Interview with Philip Fox La Follette, 1964

EDWARD COFFMAN: This is Edward M. Coffman and I'm talking with The Honorable Phillip F. La Follette at the State Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin on October 5, 1964. I'm interviewing Mr. La Follette about his experiences in the first World War. Would you tell- me something about the University of Wisconsin? You were a student when the war was declared.

PHILIP LA FOLLETTE: Yes, I was in my junior year, 1917, and - what sort of

thing do you want?

COFFMAN: Well, I'm interested in the reaction of - your views of

the reaction to your father's stand about the war and right before the war.

LA FOLLETTE: Well, the interesting thing is up until after February 22, 1917, which was Wilson's "speech without victory" speech, up to that time both 00:01:00publicly and from what we know of what President Wilson was thinking, my father and President Wilson's views were very much the same. Both felt that America's entry into World War II would remove the one great independent power from the opportunity and responsibility of trying to bring some, as Wilson put it, peace without victory, enabling the or teaching the - both the allies and the central powers that neither one had the physical resources to dominate Europe, or for that matter, the world. And, of course, when we entered the war in April 1917, 00:02:00my father had opposed it. He'd apposed the Armed Ship Bill which he said - and the reason he opposed it - because it meant it was an act of war, to arm your ships.

And after the so-called filibuster of the "Willful Twelve" as Wilson described them - after that filibuster in the special session was called by President Wilson when he appeared before Congress, he took the same position, strangely enough, that the Armed Ship Bill was inadequate: that it meant war, but without the privileges, as he put it, of a belligerent. The strange thing about World War I, in terms of public reaction, was that by and large the people who seemed 00:03:00to have lost control of their emotions to a greater extent than any other part of our population were the intellectuals. It was the University professors, it was editors of newspapers, columnists and the like. Many of them had opposed Wilson's policies, but many of them had supported him. But when they swung over to the war fervor, they seemed to become more hysterical than any other part of the population. And that showed up, of course, in a university community like Madison, where the political lines had been drawn for twenty years between 00:04:00progressive Republicans and what we call stalwart Republicans, the conservatives and the progressives. And the conservatives didn't say it outwardly, but there was no question. We know now from written documents (there are some of them here in the Library) that these super-patriotic organizations were dominated by the conservative Republicans. Not only here but throughout the country. And they saw that they could use the patriotic fervor of the time to - not just for the purposes of carrying on the war, but to smash the progressive Republican movement in this country. And there's a letter in here that I've seen, from a representative of this, I think it was called, the...I'm not positive...It was 00:05:00one of these super...

COFFMAN: National Security League?

LA FOLLETTE: National Security League. One of their representatives came from New York and once for some reason told me his papers were here, and he wrote back to New York that he was quite satisfied that they were building an organization under this national defense thought that would smash the progressives in Wisconsin.

COFFMAN: You know, I've never heard that spelled out, I mean, it looks like it but I've never heard it nailed down like that.

LA FOLLETTE: Well, the feeling here on the campus was very, very bitter on the part of the students, faculty--

COFFMAN: Was much said to you by the different faculty members or anything? Did anybody take it out on you, or talk to you about this on the faculty?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes, only to this extent, that Lois K. Matthews, who later became 00:06:00Mrs. Marvin Rosenberry and taught history here at the University, had always been very friendly to me personally, and out of very good will, she said that she hoped that I would get into the army, so that I wouldn't ever have this - she thought -

