The Commission provided the men with an array of wholesome leisure activities ranging from sports to theater to well-regulated dances and library books that were censored for their benefits. Their hope was that the war would act as an engine for social change. When the men were demobilized, they would become a crusader for progressive values in their hometowns, and push their beliefs and values on all that would listen, even those that would not. That, as we will later see, would not be the case.
What Nancy Bristow then explores is the darker, repressive side of the CTCA "s crusades. CTCA officials became repressive, intolerant, and "stuck their nose where it didn't belong"-not only in the camps but in the surrounding communities as well. "The CTCA promised Americans that their troops would return healthier and more wholesome than when they left." In attempts to do that the Commission more or less declared war on "working-class" women to prevent them from having sexual relationships with soldiers." AS they increasingly became influential in various communities, state to state, the CTCA would take it upon themselves to jail any woman that they believed to be a threat to the men and their quest for sexual purity, sometimes even sending the women to detention homes.
As the CTCA took over the social life of civilian communities, the adrenaline rush from the power that they possessed at their fingertip form the federal government began to kick in and take off. As Bristow explains, the CTCA took on the paternalistic qualities of the Progressive reform, despite their emphasis on a fair democracy. They told the soldiers and the civilians what movies they could watch, and what activities they could participate in. They were determined to make the soldiers of World War I good, decent and respectful citizens. The camps included a large percentage of working class men, African Americans, and immigrants.
