After his appointment at Boscobel College for Young Ladies ended, Primo Bartolini spent a couple of years working, first as a cook and then as a waiter, at Antonio Petruccelli’s chili parlor before the war frenzy spread through the country.
When President Wilson promulgated the Selective Service Act of 1917, under which all males aged 21 to 30 were required to register for military service, Bartolini showed no hesitation and volunteered. His number (854) was drafted and he became the first foreign-born resident to be selected in Tennessee.
Primo Bartolini’s popularity surged among Nashvillians (and beyond) and his speeches at the Italian Club, which had received charter status in 1908, became more and more frequent, especially after the Italian defeat at Caporetto in 1917.
His fellow Italians presented him with a “beautiful Italian flag made of silk” that bore “five stars in honor of five nephews of Primo” who were in active service on the Piave front.
Now regarded as “a prominent Italian of Nashville,” Bartolini composed a poem in blank verse about the “anguish and sorrow” of war but also the “fire of patriotism” he felt for his Motherland, while the local press lauded him as the most fervent non-Tennessean American patriot.
In 1918, The New York Sun awarded Bartolini the first prize at the “Sock Song Contest,” the competition dedicated to “patriotic knitting” compositions.
Primo accompanied his entry with a statement that displayed his sentiment for his adoptive country: “I am an Italian, but now am a citizen of this Country. I am within the draft and await with pleasure my call. I am indeed glad to do my part fighting the Huns.”
The 10-line poem that earned him first prize is titled Because She Knows that I Must Go, and must have impressed President Wilson who sent Primo a congratulatory note. Unfortunately, the note has been lost.
After the experience of the war, Bartolini publicly channeled his Italian patriotic feelings toward his adoptive country; his revolt against the invaders and defense of the homeland’s sacred borders from the enemy accompanied a shift in his identity from Italian to American.
Bartolini signed his naturalization papers and became an American citizen in 1921, thus rejecting the authority of the King of Italy Victor Emmanuel III, who had knighted him for his services to the Italian cause during the Great War a few months earlier.
This identity shift is clearly visible in the manuscript corrections to the poem My Italian Flag, which is reworked into The American Flag.
