urged visiting university president Arthur Hadley to support military preparedness. In July 1915, prominent citizens organized a local chapter of the National Security League and campaigned actively for the next two years. The following summer, Bascom Little, an influential local businessman and philanthropist and member of the National Defense Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, traveled to Washington, D.C., to urge Congress to pass a proposed universal military training bill. Everyone, it seems, had an opinion about the war and what the United States should do about it.13
In the fall of 1916, David Ingalls entered Yale University to pursue medical studies, and he again distinguished himself on the ice as captain of the freshman hockey team. Great-uncle William Howard Taft, former president and now member of the law school faculty, lived just a few blocks away. Somewhere along the way, likely at St. Paul’s or in that first year at Yale, Ingalls acquired the nickname “Crock,” derivation uncertain. (Daughter Jane Ingalls Davison later insisted no one in Cleveland ever called him by that name.) Ingalls soon became close friends with Henry “Harry” Pomeroy Davison Jr., son of J. P. Morgan partner Henry Pomeroy Davison and younger brother of F. Trubee Davison.14 While Ingalls was in New Haven, his childhood fascination with flight, his innate joy in reckless physical action, his social connections to influential fellow students, and the prewar preparedness frenzy sweeping eastern colleges almost inevitably turned his attention toward an aviation unit being formed by Trubee Davison.
By late 1916, concern over events in Europe, where the Great War staggered through its third year, and the debate regarding America’s role in the struggle reached a fever pitch, dominating the national conversation. When war had broken out in the summer of 1914, reaction had been mixed. President Wilson, who “resolutely opposed unjustified war,”15 insisted the United States remain neutral in the struggle and actively resisted planning for possible military intervention. Military historian Harvey DeWeerd observed, “The war was nearly two years old before Wilson allowed government officials to act as if it might sometime involve America.” Newton Baker, now secretary of war, had been a spokesman for the League to Enforce Peace. Editor George B. M. Harvey of Harper’s Weekly responded by calling Baker “a chattering ex-pacifist.” Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, a man of pacifist and isolationist proclivities, proved equally critical of professional soldiers and sailors and general staffs.16
Many citizens concurred. Irish Americans opposed any aid for Britain. German Americans, including thousands in Ohio, tended to support their homeland. Antiwar sentiment ran strongly among reformers, women’s organizations, and church groups. The country’s large socialist movement called the conflict a capitalist conspiracy to generate profits and consume manpower. Traditionally isolationist regions of the United States strongly opposed involvement. Henry Ford chartered a “peace ship” to bring antiwar activists to an international conference held in Stockholm, Sweden in 1916. Reflecting the horrors unfolding on the Western Front, “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier” reigned as one of the most popular songs of 1915–16.17
Such feelings were not universal, however. In fact, though most Americans supported neutrality and narrowly reelected Woodrow Wilson on the belief that “he kept us out of war,” they still preferred a Franco-British victory to a German triumph. DeWeerd claimed, “The country was pro-Ally and anti-German from the start.”18 Fervent supporters of Great Britain and France saw the war as a struggle between democracy and Western civilization, on the one hand, and “Kaiserism” and the brutality of the “Huns,” on the other. Submarine attacks on civilian passenger liners such as the Lusitania almost caused a diplomatic rupture between the United States and Germany. The British blockade, protested only mildly by the Wilson government, diverted most trade to England and Western Europe, and a growing tide of orders for war materials engendered further support for the Allies. So did the ever-increasing flow of loans from major American investment banks such as J. P. Morgan.
Whether favoring or opposing active participation in Europe’s seemingly endless war, many citizens demanded their government prepare for possible involvement in the struggle, if only to defend national interests and American soil in case of a German victory. As David Kennedy noted, the outbreak of war “summoned into being . . . a sizable array of preparedness lobbies.”19 Some called for universal military training (conscription) and expansion of both the army and the navy. Former army chief of staff Leonard Wood, ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, and previous secretaries of war Elihu Root and Henry Stimson were only the most prominent among thousands of citizens who campaigned for such action. Leading bankers, industrialists, lawyers, academics, and politicians advocated a strongly Anglophile diplomatic and military policy, and a great mosaic of organizations took up the call.20
Citizen training camps conducted at Plattsburgh, New York, and elsewhere reflected the growing clamor for preparedness. College students and faculty members, recent graduates, young businessmen, and teaching masters from a score of eastern preparatory schools spent their summers drilling, camping, and learning to fire weapons. Another outgrowth of the preparedness movement, the National Defense Act of 1916, doubled the size of the army (to 240,000) and authorized a tremendous expansion of the battle fleet, though none of its provisions would be fully implemented for several years and thus would have little impact on the current crisis in Europe.21
Whatever their individual motivations, many young Americans, both men and women, took dramatic action to support the Allies. Thousands journeyed to Europe to drive ambulances, serve with the Red Cross, or perform varied volunteer duties. Others enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and eventually transferred to the aviation forces, forming what ultimately became the Lafayette Flying Corps. Still more traveled to Canada to join the British army or the Royal Flying Corps (RFC). Students at colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale formed quasi-military units and flying clubs, preparing for the day Uncle Sam might call on them.22
Even before Ingalls arrived in New Haven in September 1916, talk of war and preparedness monopolized much of the academic community’s attention, with the discussion by no means one-sided. Author George Pierson noted, “Yale was far from rising as one man to the support of Belgium and the Triple Entente.” Even as former president Taft called for strict neutrality, scholar George Adams declaimed, “Germany must be defeated in this war.” Initially, though very few students or faculty members favored the Central powers, equally small numbers advocated direct American involvement. Nonetheless, relief efforts to aid the Allies commenced almost immediately, and by 1915, many graduates called on the university to be more active in preparing for possible American involvement. Significantly, Yale president Arthur Hadley seemed “enthralled and excited by the preparedness movement,” and he praised military training for students.23
As early as April 1915, Hadley called for national preparedness, and later that year, he declared military training should have a place on college campuses. Addressing Yale alumni in Cleveland, he argued that the best way to keep the peace was to prepare for war. After visiting Plattsburgh in August 1915 and speaking with General Wood, Hadley in the fall announced plans to establish a field artillery battery on campus, and more than 1,000 undergraduates rushed to volunteer for the 486 available places. The faculty eventually voted to establish a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps unit, a proposal backed overwhelmingly (1,112 to 288) by the student body. The National Security League sponsored mass demonstrations, and preparedness and interventionist speakers including Henry Stimson and Adm. Bradley Fiske addressed undergraduates. In the winter of 1916–17, after years of urging neutrality, William Howard Taft admitted that war could no longer be avoided.
It was in this environment that two dozen Yale students and recent alumni coalesced in 1916–17 to create an aerial defense squadron. The First Yale Unit began as the brainchild of F. Trubee Davison. After his freshman year at college, Davison spent the summer of 1915 in war-torn Paris driving an ambulance. During those months, he met many prominent participants in the effort, including several combat fliers. He first envisioned organizing a volunteer ambulance unit at Yale but later determined to establish an aviation detachment instead. This concept dovetailed with contemporary proposals by John Hayes Hammond Jr., of the Aero Club of America, and Rear Admiral Robert Peary to create a series of aerial coastal
