100 years ago in The Record
Sunday, Nov. 17, 1918
“The churches in Saratoga Springs generally observed the signing of the armistice [with] special music and sermons on the war,” The Saratogian reports.
The world war ended last Monday, November 11, when Germany accepted the terms of an armistice agreement that amounted to surrender. Since then, reports of local casualties from the weeks before the armistice have continued to arrive in Saratoga County, tempering the celebrations in some churches.
At St. Peter’s Catholic Church, for instance, prayers are offered at all the masses for Louis Dominick and Frank Karas, two local soldiers whose deaths were confirmed this week. In the days to come, special prayers will be offered for the safe return of American soldiers.
A thanksgiving service is also held at College Hall on the Skidmore School of Arts campus. In his address to “a large body of students and faculty and friends,” Skidmore president Charles H. Keyes warns that an apparently-defeated Germany may still be a threat to the U.S.
“We must all be profoundly grateful that into the hearts of our people there has been put the courage, the devotion and the willingness to sacrifice that has brought unsullied the banner of the great Republic to the guide of liberty and democracy for the Old World and the New,” Keyes says.
However, “The enemy has been vanquished upon the field of battle, but his secret and subtle propaganda is still being carried on in America. It is at this moment pouring forth from a thousand sources that now that war is ended there is no need of people denying themselves to give with the old generosity to the war causes.”
Major fundraising drives continue across the country for soldier’s welfare organizations that look out for the cultural and spiritual well-being of American troops. Contrary to current, possibly Germaninspired “suggestions of disloyalty,” Keyes predicts that “in the coming year there will be put upon our boys in khaki even severer tests” as America forces occupy German territory.
Meanwhile, “the wily and defeated Teuton” is appealing for food donations to prevent “starving and hardship because of lack of food in Germany.” Keyes warns American women not to give in to any humanitarian temptation.
As far as the Skidmore president is concerned, German civilians deserve to suffer because “every solider’s wife and mother and sister and daughter has rigorously applauded every act of the government, and has sought to defend or explain away every act of fiendish inhumanity.”
Victory will not be complete, Keyes says, until “the German people have won forgiveness through a restitution and reparation which may involve hardship for a generation.”