 As a 9 year old, Rusk attended a rally in Atlanta hosted by Wilson urging the United States join the League of Nations.Rusk grew up on the mythology and legends of the "Lost Cause" so common to the South, and he came to embrace the militarism of Southern culture as he wrote in a high school essay that "young men should prepare themselves for service in case our country ever got into trouble".At the age of 12, Rusk had joined the ROTC, whose training duties he took very seriously.