100 years ago in Spokane: Reverend brings word from the front

A preacher who had just returned from the European war zone told a Spokane congregation, “The Germans are already boasting of what they are going to do to our troops. We will wake them up.”

The U.S. was mobilizing more than a million troops to go to war against Germany, but most of them were not actually in the trenches yet.

The Rev. Robert H. Davis, who had returned from a stint as a Red Cross inspector, said that he was on hand when the American First Expeditionary Force unloaded on a French dock.

“Honestly, they are the finest bunch I ever saw,” he said. “I watched them march up a hill to their reception camp – brown barracks set in brown wheat fields in the brown lights of the setting sun, those splendid fellows in suits of brown tones and with faces of brown. I heard the band strike up ‘Suwanee River,’ and it was too much for me. I had to go off by myself.”

He said he hoped that, with the grace of God, “it will not be so awfully long until all is ended.”

He said he believed that Germany’s warlike culture was the root of the problem.

“When a nation teaches war in its school rooms, it becomes a part of the national fiber. Is it not natural that they should dream of world power? Terror and ruthlessness are but a preliminary principle.”