When Books Went to War

by Molly Guptill Manning

  As word circulated of the camps’ slumping morale and empty bookshelves, Trautman’s fellow librarians came to his rescue. Feeling a moral and professional obligation to do something, librarians volunteered to host local book drives to gather books for nearby training camps. In the words of the publicity director for the New York Library Association’s 1941 book drive: “Books are available to amazingly few men in the service. The librarians of the state feel that when there is time and inclination for reading there should be books to read—and so they are setting out to get them.” Grassroots campaigns mushroomed across the United States and were greeted with a hearty response. Librarians asked for pleasure reading—fiction, comics, books of humor, and short stories—as well as textbooks and technical treatises. Local newspapers publicized these book drives and helped spread the message of how important books were for the sustenance of morale in the training camps. Tens of thousands of books were collected in short order.

  The ALA took notice of these many successful local drives. If thousands of books could be collected by a single librarian, how many millions could be gathered if librarians across the country threw their effort behind a single campaign? At its 1941 annual meeting, the ALA announced that it was investigating the possibility of hosting a national book drive. A chorus of support greeted the idea, and advice poured in from experienced librarians who had undertaken book drives during World War I, or had hosted recent drives. Overcome by the incredible show of support, the ALA sent its executive secretary, Carl Milam, to Washington, where he met with Army and Navy officials as well as Charles Taft, assistant coordinator of the Office of Health, Welfare and Related Defense Activities (Taft was the son of former president William Howard Taft). Taft, who would prove to be both a chief proponent and nuisance, was amenable to the idea of a nationwide book drive, but it was Lieutenant Colonel Trautman who sealed the government’s approval. Despite the Army’s aspirations to purchase adequate quantities of books, Trautman admitted that Army posts with fewer than five thousand men had no funds for reading material, and that if some soldiers were to have any books at all, they would have to be supplied by a book campaign. By the end of this meeting, the ALA was granted federal approval to launch a national book-collection drive.

  In a matter of months, a blueprint for the project was whipped together. With the United Service Organizations (USO) and American Red Cross each donating $50,000 to cover costs, the ALA’s National Defense Book Campaign (NDBC) made plans to collect as many as ten million volumes in 1942. Office space in the Empire State Building was donated by the USO for the campaign’s headquarters, and the ALA hired Althea Warren, who was considered “#1 in the field of Women Librarians,” to run the campaign for a four-month term, the maximum amount of leave she could take from her position at the Los Angeles Public Library. Warren proved the perfect candidate for the job. In fact, she devoted so much time and energy to nurturing the campaign, her closest friends referred to it as “Warren’s child.”

  Warren’s personality, work ethic, and library experience suited her for the challenging work of heading the NDBC. After earning a library degree, Warren secured employment at Chicago’s Sears, Roebuck branch library. Physically connected to a Sears, Roebuck store, and created for the education and pleasure of the store’s employees, this library proved to be as hectic and demanding an environment as one could imagine. “Before opening, at the lunch hours, and at closing time I stood in the midst of a throng and learned to hand out as fast as a ticket agent the book that best matched each person,” Warren recalled. “‘Give me a book like The Shuttle!’ ‘I want a new set of adjectives to describe colors in the spring catalog.’ ‘The head chemist in the testing laboratory would like a certain government pamphlet by Dr. Wiley,’” people eagerly barked and yelled over the din of commotion. Warren’s advice and expertise were in constant demand, and she did not disappoint. In one memorable episode, Warren received a trusting note from a woman in the bookkeeping department via the library’s pneumatic-tube system, which ran between the library and store. “It’s very slow here on this rainy day,” the bookkeeper complained. “Please send me one of those novels you have had to withdraw from circulation as unfit for a lady to read.” Warren fulfilled the request and was surprised the next day to receive the book back, discreetly wrapped, with the message: “Blessings upon you! You’re quite right. This is not fit for anybody to read. Please send another just like it.”

  Warren later moved to California and worked her way up to the position of head librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library. Colleagues were impressed by the magic she brought to her work. Warren’s spirit and professionalism motivated her colleagues; it was said that her coworkers were inspired to work as hard as she did while trying to emulate her personable manner.

  As Warren traveled cross-country to New York City in late November 1941 to take her seat as director of the book campaign, she already had ideas about running the drive. She had been involved in the provision of books to soldiers at Camp Kearny, outside San Diego, during World War I. Having witnessed the therapeutic and utilitarian uses of books then, Warren was determined to collect millions of volumes for the growing number of men in uniform.

  Her task was simple to define and challenging to execute: to inspire a nation to give. Regardless of how people felt about the United States entering the war (with most Americans firmly opposed), Warren was confident all could agree that men in training camps deserved books for morale and entertainment. “Most of us believe, whatever our convictions concerning the war, that . . . it will be a great satisfaction to scramble to get the books for [the men in camps] which they will genuinely enjoy,” Warren said in an editorial for Library Journal. She added: “Librarians know from their own experiences that some printed pages are medical plasters to extract pain, others are tourists’ tickets out of boredom or loneliness to exhilarating adventures, still others are diplomas for getting promotion and drilling ideas into a quick-step.” While she described the creation of libraries for servicemen during World War I as “probably the finest accomplishment in the annals of our national growth,” she told her fellow librarians that they were now being asked “to gather more books than are contained in any existing library in the world.” She concluded simply, “Let’s do it!”

