100 years ago in The Record
Thursday, March 29, 1917
The U. S. isn’t yet officially at war with Germany, but that doesn’t stop The Record from calling peace advocates “little better than traitors to their country” today. President Woodrow Wilson is expected to ask Congress for a declaration of war on April 2. The Wilson administration broke off diplomatic relations with Germany in February over the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant ships bound for France and Great Britain. Some Americans still hope to stop the country from going to war. “Some of them may be honest in their intentions,” our editorial writer concedes, “but if they are, they are the victims of a misguided enthusiasm.” Worse, “the effect of their work is to inculcate in Americans a false sense of security and to erect selfish ideals in their hearts” at a time when “the world is afire and an enemy callous to all that is good and noble is attacking civilization with every weapon in its power. “To stand aside and save our own skin would be to become an accessory to the German crime…. That the Teuton would be glad to add America to his enemies is apparent by his consistent course of insult and murder. Every effort to deter us from the work of preparation is an invitation to Germany to attack us. “With such an enemy already at our throat with well-authenticated rumors of submarines already in wait outside New York harbor for our shipping, with daily evidences of espionage and of Teuton acceleration of Mexican plots, is not pacifism merely treason under a more polite name – a treason that is saved from punishment only by the narrow definition of our Constitution?”
On that ominous note, the editorial closes.
FRENCH SOLDIER SPEAKS
Williams College professor Albert Cru has been fighting Germany since the war broke out in 1914. On leave to visit his family, he addresses the Y.M.C. A. Current Topics Club in Troy tonight.
“From the inauguration of this abominable struggle England, as well as France, has been looking across the ocean,” Cru says, “France believes it has no right to judge its neighbor and our friend so our press does not carry criticisms [of U. S. policy] other than those from American newspapers.
“We feel that America will not be struck on one cheek and then turn the other, but we realize that no move should be made until the voice of the people decides what it is to be.”
Nevertheless, Cru is “certain that at the first call you men, as your forefathers, will march as one under the Stars and Stripes to defend the great cause of humanity.”