100 years ago in The Saratogian
Thursday, April 5, 1917
“By a vote of 82 to 6, the Senate has decided to answer Germany’s war on America with war,” The Saratogian reports.
The vote came late last night after thirteen hours of sometimes bitter debate. Three Democrats and three Republicans voted against the war resolution. The House of Representatives is expected to approve the resolution and make war a reality no later than tomorrow.
With war apparently inevitable, the local paper calls for the deployment of American troops to Europe as soon as possible, and for regime change in Germany and Austria.
By the weekend, an editorial writer predicts, “we will be enlisted in the effort to drive the pirates and murderers of neutrals, women and children, off the seas, and the violators of treaties, conventions, humanity and codes of warfare back into their own territory.”
U.S.-German relations have deteriorated since the German admiralty resumed unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant ships bound for France and Great Britain late in January.
The U.S. “should send a part of our regular army, no matter how small, to plant the stars and stripes at the front and in the trenches beside the tri-color of France and the flag of England,” the editorial writer insists.
“They have been fighting our fight as much as their own for three years, and the actual presence of American soldiers on the firing line would be some slight acknowledgment of our appreciation of the help France gave us in 1776, and it will put courage in faith in the hearts of the men in the trenches.
“It would convey to England our appreciation of the fact that were it not for England’s navy, we would have Germany’s fleet, and probably her army, invading our shores.”
Now that the Russian monarchy, allied to Britain and France, has fallen, apparently to be replaced by a republic, Americans hope that the German and Austrian monarchies, blamed for starting the European war in 1914, will share the Tsar’s fate.
“If the Hohenzollerns [of Germany] and Hapsburgs [of Austria] be not now dethroned, and a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, set up in Germany and Austria, there will always be the prospect and probability of another war even more ghastly than this.
“If the German people … realize that this great democratic government of ours is opposing them also, the spirit, now so rife in Germany, to do away with its bureaucratic government, will be increased to such an extent that the example of the Russians will be followed … and then peace – enduring peace – will follow immediately.”