American Defense Society 1918

Beautiful historic certificate from the American Defense Society issued in 1918. This historic document has an ornate border around it with a vignette of two bald eagles with their wings spread out. This item has the hand signature of the Society’s Chairman and is over 89 years old.

The American Defense Society was a vigilante pro American anticommunist organization. They questionsed the loyalty of people and organizations. Their tactics includedi censorship, misrepresentations and vigilantism. During WWI they targeted anyone who called for peace, promoted German books being vanished from library shelves, schools stopped teaching German, calling sauerkraut cabbage etc. Unfounded statements were typical of the accusations they made. They even started a campaign for renaming of Towns, Villages, and Streets in United States.

They also sponsored preparedness parades and sought to pressure Wilson into strengthening national defenses. Initially, however, Wilson was unmoved by--and even hostile to--the preparedness advocates. Not until German submarine attacks and especially the sinking of the "Lusitania" (May 7, 1915) did the administration begin to favour an increase in armaments. With passage of the National Defense Act (June 3, 1916) and a subsequent naval appropriations measure authorizing an enormous increase in U.S. armed forces, the Preparedness Movement became largely superfluous.