  THREE

  A Landslide of Books

  The soldier at the front needs to have a cause in his heart as well as a gun in his hand.

  —EMILY MILLER DANTON, LIBRARIAN

  VOLUNTEERS FOR THE NDBC worked feverishly throughout November and December 1941 to organize and promote the largest book drive in American history. Time was fleeting and the project was monumental. As Althea Warren admitted to her colleagues: “It is going to take a full month of radio spots, pictures, stories, editorials, and half a million printed posters to get the mass mankind of our country to give in quantity.” The campaign needed a publicity director. Marie Loizeaux, the former publicist for the New York Library Association’s 1941 book drive, was hired immediately.

  Loizeaux aimed to blanket the nation with book-drive posters, and shower every village, town, and city with receptacles for donations. There would not be a library, school, department store, or train depot that did not advertise the campaign or inform the public of where books could be donated, so far as she could help it. Loizeaux worked with major corporations, public transportation, and chain stores so that her publicity efforts would have the largest impact. She yielded impressive returns. National Transitads promised to display twenty thousand posters advertising the campaign in the trains it serviced. Bus tickets were redesigned to include a reminder to donate books. Safeway supermarkets agreed to display donation boxes and a book-campaign poster in each of its twenty-four hundred stores. Hundreds of radio programs—from college-run to nationally syndicated shows—vowed to advertise the book drive on the air. Newspaper reporters offered to announce information on the campaign, such as directing townspeople to book drops and identifying the types of books that were
in highest demand.

  The efficacy of Loizeaux’s publicity work was evident before the campaign even began. Donations from the public flowed in to the campaign’s coffers, and one eager publishing company sent a gift of one hundred thousand paperbacks. The nation’s willingness to give caused both delight and panic: if so many books were donated before the campaign even started, a landslide of books might overwhelm volunteers once it actually began. Turning to newspapers for help, Warren made a frantic appeal for additional helpers to apply at branch libraries.

  Just as the campaign was taking shape, Japan waged its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Congress promptly declared war on Japan, and Germany followed by declaring war on the United States. Suddenly the nation faced one struggle in the Pacific and another in Europe and Africa. American troops began shipping out to fight Hitler’s army, and yet some wondered why the United States was taking action against Germany when it was Japan that had attacked Pearl Harbor. Librarians understood that the conviction to go to war would not last long if fueled only by hatred and a desire for revenge. Now they vowed not only to collect books for the servicemen, but to illuminate why the nation was at war.

  The NDBC was renamed the Victory Book Campaign (VBC) to reflect the nation’s entry into the conflict. After being blessed with the support of President Roosevelt and the First Lady, who publicly donated books for the servicemen, the campaign officially began on January 12, 1942. The public turned out in droves to donate books and support their servicemen. “Carrying the books themselves, sending their chauffeurs with volumes stacked high on back seats, or calling up voluntary and library services to help move the larger contributions, New Yorkers began yesterday to fill the sorting table of the Victory Book Campaign,” the New York Times reported. Many celebrities helped raise awareness of the importance of the VBC. One of the grandest displays of publicity and patriotism occurred on the steps of the legendary New York Public Library on Forty-Second Street in Manhattan during the last two weeks of January 1942. The American Women’s Voluntary Services arranged for a series of programs featuring movie stars, popular bands, local personalities, Broadway performers, and military officials to build interest in the VBC and collect books. Several of the programs were recorded and broadcast on the radio to audiences across the United States. Each day, thousands of spectators besieged the library to catch a glimpse of their favorite Hollywood idols and donate to the drive. Benny Goodman, Kate Smith, Raymond Massey, Wendell Willkie, Katharine Hepburn, Chico Marx, and Kitty Carlisle were among the famous who threw their support behind the campaign.

  Of the dozen or so performances given at the New York Public Library that month, the one that seemed to strike the deepest chord was actor Maurice Evans’s reading of Christopher Morley’s speech “The Gutenberg Address.” In the 1940s, Morley was a household name; he was an author, contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, and an organizer of the Sherlock Holmes enthusiast group the Baker Street Irregulars. A lover of literature and poetry, Morley began his writing career in 1912 and went on to publish countless novels, short stories, and poems. More than three thousand New Yorkers braved the cold to hear the dramatic reading of his address. Many thousands more listened on the radio.

  Morley’s speech begins with the description of a young man packing a duffle bag before leaving home to join the services. Although there is some debate over his need for certain items, there is no doubt when it comes to the seven books he tucks into his bag. These books are his ration on pleasure. They will fortify his mind and keep him in good spirits. Morley attests to the fact that books provide company, soothe homesickness, and are vital armor in the fight against Hitler. Germany had weaponized books, as evidenced by the publication of Mein Kampf and the shameful book burnings. But Americans could use books to their benefit by reading whatever they desired and spreading the ideas they found between two covers. “Wars are won in the mind before they can be won in the field,” Morley observes.

