Summary

In Chapter 9, Barry changes his attention to discuss how the conditions in the world, many of which were due to World War I, contributed to the flu pandemic. He indicates that when Woodrow Wilson, the president of the United States, was finally forced to bring America into the war, he treated it as a crusade. Barry notes the crusade turned the country into a “tinderbox for epidemic disease as well” (121).

Believing that immigrants who had just come to America might still be loyal to their homelands and that there were Americans who might not want to fight in the war because the United States had not been attacked, Woodrow took a hard line to crush out disloyalty. The postmaster general was allowed to refuse to deliver any publication he felt was critical of Wilson or was unpatriotic. The Librarian of Congress was...