Q. It seems as though city parks have more monuments for World War I than for World War II. Why?

A. You’re not imagining things. There are more than 120 World War I memorials in city parks. That’s almost twice the number of World War II monuments, despite the resounding American triumph and general popularity of the latter conflict, not to mention the much higher toll it took on soldiers from the United States.

There are a few reasons for this. Chief among them was a shift from the optimism after the “war to end all wars” to the sobriety of a looming standoff with the Soviet Union. And as with most city topics in the mid-20th century, the planning czar Robert Moses played a role, too.

World War I was the first conflict in which a large number of American soldiers went overseas to fight. Over 400,000 from New York State fought, or about 10 percent of all American troops. When the war ended, it seemed like every organization in the city wanted to honor local veterans.

There are monuments to local residents, like the Pleasant Plains Memorial, honoring the veterans of Staten Island’s Fifth Ward, and to military units, like Central Park’s 305th Infantry Memorial Grove.