Access to this collection is generously supported by Arcadia funds. Members of UCLA's "post" of the "Veterans of Future Wars," dressed in World War I-era military uniforms. The "Veterans of Future Wars" was a satirical organization begun by students at Princeton University. The group formed after the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans, many of whom had become unemployed since the beginning of the Great Depression, successfully lobbied Congress to pay them the full value of their military bonuses, the sum total of which was $3.6 billion dollars, to be paid out in 1945. The Veterans of Future Wars claimed that they were likely to fight and perhaps die in the wars the United States would fight over the next 30 years, and as such should be paid their military bonuses while they were still alive to spend them. The organization became quite popular on college campuses in 1936, attracting conservative students who opposed the fiscal policies of FDR's administration, and leftist and pacifist students who saw the organization as a statement against war itself. By June of 1936, the group boasted 50,000 students on 584 campuses. The organization disbanded in April of 1937.Ironically, many of the students who belonged to the Veterans of Future Wars would serve in World War II, including all but one of its founding members at Princeton. Text from original nitrate sleeve: Veterans of Future Wars
Type
image
Format
b&w nitrate negative
Identifier
ark:/21198/zz0025ft4n
Language
No linguistic content
Subject
Education Student organizations--California--Los Angeles War Students--American--California--Los Angeles Activism
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