spoke in his journals of whether or not the US should have been in the war or not. To him, it was all about patriotism. He was just a couple months from graduating high school. He quit school the week war was announced and joined the Ohio National Guard, which he knew would be federalized into the US Army.

My wife and I have been re-watching Downton Abby over the weekend. The family had the one stout Irishman Tom Branson, who was opposed to monarchy. A comment was made in one of the episodes about how WWI was the result of monarchy issues and really not the kind of stuff that many countries have fought wars. I had never thought about it that way. There's aggressive desires for one country or leader to have more land rich with minerals or oil, etc. This one was the result of a duke being assassinated. The US had supposedly been drawn into the war due to the sinking of the Lusitania and the issue with the Germans communicating with Mexico about the Germans supporting the Mexican's in an attack on part of the US. It seems to me, just studying briefly on the surface, that most of the hype of getting the US in the war was fabricated, so it's hard to say it was justified.