100 years ago in The Record

Thursday, April 5, 1917

As the nation waits for the House of Representatives to declare war on Germany, The Record treats the impending conflict as a holy war for civilization. Today’s paper reports that the U.S. Senate approved the war resolution by an 82- 6 vote, with three Democrats and three Republicans dissenting. The House of Representatives is expected to make the war a reality tomorrow. President Woodrow Wilson asked this special session of Congress for war three days ago. “The United States to-day is engaging in a war which, please God, will be the last crusade,” this evening’s lead editorial asserts. Comparing the imminent war with the medieval wars against Islam, the writer claims that “Even the barbarities of the Musselman a millennium ago have been cast into an eternal shadow by the infamous record of Teuton arms during the last two years. Saladin, sultan of Egypt, was a gentleman in comparison with the German Kaiser and his war lords. “The present was has become a crusade for Christian civilization. Against it is arrayed a fierce and malevolent foe, intent upon conquering the world and converting it by force to its twisted and perverted code. “The United States was willing and anxious to stand aside; but the mad plot of the German principle, led by war lords drunk with the excess of blood, has made neutrality a farce. “The Record has criticized President Woodrow Wilson for hesitation and timidity in dealing with Germany since more than 100 Americans died in the 1915 sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania by a German submarine. Now, however, “leaving behind him his vain endeavors for peace, his trust in the eventual assertion of Germany’s manhood against the pretensions of the autocrats in control and his hope of some loophole for honorable escape, he has called the nation to the colors. “In the name of humanity, of civilization and of freedom, from every quarter rises the same shout that greeted Peter the Hermit in the days of old, ‘Deus vult’ – God wills it!” Elsewhere on the editorial page appears a letter written by J. J. Griffin on April 2, the day the President addressed Congress. “Before this war the belief seemed to be quite general that armed conflict was a thing of the past,” Griffin writes, “We are now disillusioned. There are few people living who can ever again believe that the world will remain at peace for any great length of time.” Noting that “there never has been much peace on earth,” Griffin hopes that “we may have peace sometime even if we have to fight to bring it about.”