The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
The First World War Home Front
North Liberty's home front was run, on paper, by a machine the record can trace down to the county and no further: a state council of defense above, a county committee in South Bend below it, and a township organisation whose officers no carrier reached names. What the record does count — counted superbly, in the state's own campaign history — is the county's money: five Liberty Loans, a thrift campaign, and a war-work fund, every figure below printed whole with its splits, as the county's. The township's subscriptions inside those county totals were never printed anywhere the record reaches, and this section leaves them uncounted rather than divide a county figure by guess. What the file can print at township strength is the edge the war's loyalty regime presented to a Pennsylvania-German township — and the fact that, here, it never bit.
The town answers: the war government as it reached this ground
STATE FRAME PROVEN; THE TOWNSHIP'S OWN ORGANISATION UNREACHED
Indiana's war government ran in a chain — federal Council of National Defense, Indiana State Council of Defense, county councils, township organisation — and this township sat at the chain's last link. The state frame stands at…
The loans whole, drive by drive — St. Joseph County
THE COUNTY'S FIGURES, PRINTED AS THE COUNTY'S, FROM GREENOUGH (1922)
The carrier whole is Walter Greenough's The War Purse of Indiana (Indiana Historical Commission, 1922) — the state's official campaign history, compiled from the State Loan Headquarters files, the Seventh Federal Reserve Bank's…
Thrift, the YMCA fund, and the purses unreached
TWO COUNTED; THE RED CROSS AND THE REST AT TESTED-NEGATIVE / RESIDUE
The county fell short in thrift while it led in bonds — the record splits them, and so does this section. War Savings Stamps, 1918 (Greenough, ch. VIII, official results table): St. Joseph County — apportionment 2,057,480…
Loyalty's edge: the German township under the loyalty regime
THE REGIME FELL ON TOWNSHIPS OF THIS EXACT KIND; ITS LOCAL BITE IS NIL AT RECORD STRENGTH
Liberty Township was Pennsylvania-German country — "mostly of German ancestry, or what are called Pennsylvania Dutch" (Chapman, 1880); "chiefly of the sturdy Pennsylvania German stock" (Howard, 1907). Its German institutions on…
The Armistice: the county seat's scene; this town's unreached
11 NOVEMBER 1918 · TWO DAYS AFTER THE CLOSURE LIFTED
South Bend's Armistice stands in the county seat's file at pointer: the News-Times of 11 November 1918 headlines the city joining "All America in Celebration" — factory whistles tied down for half an hour, the downtown "a…