Making Men Moral: Social Engineering during the Great War is a well organized and thoroughly researched book that deals with gender during the First World War. Nancy Bristow, who wrote Making Men Moral in 1996, questions the impact of the Great War on masculinity. The Great War was an event in which male identity and morality, along with physical well being, became issues of public and official concern. Know as the Progressive era, Bristow attempts to deal with the complexities of this time, a time in which morale and decency prevailed. A moralistic campaign was waged, whose goal was an attempt to remake the physical man in the service, from head to toe. Nancy Bristow's book focuses on the Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA), the Progressive program that stressed social justice, and morality, efficiency and above all, government control.
The CTCA was formed in April 1917 to supervise the cultural life of the military service men. After the declaration of war, the military training camps increased two, three, and four times their normal size. As a result, men from all walk of life where thrown together as they moved from state to state, country to country, while being trained. The image that many civilians had about camp life, according to Bristow, was that of military camps being a place corrupted and diluted by drinking, prostitution, profanity, and fighting. The book shows how that image reverted back from the Civil War. " In both the Confederate and Union camps, soldiers exhibited a rejection of moral conventions that shocked many Americans those evils included Sabbath breaking, gambling, drinking, theft, and illicit sexual relations- So, to soothe the minds of the many civilians worried about their loved ones living this type of lifestyle while at war, The Progressive party formed the CTCA and formulated an ambitious agenda. .
The main objective of the CTCA was to rid the troops of veneral diseases by introducing them to the concepts and advantages of sexual purity and abstinence.