COFFMAN: Stigma?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes, stigma. But typical of the hysteria, there was a mass meeting over in the old gymnasium, right across the campus here, to build up fervor, patriotism. And Carl Russell Fish, who was a professor of American History here, incidentally my advisor, he spoke. Well, Carl Russell Fish was a fellow, I'd say in his fifties. He was quite a character around this campus. He was a man of real ability historically - as an historian. But he was all for war and he was a 00:07:00little skinny fellow, stood up there in front of this mass meeting of students, many of whom, of course, were people who were going to be fighting before long over in prance, and he moved to the edge of the platform and he lifted up his hands and he waved them in the air and he said, "I don't know about you, but as for me, I am at war." Then it happened that I was a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity and we lived over here on Mendota Court and it was quite an interesting thing. The president of the Student Council of Defense was also a Beta. And we were very good friends personally and there wasn't any... never showed it to me, excepting one or two fellows in the house. But I remember one editorial in the 00:08:00Wisconsin State Journal published here in Madison, by Mr. Richard Lloyd Jones who was the editor, in which he said, I can almost quote him... he said "The Beta house has become a hot bed of sedition and German propaganda." He said there were three or four fellows in the chapter there. There was Joseph R. Farrington, who later became the publisher and editor of the Honolulu Star Bulletin and for many years was in the lower house of Congress in Washington as a delegate from Hawaii. He and I roomed together for three years. Well, he was always on our side. Then of course, my father was burned here on the campus in effigy, but that was a comparatively small group. It was a very hysterical group. There was a couple of university faculty members that led sort of an 00:09:00Indian dance around the burning effigy. I didn't happen to be here, I was living out on our farm at the time. But in June, I think it was...

COFFMAN: This is 1917, June of '17?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes, John R. Richards, who was then the head football coach here at Wisconsin, and a lifelong friend of my father's, and who happened to know the Commandant of the ROTC here - he came to me and he said, "I think you've got a chance to go to Officer's Training Camp down to Fort Sheridan," and he said, "I'd like to have you go over and talk to the Commandant." I'd never taken any ROTC. I didn't know right face from left face or how to properly salute or anything else. But I talked to him and he was a very understanding man and he 00:10:00wasn't the slightest bit Interested in politics and he was just a soldier. Anyway, I got into that camp along with Joe Farrington. He and I went down together.

COFFMAN: About what time was this?

LA FOLLETTE: This was June.

COFFMAN: June, '17?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes, And it was originally - it started out as simply an extension of the normal ROTC. It wasn't, supposed to be an officer's training camp. It was ROTC, you know, summer camp. The summer camp ended, I'd say, roughly at the end of six weeks - something like that. And they gave us, I think three or four days off - leave. And they told us that those that were - nearly all of them, that if they came back at the proper time, which was sometime in July, they were going to run the camp on to June - or to September that year and graduate men as second lieutenants 00:11:00similar to an officer's training camp, as a part of the Student's Army Training Corps Program to supply officers for the Student's Army Training Corps in the various schools and colleges in the country. Well, I took that period of leave and went down to Washington to see my father and mother. Talked to them about it. And my father said of course, he wouldn't want to influence me in any way. But he said that what he was -apprehensive of was that if I got into the army, that some - either people in politics or maybe possibly in the army - that they might single me out to take some punishment on him through me. So my father all through the war, while Secretary Daniels, C. S. Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, he didn't agree with my father. He didn't agree 00:12:00with this attack on him as a traitor: he considered him as wrong, but as a patriotic American. My father suggested that I go into the Marine Corps. He thought that if I got into the Marine Corps, that Daniels would see to it that I got treatment just like anybody else, that there would be no animosity. So I went down to and took the physical exam, and came back - I passed it - so I go in. But I don't know, I just always had an inner feeling that when you come to things in war time, that the natural things to take their natural course. And though I don't have much superstition, there's always some - you have a certain hunch and I was always worried that if you tried to guide the events you might make mistakes. The thing to do was to go with whatever the 00:13:00events brought. So I went back and finished. And incidentally, I was very ill-equipped to be made a second lieutenant. I could run a typewriter and apparently had some native gifts as an executive, so they had from time to time, at those training camps, they'd have individuals who would - in the companies - would be made - you know - temporary officers and give the drill. Well, I tried it one day and if I didn't get-- The company are a part of it, see - the platoon all tangled up. I didn't know the first thing about [unintelligible] or drill. And the reason I didn't, was because as soon as I got there, they asked me to use a typewriter. And the officers at that training school also were men who had gone to previous officer's training camps.

COFFMAN: In other words, you didn't have very many regular army people there.

LA FOLLETTE: No, No.

COFFMAN: Even in the summer of 1917?

LA FOLLETTE: They were primarily reserve officers or men who had gone to training camps. And of course, they felt, and I think correctly, that they'd pick the best men and put them into the various activated divisions for combat and the fellows who were left behind felt pretty sore and they didn't have their heart in the work. And so I got, because I could run a typewriter and the company commander particularly found out that I knew how to organize things and I hadn't been there in this job as top-sergeant, that's what I was, who's higher than the so-called cadet officers, who had control of the passes and who could go and who couldn't. And you know how the top-sergeant runs it.

