Thanksgiving in Washington, a century removed

OPINION:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times on Thanksgiving in Washington, D.C., a hundred years ago. It was great in the sense that although the nation had entered World War I the previous April, the necessary wartime sacrifices weren’t as onerous as citizens thought. For the watchwords of the war at home were “heatless, wheatless and meatless,” scary enough in April but implemented in a sensible way. Wheat was to be given up only on Mondays and Wednesdays, meat on Tuesdays and pork on Thursdays and Saturdays.

Fuel restrictions were even less burdensome. Americans participated voluntarily in “heatless Mondays” and “lightness nights” and weren’t offended by giving up on the family drive on “gasless Sundays.”

And necessity, along with scarcity, seemed to be the mother of invention, especially with respect to food at Thanksgiving. Ingenuity on the part of government dieticians came up with adequate, although scarcely scrumptious, substitutes, especially for desserts. For instance, pie crusts could be made without butter and wheat flour, using instead corn flour, almond paste and rice flour. Even the White House was short on food tradition, for although it usually received several turkeys from well-wishers each year, none had been received by the Wednesday before the holiday.

To be sure, although a full-course meal at the fancy Willard Hotel ran about five bucks, the Washington Herald estimated that a sumptuous meal could be had at home for about a dollar. In an editorial, the Herald blasted hotel owners for providing portions “much smaller than the old days” but without a reduction in price. “In most cases,” opined the paper, “[the prices] have increased as much as the portions have decreased.”

Not surprisingly, adequate fuel was a problem as winter approached, and “many complaints,” according to the Herald, “were made by consumers that they had been unable to obtain coal from local officials.” Fortunately, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, November 27, saw a large quantity of coal arrive. And in an almost perfect holiday scene, so did snow arrive the next day to glisten the city. “When the first drops fell late in the afternoon and continued to fall all night until the city was blanketed,” wrote a Herald reporter, “hardly a person could be found with the nerve to admit that he had expected such an ideal ’Christmas’ snow on November 28.”

The downside to the holiday was a still simmering dispute with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under conductor Dr. Carl Muck (1859-1940) that earlier in the month featured a concert at the National Theater. Muck, German-born but a Swiss resident, offered to resign from the Boston Symphony as wartime was accompanied by demands to play at each concert the Star-Spangled Banner. Although Muck’s resignation wasn’t accepted, his tours throughout the East Coast were preceded by controversy. The Metropolitan Opera, for instance, banned all German songs and operas, and Baltimore cancelled the Boston Symphony’s license shortly before the scheduled date.

The national anthem was played during the Washington engagement, as were the scores of German composers, leading to a strained reception. Muck was eventually arrested on March 25, 1918, on grounds that his musical interpretations contained coded messages to the Axis powers. He spent almost 18 months at a Ft. Oglethorpe, Ga. internment camp and then was deported to Copenhagen.

But Thanksgiving, most of all, was a time for thanks and prayers, with the District playing host to 10,000 Army and Navy troops. Dignitaries, from President Woodrow Wilson to members of his Cabinet. attended church, sang hymns and offered prayers for the nation’s blessings. And no prayer was more moving than that of Secretary of State Robert Lansing:

“If we measured our national blessings by the materialistic standard of physical comfort and prosperity, which has been in recent years so potent in our thought as a people, the observance of Thanksgiving Day this year might seem almost a mockery, for we are engaged in the most destructive and terrible war of our times …

“No greater blessing could have come to this republic than this awakening to the fact that patriotism is more to be prized than wealth and that the loyal service and self-sacrifice of a people are the only sure protectors of national existence.”

Thanksgiving in the nation’s capital in 1917 also saw a boom in the city’s population as a result of both civilian and military personnel increases. A busy city created economic benefits, no doubt, but it also gave rise to crowding, leading District Commissioner W. Gwynn Gardiner to contend there was only one sure way to relieve the city’s terrible traffic congestion.

Build a subway.

• Thomas V. DiBacco is professor emeritus at American University.