The sudden onset of World War I a century ago left most Americans shocked and confused. Which countries were to blame? Could the United States maintain its neutrality? Would American boys be sent off to settle the ancient feuds of European royalty? Would the fighting in far off Europe depress the nation’s hard-earned economy?
No one could believe the sudden explosion of violence resulting from old animosities and tangled treaties. First, Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia. Then Germany backed Austria, and Russia marched to protect Serbia. Germany declared war on Russia and France, Russia’s ally. German armies invaded Belgium and France, and Britain declared war on Germany. All this and more happened in a few days between late July and early August 1914, and it was recorded daily in bold headlines on the front pages of Bangor’s two daily newspapers.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, some people persisted in calling the whole thing a “war scare.” Using the growing conflict as a scapegoat for local concerns, the Bangor Daily News said the fighting in Europe would be one more brief but burdensome blow to the city’s shipping economy.
“Where has gone the once prosperous river of Penobscot?” the newspaper lamented on Sept. 4, 1914. “Have our industries been paralyzed forever? Or is this stagnation due to a temporary war scare created among the crowned heads of Europe.”
The editorial was mostly a crafty attack on Democrats and the Wilson administration, which the paper’s pundits would have people believe was defiling the economy. A complicated election was underway involving candidates from five parties — Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, Socialists and Prohibitionists.
The “war scare” created other uncertainties as well. “Hard to Get Back: Bangor People May Be Marooned in Europe for a Time,” warned a headline in the Bangor Daily Commercial on Aug. 1, 1914, the beginning of a long series of stories keeping track of various local travelers who had become stranded in Europe by the conflict.
Some cruise ship lines from warring nations were ceasing operations, while some nations were seizing steamships for their military. Banks had cancelled credit. Warships cruised the Atlantic looking for ships from enemy nations.
Mrs. Adolph Pfaff and her daughter Gladys, who had been planning to study at the University of Heidleberg, were stuck in London. Mr. Pfaff cabled them not to go to Germany, said the Bangor Daily Commercial on Aug. 1, 1914.
C. Winfield Richmond and his wife were stranded in Paris where Mr. Richmond was studying piano. Mrs. Harris M. Plaisted and Mrs. Ralph P. Plaisted and son were spending the summer in Switzerland, while Miss Harriet M. Burr and Everett M. Glass were in Rome intending to “go north.”
Miss Louise M. Haines and Miss May Sanborn were supposed to be in Switzerland, while Miss Adeline F. Wing and Miss Charlotte Thatcher had sailed from Liverpool for New York. Clifford Patch and Percival Cushman meanwhile had just arrived from Liverpool on the Franconia, and Patch had made it to Bangor.
On Aug. 3, 1914, another list of the missing (or the found) was published. The Rev. L. W. Lott of St. John’s Episcopal Church wired that he was leaving Liverpool for Boston on Aug. 25, 1914; Dr. H. T. Clough, Dr. W. L. Hunt and Dr. Adams, who were attending the International Congress of Surgeons in London, would be coming home August 21.
These were just a few of the Bangor residents sampling European culture that summer. They also included Miss Carolyn Swett, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Ayers, Cornelius O’Leary and daughter Mrs. John Hayes, Carl Holden and Miss Jeanette Weiler.
Their stories would be spun out over the next few weeks. A few of these individuals were searched by foreign officials. A few Mainers such as Mr. and Mrs. S. L. White of Houlton were held briefly, suspected of being British spies. For most, however, the delays would be just an exciting inconvenience.
The impact of the war on immigrant labor concerned employers, especially in Bangor, which thousands of men passed through each year on their way to logging camps, potato fields and other labor. A reporter for the Bangor Daily Commercial interviewed one of the city’s labor recruiters about the potential problem of a European war.
“There are hundreds of men in the woods of northern Maine who owe allegiance either to one flag or the other, and he is sure that they will respond to a call for arms, in case their governments furnish them with transportation home,” said the story on July 29, 1914, after Austria declared war on Serbia. “Should Russia engage in the conduct, the [Bangor labor agent] says that the woods would be well nigh depopulated.”
