by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

Political Advertisement as seen in today's paper.

Political Advertisement as seen in today’s paper.

The news and headlines from The Daily Capital Journal:

EGYPT IS INVADED BY TURKISH TROOPS; “HOLY WAR” PROBABLE

Circumstantial though not officially verified reports were current today that Turkish troops had invaded Egypt, following the sultan’s proclamation of its annexation.

The Turkish ambassador in Berlin predicted an early declaration of a holy war.”

Experts believed the Germans would try to prevent this, preferring the Turks help against Russia to scattered Mohammedan uprisings.

Despite all this, there had been no formal declaration of hostilities from Constantinople.

ITALY PREPARED TO TAKE PART IN WAR; BIG ARMY EQUIPPED
War spirit Spreads Fast and Sentiment Almost Unanimous for the Allies
King Is Firmly for Neutrality But His Sympathies Are With England

GERMANY PLAYING TURK AGAINST SLAV; WILL FORCE ITALY IN

With the entry of Turkey into the war, in an editorial, “Stand By President Wilson” the Capital Journal ties support for the President and maintaining American neutrality to their endorsement of the senatorial race:

It begins to look like a world-wide war.

Turkey, with all the Moslem hordes at her back, has proclaimed a “holy war,” and her army and navy are already at work.

Italy is preparing to act. Greece and the Balkan states will enter the lists against the Turks.

Within thirty days it is practically certain that nearly every nation and race in Europe, Asia and Africa will be involved in the greatest, most general in scope, most destructive to life and property, war in the history of the world.

Will the United States be able to maintain neutrality and keep from being embroiled in the titanic struggle of the nations?

That is the issue of supreme importance before America. It is greater than the tariff, prohibition or trust questions. It is almost a question of life or death, because Death will reap the harvest if we are forced to take part in this awful and senseless war.

President Wilson will do his best to keep on terms of friendship with all the belligerent nations. It will be a difficult thing to do, but the people of the United States have faith in his ability, and feel that he may be trusted. They will vote, regardless of party, to send men back to congress who will assist him instead of making hard the difficult task before him by their constant opposition. The president has asked that Senator Chamberlain be reelected. The people of Oregon are no doubt inclined to accede to this request because they have come to have faith in the president and his policies, but they are assailed with the cry of “vote ‘er straight” from the Booth men and the calamity howl that the president’s policies, most of which, like the currency and anti-trust bills, have not even gone into effect, have ruined the country.

But think of the greater ruin, the death and desolation, which might follow the breaking down of the president’s peace policy! The dispatches in today’s newspapers – war spreading everywhere makes even the most stolid on this side of the ocean shudder when they think of what may yet happen if the tide of slaughter is not soon stayed. It makes the old tariff issue seem absurd by comparison and all this partisan talk vapid and foolish.

The president today needs the assistance of every American man and woman.

Chamberlain’s opponent was R. A. Booth. The Capital Journal editorializes regarding Booth’s treatment of workers, raising immigration issues that are familiar even today:

. . .

[W]hile Mr. Booth is campaigning for the special benefit of the working man, as he asserts in his speeches, more Greek and other foreign laborers have been employed in the Booth-Kelly mills of late years than American working men. They would not pay the current price for American labor, and when their principal mill, the one at Springfield, Oregon, burned about four years ago, the repeated answer of the manager of the company to requests for information as to when it would be rebuilt was: “The state of the lumber market does not justify rebuilding at this time.” The mill was finally not rebuilt until after Wilson’s election.