Kennewick's Close Encounter with the Great War
An editorial reflecting on the sudden, violent onset of World War I and the fear of its reach into a small Washington town.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
If this were Germany, what a grand soldier that boy would make, remarked a local German some weeks ago as he admired the stalwart carriage and muscular symmetry of one of Kennewick’s 17-year-old youths. Today the same German, as his admiring eyes followed a passing youth, mused, What a blessing this is not Germany, for that boy would now be a target for someone’s bullet. The flower of his young manhood would be blighted in the budding and the promise of tomorrow would be stifled in the heart-sobs of today. On that first occasion the German, under the thrill of patriotic pride, saw the glamor, the spurious splendor of German arms. The events of the last ten days have lifted the helmet. Today he beheld gaunt destruction—the unmasked visage of militarism. As the battles rage and the war progresses over seas, the thunder seems afar off. But shift the scene. Pluck our own little town bodily up and set it down in the war arena. Call our boys from the farm, from the office, from the shop and the mill. Send forth the pride of our homes and the flower of our youth to become targets for someone’s bullets. How many family circles would be unbroken? How many of our homes would escape the stalk of want and the shadow of death? Thus sobered, we see in each cabled dispatch but another horror of devastation, sorrow and destruction, and we learn as never before that true patriotism clamors for war never, but counsels peace ever.
“The events of the last ten days have lifted the helmet. Today he beheld gaunt destruction—the unmasked visage of militarism.”
Published August 1914, just days after the outbreak of WWI, this piece captures the exact moment a remote American town moved from observation to existential dread. It echoes the way contemporary citizens feel when global conflicts suddenly make the local cost of life feel fragile and precarious.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.