30. An Illegal Immigrant and the Draft
While Serna was toiling in the fields, the United States, whose president, Woodrow Wilson, had been reelected in 1916 with the campaign slogan “He Kept Us Out of the War!“, found itself getting drawn ever closer into the conflict. America had almost joined the fray in 1915, when a German U-boat sank the ocean liner Lusitania, leading to the death of 128 Americans. However, war was avoided when the Germans eased off on submarine warfare.
By 1917, Germany was desperate. To knock out Britain, it announced unrestricted submarine warfare against all ships approaching British waters. That directly challenged America’s position that freedom of the seas should be absolute for neutrals. Between that and a harebrained scheme to get Mexico to attack the US in exchange for the territories lost in the Mexican-American War, war was declared against Germany in April, 1917. With war came conscription, and when officials fanned out across the country to ensure that the draft was properly enforced, Marcelino Serna was caught in their web.