Brown in the Great War

 “BROWN COMES BACK TO HER OWN AND BECOMES ONCE MORE A SEAT OF LEARNING AND  NOT A SEAT OF WAR.”                               –Robert P. Brown[1. BUA. BAM, 19:4. November, 1918. p82]

Back from the Nation’s service. Some of the Brown Men who have Re-entered College.BUA. BAM, 19:7. February, 1919.

After the armistice celebrations, Brown began “unscrambling the omelette,” as president Faunce put it in his 1919 report to the Corporation. Throughout the country, the Government had ordered the disbanding of the Student Army Training Corps. A telegram from Washington informed President Faunce that Brown’s unit was to disband beginning on December 1st. By the 21st of the month, the disbanding of Brown’s Student Army Training Corps and Naval Training Unit had both been completed.[2. BUA. OE-IE-3. Demobilization]

As soon as military control of the curriculum ended, the University “rapidly swung back to its ordinary and normal life.” Faunce explained in his annual report that the students “Instead of imbibing the spirit of militarism, they had acquired for it a strong distaste. When at the end of December, the students were finally discharged from military service and the S.A.T.C. came to a natural ending, there were no mourners to bewail its decease.”[3. BUA. Annual Report of the President to the Corporation of Brown University. Providence, RI. 1919. pp9-10] The fraternity houses re-opened, athletic sports began to revive, musical and dramatic clubs reorganized, dormitory rooms were no longer barracks and began once again to look like student homes, courses in humanities began to recover their numbers and interest, and Professors returned to their normal work. Building projects that had been placed on hiatus resumed, and within two months the University was almost itself again.[4. Ibid. pg11] “Quite a number of the men who have been in service are now back on the Hill with their khaki and their halos done up in mothballs. [ ]…Signs of the war on campus have largely vanished and the faculty, which pulled together as a unit during the war, has joyfully resumed its internal hostilities. The cutter that was anchored outside Rockefeller Hall has been sunk, or anyway it has disappeared and the former members of the naval unit have now been ashore long enough to walk across the campus without rocking. When a student salutes a member of the faculty now, we know he doesn’t do it because he has to but because he didn’t think in time to stop himself.” – H. E. Walters.[7. BUA. MS-IUF-W1. H.E. Walters Papers. Review Hints, February 5, 1919]

A scene from the Sock and Buskin production of the plays; “Not On the Program”, “Miss Civilization”, and “Nothing But the Truth”, held 1919-1920. Images of Brown.

“War Certificates” were issued to all of the students who left the college to enter war service. Alumni received another form of certificate. A total of 1,324 War Certificates were awarded. 108 men who had withdrawn from the University to to enter service, returned to campus to complete their academic work.[5. Ibid] An appointment office was created to assist Brown men in finding jobs, and not long after, 294 men had registered with the University Employment services.[6. Ibid. pg65] Officers Abbott, Edwards, and Borden had resigned from the staff, but the rifle range installed by the Army and Navy units during the war, remained due to the number of students continued interested in marksmanship. Varsity football games resumed. Brown got “trounced” by Syracuse on November 1st (53-0), but won the November 23rd game against Dartmouth (28-0) in Boston, in front of a crowd of 5,000.[8. BUA. Annual Report of the President to the Corporation of Brown University. Providence, RI. 1919]

President Faunce described the 1919-1920 academic year as one of “curious unrest” and attributed it to a reaction against the discipline of war. He noted in the students an “obvious inability to settle down and concentrate on the real business of study.”[9. Ibid.] The curious unrest that Faunce described was not limited to the Brown University campus. The unsettled mood of the nation after the war, ushered in the extravagance of the 1920’s Jazz Age. Times had changed. Brown community members continued to heal from psychological and physical wounds suffered in the war. Ex-servicemen attempted to find their place in a changed workforce populated with women, who had won their right to vote and were asserting their independence.

Ivy Day, June 14, 1921. Pembroke College archives. Images of Brown.