Америка қорғаныс қоғамы: Ұлтшыл саяси топтың тарихы

Nationalist American political group

The American Defense Society (ADS) was a nationalist American political group founded in 1915. The ADS was formed to advocate for American intervention in World War I against the German Empire. The group later stood in opposition to the Bolsheviks, who came to power in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917, and the proposed American participation in the League of Nations. In domestic politics, the ADS launched a campaign to eliminate instruction of the German language in the United States. The organization's first honorary president was former President Theodore Roosevelt. The chairman of the ADS was Richard Melancthon Hurd, a close friend of Roosevelt and a career real estate economist.

After World War I, the ADS joined the campaign against American participation in the League of Nations. It described the League as a surrender of national sovereignty "obnoxious to the Constitution of the United States." It denounced "the impossible doctrines of the self determination of races which is contrary to our fundamental doctrines as a nation." The ADS was officially nonpartisan, but in 1920, Charles Stewart Davison, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, wrote an open letter to its officers, members, and contributors to urging them to support the Republican presidential ticket of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. The manager of the ADS's Washington Bureau in the 1920s was Richard Merrill Whitney, the author of an exposé of radical activity, The Reds in America. The ADS made a brief resurgence during the years immediately before World War II. The group conducted a campaign against the attempt of President Franklin Roosevelt to "pack" the US Supreme Court by expanding its number of members.

Later, the group was hamstrung by the death of two of its principals: Board Chairman Davison in 1942 and Board Chairman Elon Huntington Hooker in 1948. In 1943, it honored Theodore Roosevelt on the 85th anniversary of his birth. The ADS seems to have disappeared from New York City directories in 1956.