WWI flares amid burning flags
Some historians argue that the 20th century was shaped by World War I. Known as the Great War, it began 100 years ago amid waving – and burning – flags.
Coincidentally, on the very same day, Idahoans focused on an American flag for a happier reason.
On July 28, 1914, newspapers around the world reported the outbreak of the war in Europe. While the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife a month earlier by Serbians is often seen as the last straw of European foment that would lead to all-out war, the seizure of a flag was the first spark that ignited four years of slaughter.
“Two Servian Steamers Seized by Austrians,” screamed one headline, adding, “The Servian Colors Torn Down and the Austrian Flag Raised as a Starter” to war. The ships belonging to Servia (now spelled Serbia) were boarded by Austrian troops and claimed for their nation.
On a steamship in the Atlantic on his way home from a visit to the U.S., Count Karolyi, who was head of the Hungarian Independent Party, told a reporter that “the situation would not have become so delicate” as to lead to war had he been home. Now, he continued, “All true Hungarian patriots will…rally to the flag.”
As more and more reports came in about what was happening overseas, some newspapers resorted to printing series of brief reports to keep up with the tumult. For example, “Situations in Europe Told in Paragraphs” was the headline in a Minnesota daily, and one of those paragraphs said that “five hundred Slav students burn Austrian flag in Paris streets.”
The United States would not become enmeshed in the world war until 1917, but it seemed inevitable to a Baltimore newspaper editor named A.S. Goldsborough. On the day the war began with torn-down and burning flags, he said that “a flag means nothing unless it represents an idea and unless that idea is fulfilled by a people….The flag of Turkey…is as much a flag as our own, but what a difference in their significance.”
Meanwhile, as cannon fire and trench warfare rocked Europe on that July 28, 1914, the people of Idaho were joyously marking the 80th anniversary of what they believed was the first time the American flag had been unfurled in the state-to-be, an event that occurred at Fort Hall, a trading post along the Oregon Trail.