摘要：In the late summer of 1917, the cadence of marching feet, the reports of rifles, and the clatter of mounted soldiers shattered the solitude of the sage-and-chaparral covered Linda Vista mesa some ten miles north of downtown San Diego. The new sounds resonated from Camp Kearny, a World War I National Guard training camp. The Army had come to town. San Diego, in 1917, experienced an economic downturn following the closing of the 1915-1916 fair. The war in Europe, however, changed this picture. As promised, President Woodrow Wilson kept the country on the periphery of the European conflict, but international events ended his idealistic hopes for nonintervention. In April, Wilson requested the Sixty-Fifth Congress to declare war on the Central Powers. For the Allied Powers, the declaration presented an infusion of fresh troops to break the stalemate on the Western Front; for the U. S. War Department it presented the challenge of mobilizing an entirely new army. For San Diego citizens, it represented the opportunity to do their patriotic duty of organizing and supporting war service organizations and boosting the local economy.
