AbstractOver 2,000 Radcliffe College students, administrators, and alumnae irregularly involved themselves in World War I (WWI) activism. While most matriculating and matriculated Radcliffe members collectively contributed to war work, their individual records illuminate peculiar paradoxes that challenge historical concepts of America's WWI culture. Radcliffe females generally assumed war tasks untethered to their professional experiences and political aspirations. Many undergraduates and graduates contended that they chose, circumscribed and concluded war-connected work at their discretion—not Radcliffe's and/or America's. Moreover, domestic efforts designed to awaken Americans' war patriotism and activity encountered a decidedly dormant and indulgent Cambridge college compound. Not until fall 1918—over a year into U.S. belligerency—did Radcliffe's campus completely mobilize for ‘selfless' war service. Radcliffe's WWI-related chronicles—including its members’ post-hostilities humanitarian activity—suggest that “coercive voluntarism” and “complete citizenship” were not ubiquitous forces in WWI America.
Born to privilege in Boston, Frances Webster, like her peers volunteered overseas with the American Red Cross as a nurse's aide. Where the activities of other Americans during the First World War is characterized as a “culture of coercive volunterism,” Webster's reflected a more complex mixture of altruism and tourism. Her history of participation in the First World War suggests historians need more multifaceted frameworks to explain Americans' First World War service.
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