A check of Bangor’s Army recruitment office at the end of August by the Bangor Daily News revealed no unusual activity. Many unemployed immigrants in New York were signing up, but in Bangor, there were plenty of jobs for unskilled workers.
The only recruitment story to emerge appeared in the Bangor Daily Commercial on Sept. 5, 1914. Two runaways from Opportunity Farm in New Gloucester were said to be headed for the Canadian border to enlist in the British army. One of them was William Tracy, 15, of Bangor.
Rising prices were another concern.
“Because of the war scare the price of wheat flour has gone up 50 or 60 percent on a barrel in Bangor on the wholesale market,” said a story in the Bangor Daily Commercial on July 30, 1914. Stories as the weeks went by announced that the prices of sugar, pork, beans, spices and even toys from Germany were advancing as well.
A Bangor Daily News story on Sept. 24, 1914, speculated that Maine’s shook trade might recover should Italy go to war against Austria. Shooks were thin slices of logs used to make boxes for shipping fruit. A Maine industry supplying shooks to Italian fruit growers had flourished in the late 19th century until Austrians began to compete successfully with “poorer but much cheaper shooks.”
Bangor residents, like most Americans, needed a geography lesson to locate obscure places such as Serbia. The Bangor Daily News offered to mail out an up-to-date five-colored war map for 10 cents plus a coupon and 2 cents postage. The material also would contain the portraits of 16 European rulers, military capabilities, battles and “all statistics and war data” — “folded with handsome cover to fit the pocket.”
Rumors of foreign ships just off the Maine coast and of foreign soldiers lurking deep in the Maine woods were becoming a constant source of public fascination and fear. This was especially true after the German passenger liner Kronprinzessin Cecilie steamed into Bar Harbor early in August supposedly with war ships in pursuit.
Reports of mysterious offshore lights and cannon fire became so incessant that one cynical writer for the Bangor Daily News on Aug. 6, 1914, rattled off a catalogue of crazy rumors including the “rattle of machine guns” in the direction of Pushaw, Austrian torpedo boats “thick as flies in the West Branch,” and Japanese legions marching overland from Meddybemps to the St. Croix to defend St. Stephen against an unexpected attack by the Prussian Grenadiers.”
The farcical merged with the surreal on Aug. 15, 1914, when both Bangor papers printed a sensational report that Gov. William Haines had received a message from U. S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan advising of reports from the British that a “man named Seligman is instigating certain German subjects to join in raids through Maine and Vermont woods and Dominion of Canada.”
The governor’s response, in part: “Rumor seems absurd. But few Germans in Maine, and almost none in northern part.”
A few humorous diversions such as this item from the Bangor Daily Commercial on Aug. 10, 1914, helped calm the nerves of those following the slaughter in Europe: “An argument as to the size of the Hamburg American liner Vaterland, 950 feet long and the largest in the world, arose between two Bangor men the other day, one claiming she would extend from Sweet’s Corner [corner of Main Street and West Market Square] to Union Street. The other denied that she would reach as far as that.
“The first man measured 950 feet on Main Street and found that with the Vaterland’s bow placed at the Union Street corner of the Bangor House, her [stern] would touch at a point 25 feet beyond Sweet’s Corner.”
Such moments of levity became fewer as the war continued. In 1917, the United States cast off its neutrality. The war was not a temporary “scare,” as the Bangor Daily News had suggested. The Bangor Daily Commercial’s earlier description of the situation on Aug. 3, 1914, turned out to be accurate: “Europe is facing a war such as civilization has never known, the war that will cause the great campaigns of Napoleon to pale into insignificance.”
Wayne E. Reilly’s column on Bangor a century ago appears in the newspaper every other Monday. His latest book, Hidden History of Bangor: From Lumbering Days to the Progressive Era, is available where books are sold. Comments can be sent to him at wreilly.bdn@gmail.com.