Conclusion

Council of Defense Final Report

The Connecticut State Council of Defense was established as a war-time agency, with the understanding that once the war was over, it would cease to exist. That was the intent as well with respect to each of the various committees the Council established, including the “Committee on Aliens.” Early on that Committee was renamed the "Committee on Foreign Born Populations," and then the "Committee on Americanization," and then eventually the "Department of Americanization."

In its final report, the Council of Defense recommended that a permanent Department of Defense be established as free-standing state agency.

Governor Holcomb Inaugural Message, 1919

e

In his Inaugural Address to the General Assembly in January 1919, Governor Holcomb also recommended that a Department of Americanization be established. While the General Assembly debated a bill that would have done so, with a two year appropriation of $200,000, in the end they modified the bill. As enacted, the bill addressed Americanization. not by a new state agency, but as a Bureau in the Department of Education, with a scaled back $50,000 two year appropriation.

Ongoing concerns over the loyalties of foreign-born individuals were heightened in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, and helped fuel the hysteria that resulted in the Palmer Raids in several Connecticut cities and across the country. And this was followed by immigration quotas and restrictions in the 1920s. 

One hundred years after World War I America continues to struggle with issues attributed to the "foreign born." In fact, over the past century the number of related problems has grown exponentially, and the political rhetoric has reached the point where meaningful discussion cannot occur. Its seems George Bernard Shaw had it right: "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."