COFFMAN: This was in the fall of 1917?

LA FOLLETTE: No, this was in the summer. So I found my-- Then one day, quite 00:15:00early in this camp, when they had just made me first sergeant, the commanding officer came around, none of the officers were there, and somehow or other I seemed to satisfy the commanding officer satisfactorily so there were no repercussions because the officers weren't present. They felt very free that they had found somebody who could sort of run the company, as a top-sergeant should run it and they went away right after retreat at night and used to go into Chicago and left me to run the show.

COFFMAN: This is in this SATC Company?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes.

COFFMAN: Well, when you finished this training, did you come back here - to the University or--

LA FOLLETTE: I came back here to borrow $150.00 to buy a uniform. Cause they didn't furnish you uniforms in those days.

COFFMAN: They didn't give you any clothing allowance. I didn't know that.

LA FOLLETTE: No, not officers.

COFFMAN: Oh, I see.

LA FOLLETTE: You have to buy them or--I don't know if you even got a uniform allowance, I can't remember. Anyway, I had to borrow some money from the bank here to pay for it. And I was - they took all these men, most of them, that they made second lieutenants, and they gave them a very brief course at Fort Sheridan in ... as personnel adjutants, in charge of all the paper work in a company or battalion. And they were assigned to these various colleges and universities. I was sent to the University of Oklahoma at Norman. And the commanding officer there was a railroad man and civilized, but he'd been - stayed in the reserves - and he was a Captain. And he was a very fine fellow, but he was very shy. I mean he was self-conscious - the fact that he hadn't gone 00:17:00to college, and so forth. But he was a little stand-offish with me. For that reason, he didn't know what kind of a fellow I was going to be. But before that, I got there in September, then I went down shortly after the Armistice - they had another school down in Austin, Texas to teach us how to do the discharge forms. And I was in charge of the discharge of all those SATC men in Norman. And again, I had always had some gift as an administrator, and I had the whole thing organized. So the day after Christmas, the only people were two men left down there, down on the campus there, was Captain Bach, who was a C.O. himself, so I left the next day after Christmas.

COFFMAN: Well, in the SATC there are things that interest me about it. One was 00:18:00how many cadre people did they have? Did they have any old-army non-coms, or anything like that? Did they have any other officers other than you and this captain?

LA FOLLETTE: Oh, yes, they had - well, I haven't forgotten how large it was. It was run as a mechanic's school: and they had - they weren't all just students from the University of Oklahoma. They were part of an auto mechanics school. They had, I've forgotten, but there must have been ten or twelve, fifteen officers. There was a - the only first lieutenant was an old army sergeant and he didn't take his students too seriously.

COFFMAN: I know the type. Well, in SATC, this is something I've never really settled at all. Was it like the ASTP program in World War II? In other words, 00:19:00were these boys brought in and they lived more or less under military discipline in the dormitories?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes.

COFFMAN: They wore uniforms--

LA FOLLETTE: All the time - they had a close-order drill--

COFFMAN: Did they take regular university courses other than these people in the mechanics thing?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes, there were the regular students and also the mechanics school.

COFFMAN: And then the regular students - this was very similar to ROTC then I suppose, except they wore uniforms, they simply took a little close-order drill, or this sort of thing. And you were the adjutant of the SATC?

LA FOLLETTE: Technically, I was the personnel adjutant, but the first lieutenant who was the adjutant was very glad to let me do most of his work.

COFFMAN: Well, were there any incidents there during the war or anything?

LA FOLLETTE: No, none whatever.

COFFMAN: Do you remember anything about the Armistice, the false Armistice, or the regular one? What you were doing, or how you heard about it or--

LA FOLLETTE: Well, it was the regular - we weren't affected, as I remember, by 00:20:00the false one. When it came, all the students decided to quit because they thought the war was over. And--

COFFMAN: This is when the real one came?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes, and our C.O. let us all put down our side-irons and go out and see and went back to their classes.

COFFMAN: Well, do you mean they were all going out and celebrate or they were just going period?

