100 years ago in Spokane: From the Front, account of Germany’s preparations for a ‘next’ war

Major H.W. Patton of Hoquiam was in Spokane to address the Chamber of Commerce about what he saw during a tour of the Western Front in Europe.

He came back “an optimist, certain that America can win the war,” but even more convinced that America must win the war.

In fact, he was concerned about what seemed like an inevitable second world war.

“Germany is already preparing for peace and the ‘next time’ – preparing in ways that are atrocious, according to our sentiments,” he said. “Any American who sees the (current) war comes back convinced that we could not endure a next time, even if the world could.”

He said Germany was preparing for a future war by ensuring a large population of soldiers 20 years hence, through “compulsory methods of breeding human beings, at the expense of their own women, and at the expense of thousands of captive young Belgian and French women held within their lines.”

He said that babies are being taken into Germany “a month after birth and reared in great nurseries, literally by the thousands.”

He also claimed that they are “buying babies in Poland for 25 cents.”