of their dear ones. I left with a heavy heart, trying to bear up manly under a burden which almost broke me down. That parting picture will be clear in my mind's eye as long as I live."

Introduction :: African Americans :: Educational Institutions :: Mobilizing Resources :: Patriotism & Politics :: Women

This section illustrates how the federal and state governments, charitable organizations, educational institutions, and individual North Carolinians responded to the war and the lasting impressions that the war left on the Tar Heel state.

"In talking with the commanding general at Le Mans, I referred to the fact that something like fifteen Negro officers had been sent back as "inefficient." He said to me: "If it is of any comfort to you, I will tell you this: we sent back through Blois to America, in six months, an average of one thousand white officers a month, who failed in one way or another in this awful struggle. I hope, Doctor Moton," he added, "that you won't lose your faith in my race because of this, and certainly I am not going to lose my faith in your race because of the record of a few coloured officers who failed." - page 259-60 - Finding a Way Out: An Autobiography: Robert Russa Moton

During the "Great War," the lithographed poster was the harbinger, reporter, and arbiter of news, opinion, and sentiment on both the frontlines and the home front. This evocative form of public communication had the advantage of being able both to go and to remain everywhere. When the United States of America entered the conflict in April 1917, the poster as a medium of expression was not new.

In the decades preceding the First World War, not only had many formal artists been drawn to the medium, but the poster, with its graphic appeal, had also become a tool of advertising, commerce, and industry. Innovations in color lithography and the development of larger and faster printing presses in the second half of the nineteenth century greatly facilitated the emergence of the modern, mass-produced poster defined by its powerful integration of emotionally evocative graphic images with brief, but direct and effective, textual messages.

Address on Armistice Day, Arlington National Cemetery, November 11, 1935
Address on Armistice Day, Arlington National Cemetery, November 11, 1941