THIS DAY IN 1918 IN THERECORD

Wednesday, May 8, 1918. “If some individual should happen to approach you and ask you to tell him when the great conflict now being waged overseas started, do not respond in the year 1914,” a visiting professor tells a Troy audience tonight.

Charles Upson Clark of the American Academy at Rome believes that the Austro-Hungarian Empire made war inevitable when it took the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Kingdom of Serbia in 1908. Clark appears at Troy High School tonight as part of a fundraising tour for Italian war relief.

Clark’s history of the road to war focuses on Italy, formerly an ally of Austria and Germany but now fighting against them alongside Britain, France and the U.S. The so- called Triple Alliance began to break up, Clark says, when Italy refused to recognize Austria’s annexation of the Serbian territories unless it received “compensation” from Austria. The Alliance was effectively finished when Austria and Germany failed to help Italy in its war with the Ottoman Empire in 1911. The Ottoman Turks are now part of the so- called Central Powers along with Austria, Germany and Bulgaria.

Since declaring war on its former allies in 1915, Italy “has withstood one of the most stupendous invasions ever known to have been made in any war,” Clark says. His multimedia presentation shows Italian troops in action as well as Italian home front activities.

Clark won’t predict when the war might end, but warns that there’ll be no lasting peace unless Austria-Hungary is broken up. If the Hapsburg empire remains intact, “all the blood being shed will have been in vain,” he says, “It will all have to be repeated.”

The Brewing Octopus

A self-styled “Friend of the Saloonkeeper” writes in The Record’s “Pulse of the People” column today that the brewers who supply saloons with beer “should make application for membership in the Anti- Saloon league.” People who want to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages have “no stronger ally than the brewer,” the writer complains, because brewers are putting saloons out of business by raising prices. Beer suppliers recently raised their rates by $6 per barrel, an amount equivalent to $103 in 2018 money. The “Friend” claims that the brewers have cynically advised saloonkeepers to save beer and money by serving beer in smaller glasses, seven ounces instead of eight. That’s unfair to “the working man after a hard day’s labor who wants a glass of beer and is handed a thimbleful and charged five cents for it.” Prohibitionists may think that saloonkeepers have “horns and scales,” but as far as “Friend” is concerned the brewers are the real devils.