100 years ago in Spokane: Women volunteer for Red Cross, Navy and other jobs to assist war effort

With Congress preparing to declare war on Germany, Spokane women enthusiastically responded to a call to join the National League for Women’s Service.

“300 women crowded the chamber of commerce assembly room,” reported The Spokesman-Review. “Many women had to stand while chairs were brought in.”

The league was “nonpartisan in every way” and not “in any sense military.” The league helped women to do “their bit” for their country, whether that meant assisting them in joining the Red Cross or the women’s yeomen service of the navy.

A front page editorial cartoon put the question starkly: “What have you done, to help your country in this time of national crisis?”

From the newspaper beat: The Spokesman-Review itself was making news, for its policy toward “pacifist” advertising.

It allowed a group called the Emergency Peace Federation to take out an ad in the paper. However, it turned over the money to the local national guard.

The paper published admiring quotes from various citizens, including the president of the Spokane chamber of commerce, who said, “I realize that a newspaper can not always choose the advertising matter that it sells space to,” but praised the publisher for donating the proceeds.

He added that “such advertising should be frowned upon by all good citizens.”

The ad in question appeared in the March 31, 1917, paper. It said that “we are being stampeded into a war – a war that will mean the butchery of the flower of our youth, the wrecking of thousands of homes. The orphaning of thousands of children.”

The editorial attitude of the paper toward the pacifist movement can be inferred from a headline it put on another story about the Emergency Peace Federation: “Patriots Clash With Pacifists.”