100 years ago in Spokane: Local ‘defense council’ gives Fairfield outlet for patriotic verve

Residents of Fairfield gathered together to form a “defense council,” a branch of the larger Spokane County Defense Council.

A crowd of 111 people, many of them from farms in the vicinity, jammed into the town’s small hall to take part.

Del Cary Smith delivered an address in which he said that any man and woman who fails to do their part for the war effort “is disloyal,” whether their omission is intentional or not.

“The man who, because he is of German descent, refuses to subscribe to the Liberty bonds on the ground that they will finance a war against his own relatives, must remember that he must make his choice whether he is to remain in this country,” Smith told the crowd. “He cannot stay here, enjoy the benefits of our free democracy, and be a half-hearted American or reluctantly loyal.”

Applause to Smith’s statements came “time after time.”

From the weather beat: Ice skaters glided over the Manito Park and Liberty Park ponds, as the city experienced its coldest day of the winter, 13 degrees above zero.

However, it would have to stay cold for much longer before the region’s “commercial ice concerns” could start cutting ice from the region’s lakes. The ice was still not thick enough.

One resident of South Monroe Street reported some interesting visitors during the cold snap. He said a flock of bluebirds descended on his mountain ash berries and stayed all day long.