LA FOLLETTE: Well, they were - a combination of both celebration and then the war was over, and therefore they didn't have to go through anything more.

COFFMAN: Well, you went to this demobilization school down at Austin?

LA FOLLETTE: University of Texas.

COFFMAN: How long would it take to demobilize these people? Did it take very long - or the actual running through?

LA FOLLETTE: Oh, well, normally, you see these were people who were going on to school--

COFFMAN: They were going to be there anyway.

LA FOLLETTE: Anyway. And so the plan was to get them out by Christmas. 00:21:00I think we spent maybe three, four days down in Texas. All they did was just show us the forms and-- But the only one little incident that always interests me was that during the flu epidemic, we had few - I think out of the couple thousand men that were there in this outfit - that we had an extraordinary low mortality rate in that 1918 flu. The surgeon was an old doctor from up in the state of Washington there in the lumbering days, where he use to tell how he used to have to go out to these lumbering camps and amputate men's legs or arms with a saw, no anesthetic. But he had one theory about the flu. That is, it was to keep these men in these camps isolated from the rest of the population. That meant, no leaves and no passes. And he insisted, that the windows all be kept 00:22:00open in all the dormitories where everybody was - constantly - never closed the windows.

COFFMAN: So you didn't get hit hard by the flu?

LA FOLLETTE: Nope. And there was one chaplain, a private, who'd signed an application for risk insurance, and then he died, before the whole thing was completely processed. Well, I got a letter from his family, many months later, about it. And on some occasion, when I was in Washington - oh I know when it was, when I was going to my first year of law school - I went down and I found the records that I'd kept and organized at Norman, all intact. And I found that fellow's application, and by filing affidavits, that he was under military discipline at the time, the--his family got this war risk insurance.

COFFMAN: One other thing that I wanted to ask you about -- your training at Fort Sheridan, I think you worked as first sergeant most of the time so you probably didn't actually take part in much of the actual training schedules or anything. What sort of training were the people getting there?

LA FOLLETTE: The usual--

COFFMAN: Close order drill?

LA FOLLETTE: Close order.

COFFMAN: Much marksmanship?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes, a lot of work on the firing range.

COFFMAN: Did they have--were they short of weapons or anything?

LA FOLLETTE: No.

COFFMAN: Did they have enough to go around?

LA FOLLETTE: No. And you see with at least 98% to 99%, maybe 99, 99 I don't know, most of the - practically all of the men had come from universities' ROTC.

COFFMAN: So they already had a lot?

LA FOLLETTE: They already had a lot. They were juniors or seniors all of them.

COFFMAN: Well, did they have classes in company administration and tactics and all of this?

LA FOLLETTE: Most of it was close-order and extended-order drill and on the 00:24:00range. Camping out - things like this.

COFFMAN: Did they dig trenches and all of this?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes.

COFFMAN: The reason I - Mr. Eason lived at an officer's training school. I think it was Sheridan, but I think he was there a little bit later. And I was just wondering, they probably went over the same trench area--

LA FOLLETTE: No, he must have - he was in there before, because this one was the last one there.

COFFMAN: Well, maybe it was before. I've forgotten exactly the dates when he was there. Well, can you think of any other incidents about the war that would illustrate the - you know, the atmosphere of the time?

LA FOLLETTE: Well, it was pretty bad. You'd - I went up to the fraternity house 00:25:00for dinner one night. A friend of mine asked me over, and everybody at the table went over and sat at the other table. But every one of them came from the stalwart Republican ranks anyway. But they never would have behaved that way excepting for war.

COFFMAN: Well, you said something to me the other day about the reaction of the army once you got in the army - their reactions.

LA FOLLETTE: Never the slightest. Matter of fact the Commanding Officer was an old career army . . .

COFFMAN: At Fort Sheridan?

LA FOLLETTE: McClusky.

COFFMAN: Manus McClusky?

LA FOLLETTE: I've forgotten his first name. But he sent for me one day to come over to his quarters. He was lying on the bed - it was hot weather and I remember he was massaging his belly. He'd been through the Philippines and he'd picked up malaria and dysentery. And he just wanted me to come over, and he was 00:26:00very fond of me. He talked to me about the army and - he didn't - a great many men in the army didn't like this - these -

COFFMAN: Super-patriots?

