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. Among the group's moral supporters was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who declared the mock student organization "as funny as can be" and "taken light, as it should be—a grand pricking of lots of bubbles." 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 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. Critics advocated for the future lynching of "yellow slackers" when the next war eventually embroiled the country and the world. Representative Claude Fuller of Arkansas went so far as to denounce the Veterans of Future Wars on the floor of the United States Congress, missing no target in characterizing the group as communist, fascist, and pacifist. 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