“POTATO WEEK IS LATEST ANTI-GERMAN CAMPAIGN,” announced a headline in the Lawrence Journal-World in early April 1918. “Every potato eaten saves that much wheat,” said State Food Administrator Walter Innes, who had designated April 8-13 as “Potato Week” in Kansas. “Potatoes have ...

In the spring of 1918, a speech given by a visiting orator raised the hackles of several of Lawrence’s patriotic citizens, including Mayor W. J. Francisco. Scott Anderson, formerly a pastor in Los Angeles, California, gave a lecture in the Fraternal Aid Union Hall titled “War Clouds and ...

The opening of the Third Liberty Bond drive occurred on the eve of the first anniversary of the U.S. entry into the “Great War,” and Lawrence kicked off the celebration at 2 p.m. that Friday afternoon, April 5, 1918, with “all whistles and bells in Lawrence (in) the biggest clamor ever ...

Local news reports show that anti-German sentiment infiltrated the Lawrence mayoral race of 100 years ago. The Lawrence Journal-World of Jan. 31, 1918, dropped a hint that there was “every indication that the pro-German candidate for mayor of Lawrence is soon to be announced. Of course he ...

Wartime food restrictions specified the quantities of certain foods residents were permitted to keep on hand, and people were not hesitant to report friends or neighbors who were suspected of crossing the line. In March 1918, the Lawrence Journal-World reported that some unnamed person had ...

A mix of war-related University of Kansas news occupied the front page in early March, 1918. On March 8, the Journal-World announced that Roy Stockwell, former secretary of the University of Kansas Y.M.C.A. and a 1911 KU graduate, had been “decorated with the Croix de Guerre by the French ...

The Lawrence school board announced this week a two-fold concentration on gardening and agriculture. Speaking on the project of school gardening, Superintendent R. A. Kent stated that “the World War is calling primarily for men and the industrial and agricultural products which will support ...

An event described in the Lawrence Journal-World as a “tractor school” took place this week in Lawrence with the intended purpose of making farm work more efficient. The event, described as “purely a patriotic and educational affair,” took place in the Douglas County Courthouse, where ...

With the approach of the warmer months, patriotic Lawrence residents were showing an interest in “war gardening.” Professor Charles A. Shull, of the department of botany at the University of Kansas, spoke in Lawrence this month on “scientific intensive gardening,” by which “every ...

With many of the previous year’s workers now training at Camp Doniphan or already serving overseas, the state’s colleges were in search of ways to release their students a bit earlier this semester to assist with the harvest. Looking ahead to spring, the University of Kansas acted this ...

As recently as 50 or even 25 years before the Great War, Lawrence residents had spent a good part of the winter cutting and storing ice from area ponds and from the Kansas River, and “extensive ice houses on the river bank” had a capacity of several hundred tons. Local “ice men” ...

In the spirit of wartime frugality, the Kansas College Association this month discussed “the elimination of college baseball, reduction of expense attached to intercollegiate athletics, lowering of Coach’s and other athletic official salaries, extension of inter-class athletics to the ...

Food conservation efforts continued through the winter, with citizens encouraged to abstain from red meat every Tuesday and from all wheat products every Wednesday. Not only private citizens, but public restaurants, were urged to comply, and daily updates in the Journal-World publicized which ...

Since its founding, Lawrence had been very welcoming to settlers of German origin, but this attitude was undergoing a big change in early 1918. This week, the time span of Feb. 4-9 was announced for “the registration of German alien enemies in Lawrence…. For this purpose the police station ...

Several representatives from Lawrence churches met this week to discuss “elimination of the liquor traffic, not only in this country, but among the American soldiers abroad.” Rev. W. J. Herwig, Superintendent of the Kansas Department of the Anti-Saloon League of America, and Rev. E. E. ...

According to T. J. Sweeney, chair of the gifts committee, the Lawrence soldiers at Camp Doniphan were reported to have enjoyed a good holiday celebration with the help of the arrival of the special railroad car packed with treats from home. Major Henry T. Salisbury, formerly in command of the ...

During the course of the war, there were of course several front-page stories every day relating battles and other news from the front. One interesting side effect of this emphasis on war news was the permeation of ordinary hometown news with “war jargon.” A fine example of this tendency ...

As U.S. soldiers approached their first “Great War” Christmas, a joint effort by the federal government and local citizens was created to bring a holiday feast to the approximately 620 Lawrence men training at Fort Sill. According to a late-November Lawrence Journal-World article, “Uncle ...

Sam Pickard, son of C. C. Pickard of Lawrence, wrote home this month while training in the Royal Flying Corps of Toronto, Canada. During a practice flight one evening, Pickard had “found something wrong with his machine so that he could not read the instruments before him to tell his ...

The Service Flag, whose stars were used to indicate family members who were serving in the armed forces, became widespread in the Second World War, but its origins date from 1917, when the first such flag was designed and patented. The new practice quickly caught on. “The first of the service ...