LA FOLLETTE: Super-patriots. They thought if they had so much fight in them, why didn't they get into a uniform?

COFFMAN: Yes, I've heard comments on - estimates on how many of the people who marched in preparedness parades actually got into uniform, once it began. Well, I can't think of any more questions. I've got a lot of tape left. There's one thing I would like to ask you just to get it on here. Could you describe your father for me. You've described him at several times, but I thought I'd get it on this. What type of person he was and--

LA FOLLETTE: Well, he was a - you can see how short I am - when I stood up straight twenty years ago, I was 5'7" and I was the tallest member in the 00:27:00family. As we all grow older, we tend to sag a bit, I'm sorry to say, physically. But my father, in his younger days, he was 5'6" and my mother was 5'4". He was very stocky framed. He had - he wore a pompadour, which became rather famous. He had a square fighter's jaw and piercing steel-grey eyes, bluish, but grey-blue. And when he was in his fighting moods, they shot fire. On the other hand, he was an extremely tender man.

COFFMAN: You told me once that story about you and your brother.

LA FOLLETTE: Yes.

COFFMAN: At the railroad station there.

LA FOLLETIE: My father was very demonstrative with his children, and of course, my mother and the rest of us. And Bob had gone - my brother - had come out as a freshman and he came back - that would be in Christmas, I guess, of 1913. And we - Dad and I went down to meet him at the Union Station at Washington, of course. Bob went up and kissed my father and we were grown men then of course. I was about sixteen, and he was about eighteen, and of course, we didn't have any more of this nonsense, about kissing each other. My father took a hold of both of us and he said, "Now listen, don't ever be ashamed of your affections." And you'll 00:29:00find as you read, people who are writing now about that period in American politics, that most of them all picture him as a man without any humor; as very grim, uncompromising. Nobody could say that who knew him. You realize that here in Wisconsin that he - when he started in to buck the old stalwart machine here, that he had no money. He had no organization when he began. And at no time in his political career, that I can remember of, did he have more than one daily newspaper in the state of Wisconsin that was actively for him. There would be 00:30:00two or three papers that were more or less neutral. But all the rest of the great powerful, metropolitan dailies, were all against him, and of course, the Chicago papers who spilled over into this state were always against him. The only way that he possibly could have carried Wisconsin the way he did, year after year, from 1901 until the time he died was because he had - there were literally hundreds of thousands of people in this state had known him personally. And they felt that he was their personal friend - most of them. And it didn't make a difference what the newspapers said. They knew Bob La Follette, and he was their friend, even to fight in their fight. And that was the source of his strength.

COFFMAN: You told me something else once, I don't want to go into this and take a long time about it, but you told me something else I think that's very 00:31:00interesting, that contradicts this, and this was his comment on injecting humor, you know, into his speeches. And this was one reason why, I'll bet, people reading his speeches would say he was humorless.

LA FOLLETTE: Yes. Interestingly enough, there was a comment on that very question in this present 1964 campaign.

COFFMAN: Really?

LA FOLLETTE: Yes. That President Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, is -- has quite a reputation as a reconnoiterer and as a witty fellow who loves to tell stories, and the like. And the same with Senator Goldwater. But that Johnson is creating the image of great seriousness. He never jokes, he never uses his wit. My father said that there had been a number of examples in American politics of where a 00:32:00man got a reputation as a public figure as being a humorist, and it destroyed his effectiveness. That on the other hand, you have a man like Abraham Lincoln, who was able to use stories most effectively. But by and large, my father said that this was serious business and people must feel it was serious business. It wasn't a question of just quipping - wisecracks. This was a matter of, he felt, the economic life or death of groups of people, and you mustn't crack jokes about or in connection with a campaign. It must be utterly serious.

COFFMAN: You know, I think this would explain why historians would go into this too, because when they read comments on his speeches and things like that they don't see any humor there, so they would just think - "Well, he was humorless," and I think this is where this thing carried over.

LA FOLLETTE: This is absolutely - A man who hasn't any warmth, any humor - 00:33:00doesn't tie people to him. And--well that's the explanation on this. There never - my father said it was a dangerous thing to do.

COFFMAN: I'd like to talk to you more about this, but I certainly--