During the last years of the great war, the Lindsborg Record began to feature letters from “Over There.” These letters were sent to the newspaper from the families that received them and a were featured in their own section of the paper almost every in the last few months of 1918. The image featured above is an excerpt from one of these such letters (this one in particular, is from Walter K. Hawkinson and is found in the August 16th, 1918 edition). From this letter, as well as a few others, there is evidence of letter censorship. The censorship of letters in World War One and even later can be used to both maintain morale and also to limit details that could be useful to the enemy.
Tag: lindsborg
Bethany College had its very own unit of the Student Army Training Corps, or SATC. The SATC was created by Congress as part of the Selective Service Act of 1917. It’s purpose, according to the SATC Training Manual, was to utilize effectively the plant, equipment, and organization of the colleges for selecting and training officer candidates and technical experts for service in the existing emergency. The SATC was a voluntary program that inducted 200,000 men on its first day. These men were given private status, which gave them no way to avoid enlistment.
Lindsborg is a small, Swedish town in central Kansas. The land was settled on in 1869 by Swedish immigrants, and became a city the following year. To this day, one-third of the townspeople are Swedish. Around the time of WW1, most of the city was still speaking Swedish as their first language, as the majority of the citizens were first- or second-generation Americans.