100 years ago in The Saratogian
Monday, Aug. 20, 1917
An American ambulance driver recently returned from France tells a Saratoga Springs audience tonight that the world war will last at least three more years, and may go on twice as long if the U.S. doesn’t commit quickly to tipping the balance.
Merrill Dennison addresses an open-air gathering outside the Adirondack Trust building from the back of an automobile owned by E. D. Starbuck. Dennison volunteered for the American Ambulance Hospital Corps soon after war broke out in the summer of 1914. The U.S. joined the conflict by declaring war on Germany last April.
“No peace can come before Germany is taught by a decisive defeat that her ideas are wrong and must be changed for good and all,” Dennison tells the gathering, “The Allies [France, Great Britain, Italy, Russia etc.] depend more on us than on any two other countries. It is for us to say how much longer the war will last.
If the war ends without a decisive victory, Germany “is just going to emerge from this war just as she emerged from her wars with Austria and Denmark [in the 19th century] – believing that war pays economically; and that it is a dignified, fine and essentially pleasurable occupation for men.”
The world war must become a war of ideas, dedicated to the defeat of Prussian militarism. “The Allies are not fighting for territory, nor for indemnities, but for a permanent peace,” Dennison argues, “And to accomplish that, we’ve got to change the viewpoint of an entire nation.
“If peace were declared at the present status [of military stalemate], in fifteen, twenty or twenty-five years we would have a Germany as strong as ever coming over to ask the United States to pay the bill for this war.”
Dennison doubts that the war will end in less than three years because that’s how long it will take, by his estimate, for the U.S. to send the millions of men necessary to overwhelm the Germany army.
FIGHT NIGHT
The racing season brings a variety of sports to Saratoga Springs, including professional boxing. The Beach Athletic Club presents a fight card at Convention Hall tonight with a replacement fighter in the main event.
An Albany fighter, Jabez White, was scheduled to face bantamweight contender Pat Moore. When White drops out after developing abcesses in his ears, a New York City boxer calling himself Jack Sharkey takes his place.
Sharkey, whose real name is Giovanni Cervati, fights Moore to a “first-class draw.” Later in his career, to avoid confusion with a heavyweight using the same name, Cervati will call himself “Little Jackie Sharkey.”