Category Archives: 1917

All diary entries written in 1917

6 February 1917; Tuesday

February 1917, ,

Up at 7 o’clock. Busy all day as usual. Finished about 7 o’clock. Had a man very ill with pleurisy and had him taken over to the building.

Billy Truman got other three leave cards with another at the billet last thing.

Heard that President Wilson1 had withdrawn his ambassador and that Count Bernstorff2 had been given his passport. A lot of talk of war between USA and Germany.

  1. President Woodrow Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on 3rd February 1917 following the latter’s decision to re-introduce a policy of unrestricted U-boat warfare two days earlier; see yesterday’s diary entry. The text of President Wilson’s speech to Congress announcing this development is available here. ↩

  2. Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff (14 November 1862 – 6 October 1939) was a German politician and the ambassador to the United States from 1908 to 1917. ↩

5 February 1917; Monday

February 1917, , ,

Up as usual. Busy all day. Billy Truman received orders to go on leave and cleared off after dinner. I took over his tent for a short time and then Harvey came up to it.

Heard of the Germans’ submarine scheme1 and war demands of America.

  1. Germany had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on 1st February. Unrestricted submarine warfare had previously been Germany’s policy, but this policy had been quietly discontinued in late 1915 following the aftermath of the sinking of the Lusitania. ↩