Anti-War Sentiment
The modern American peace movement was largely born during the First World War. During the war the American peace movement was broad and diverse politically, geographically, socially, and economically.
At VPI, Professor J. R. Parrott was part of the movement. In October 1917 when a minister visited campus to encourage support for the war, Parrott put his pacifist beliefs into words in a private four-page essay titled “A Little Preachment from the Pew to the Pulpit.” In it Parrott explained that he opposed American intervention not only due to his religious beliefs, but also his political beliefs. Like many anti-war activists, Parrott believed the United States government was persuaded to enter the war by wealthy elites who benefited from war – specifically by “the Morgan money [J. P. Morgan] and the munition crowd [war manufacturing].”
Publicly, Parrott voiced no opposition to the war. Parrott’s silence was likely due to the efforts of the United States government to eliminate dissent during the war, which placed strict limits on free speech and resulted in the internment of thousands of Americans.
Anti-war sentiment also manifested in the reluctance of parents to send their children to VPI to receive wartime military training. Many parents wrote to VPI’s president asking for draft deferments for their children or for their children to simply return home. In these letters, parents expressed that they had sent their children to VPI to obtain a traditional land-grant education which would lead to good civilian jobs after graduation, not to be trained to go to war and fight in France.
Though in the minority, a broad and diverse group of students, parents, and faculty held anti-war sentiments. In later decades anti-war sentiment on campus continued to be visible, most notably during the Vietnam War and War in Iraq.