  In the address, Morley draws a parallel to America’s bloodiest conflict, the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln’s most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address. Honoring the lives lost on that battlefield, Lincoln dedicated the nation to ending the war and proving that democracy and freedom could endure the test of time. Morley’s Gutenberg Address would honor the printed word and freedom of thought:

  Twenty five score years ago a German workman brought forth a new idea, conceived in worship and dedicated to the proposition that men’s words can travel, that their thoughts can freely communicate and multiply, and are worth preserving. Now we are engaged in a world Civil War, testing whether that freedom of mind and word, or any other freedom, can long endure.

  Through the efforts of librarians, politicians, authors, teachers, and the media, Americans came to understand that the nation was going to war in the name of freedom, not only to vindicate their losses in Pearl Harbor. Liberty itself was menaced. Europeans who had fallen under Hitler’s rule lost the freedom to read and discuss many ideas, and Americans began to realize the same could happen to them. The war began to feel less distant and more personal and immediate, especially as America’s armed forces swelled in size, and seemingly everyone knew a young man who was being sent off to war. By early 1942, one out of every three men between the ages of eighteen and forty-four left home to serve the nation. Those left behind on the home front were stirred by the VBC’s call for books. Not only would they try to meet the campaign’s goal of donating more books than the number housed in the libraries of the five largest cities in the world, they hoped to exceed it. After all, if Morley was correct, and wars were won first in the mind, American servicemen would need an awful lot of books.

  Within two weeks of the campaign’s start, 423,655 books were collected. By the end of January, 100,000 books were sorted, bundled, and loaded onto Army trucks and shipped to camps. The VBC volunteers were impressed by the public’s response to the drive. “Although we realized that in setting our starting date we were giving scant time for preparation we rejoice [that though] we began half-cocked . . . we were ready to meet the requests . . . for books for troops in transit,” read the minutes of a January 1942 VBC board meeting.

  Post librarians with empty bookshelves were overjoyed when shipments of victory books arrived. “It is hard for me to express my deep thanks for the very wonderful collection of books that the Book Campaign donated to our Post Library,” one library officer wrote to VBC volunteers. “Our library here is starting out from scratch,” and “I had spent days trying to figure out how I could get my shelves partly filled with the very limited funds that the Post Library had to spend,” he said. But the VBC had changed everything. This librarian reported that his shelves were now filled, and “I have had any number of people comment on the very fine choice of books.” Another librarian wrote, “You have started something here that I hope catches hold and spreads throughout the country, for these new and recent books are something that all the Army Camp Libraries are very much in need of.” It would take time for all post libraries to receive books; alongside letters of earnest thanks came pleas from desperate librarians for help in filling their empty stacks.

  Yet inevitably, the initial fanfare faded. Although one million books were collected in the campaign’s first month, some felt this was nine million too few.

  “Something’s wrong somewhere,” began a February 1942 editorial in the Saturday Review of Literature, a widely read periodical at the time. “It seems incredible that a nation of 130,000,000 people, who frequently buy one million or more copies of a single book, and where approximately 750,000 hold memberships in book clubs, should be so sluggish and indifferent about contributing books for men in the services . . . The goal of ten million books should have been reached in the first week, instead of one-tenth that number in a month.” It was not for lack of publicity that the campaign was off to such a start, for newspapers, radio programs, and magazines cooperated in giving the campaign prominence. Posters were hung on
every surface that could accommodate them. They were in libraries, stapled onto telephone poles, and plastered on the walls of train stations and schools. What was the problem? The editorial concluded that perhaps the sacrifice being asked seemed too inconsequential compared to some of the more significant demands being made of the public. “Is it possible that the national psychology emphasizing bigness has caused us to think only in those terms—to the detriment of the small things that have to be done if we are to win the war?”

  To be sure, an overwhelming list of demands was made on the public. Collection drives for all manner of goods were held, and Americans were expected to do their part and contribute. When the nation faced a crucial shortage of aluminum in the summer of 1941, it seemed airplane production would grind to a halt. Frantically, the Office of Production Management threw together a two-week nationwide aluminum-scrap drive in July, with hopes that fifteen million pounds of aluminum would be donated, enough to manufacture two thousand planes. Americans turned their homes upside down searching for every last bit of the metal they could spare. As one historian described: “Enthusiastic householders, delighted at the call for service, hauled an astonishing collection of aluminum wares to their village greens—Uncle Mike’s coffeepot, Aunt Margaret’s frying pan, the baby’s milk dish, skillets, stew pots, cocktail shakers, ice-cube forms, artificial legs, cigar tubes, watch cases, and radio parts.” Even when the unbelievable news was reported that no airplanes could be made from the donated aluminum (officials learned after the drive that only virgin aluminum could be used), the drive’s success in uniting the nation remained a badge of glory.