thumb|right|200px|National Commander of the Veterans of Future Wars, Lewis Gorin Jr., as he appeared in 1936.
Veterans of Future Wars (VFW) was a satirical political organization initially created as a prank by Princeton University students in 1936. The group was conceived as a parody of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the movement for early payment of a bonus to veterans of World War I that had been originally scheduled for disbursement in 1945 when the World War Adjusted Compensation Act was passed in 1924. The group jokingly advocated the payment of a similar $1,000 "bonus" (plus 30 years' of interest) to future veterans of a coming European conflagration while the recipients were young enough—and alive—to enjoy it.
The erstwhile parody organization became a national sensation, gaining upwards of 60,000 adherents on college campuses across the United States. The members nationwide were strongly anti-war and cared little for the anti-bonus motivation of the leaders, all of whom were Princeton students. The deep contradiction led to an overnight disintegration late in the 1936–37 academic year.
Organizational history
Background
In March 1936, Princeton University roommates Lewis Gorin Jr. and Urban Rushton attended a movie at which they saw a newsreel reporting plans for an early payout of $2 billion in bonus money to veterans of World War I which had been originally scheduled for disbursement in 1945 as part of the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924. The pair's sensibilities were offended that such a massive payout was being so readily granted by Congress in the midst of the Great Depression, due mostly to the lobbying efforts of special interest groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the American Legion.—while they were still alive to cash the checks and young enough to enjoy the money.
The group's manifesto also noted that American women would "suffer no less than the men in the coming strife" and therefore advocated immediate payment of a pension of "$50 per month during the remainder of their natural life" for "all mothers and future mothers of male children," via the Veterans of Future Wars' "Home Fire Division."
Local parody goes national
The satirical Princeton organization dreamed up by Gorin achieved national prominence through a well-timed press release. News of the tongue-in-cheek manifesto calling for cash "bonuses" and "pensions" to young men and women was picked up by the Associated Press, United Press International, and other wire services and spread coast-to-coast via the nation's daily newspapers. Further spinning the VFW concept were journalism students at Rutgers University who launched an pseudo-organization called Propagandists of Future Wars, others at City College of New York who gave birth to the Foreign Correspondents of Future Wars, and a women's group at Bennington College, which debuted the Future War Spinsters.
Gorin himself achieved national prominence, receiving multiple invitations as a speaker at events held by the vibrant anti-war movement of the day and later being remembered in his 1999 New York Times obituary as having briefly been "the most famous collegian in America who did not actually play football." Gorin's short work received serious reviews in major newspapers around the country, with the New York Herald Tribune proclaiming it "the best and grimmest joke of 1936."
Gorin proclaimed serious intent behind the satirical organization, declaring a hope that the VFW would be the vehicle by which the anti-war movement could "arrive at some plan to keep us out of the coming European War, but a plan which will appeal to isolationists, Jingoes, and pacifists" alike.
Criticism
The Veterans of Future Wars spoof was not without its critics. An early effort to form a women's auxiliary called the Future Gold Star Mothers at Vassar College caused a firestorm, with Vassar President Henry Noble MacCracken denouncing the proposed group as a "breach of good taste" and prohibiting campus organizer Marys<!---correct spelling is Marys---> Converse from forming an organization by that or any other parody name. Similar statements and actions were taken by university officials at a range of other campuses, including Georgetown, George Washington, Temple, Indiana, Southern Methodist, and many other institutions.
Various patriotic and nationalist organizations such as the American Legion were vitriolic, with the National Legionnaire magazine mocking the "Pansies of Princeton" in verse.
Hate mail poured into the Veterans of Future Wars' office, with anonymous and signed letters calling the group's participants cowards, communists, and Nazis, and challenging their intelligence and virility.
Demise and legacy
The Veterans of Future Wars, starting as a joke among friends before rapidly blowing up into a national sensation, proved to be ill-prepared for its sudden growth. Contradictions emerged between more conservative elements focused upon the frivolity of massive government spending on a soldiers' bonus during the depths of the Great Depression on the one hand and those on the organization's left interested in striking a lasting blow at growing militarism in the United States. While most of the thousands of students flocking to local groups associated with the VFW were attracted by the group's potential as a voice for pacifism, in the view of Fairleigh Dickinson University historian Chris Rasmussen, Gorin and the VFW leadership "were wary of presiding over a strictly antiwar organization or being branded as leftists or pacifists." As a result of its political hesitancy, the most active and radical supporters of the VFW quickly moved from the parody organization to more serious efforts to keep America out of the coming European war, such as the American Student Union. Amidst this leadership vacuum and programmatic uncertainty, the Veterans of Future Wars atrophied as rapidly as it had arisen, dissolving by the end of the 1936–37 academic year.
The group's somewhat cynical view of the inevitability of American participation in a new European conflagration proved to be prescient, with Gorin and the entire governing National Council of the VFW, except for one member paralyzed in a car crash, ultimately joining the United States Armed Forces.