Germany rolled the dice in 1917, accepting war with America by an aggressive unrestricted u-boat campaign that sank anything approaching the British Isles in hopes of starving Britain before we could get organized to fight.  When the Germans also used American facilities to send a coded message to Mexico urging war against the U.S., the roof caved in.  America was in the Great War.

We’d had three years to get ready, and hadn’t done much of anything.  A “Home Guard” quickly formed to protect Corning from attack, and almost as quickly faded away.  A draft was soon in effect.  Germania Winery changed its name.  The Curtiss plant in Hammondsport worked around the clock.  When people came over the hill from Bath, they could hear the aircraft engines roaring in their test stands near the Glen. 

Thousands of prospective pilots started training on Curtiss Jennys, mostly made in Buffalo.  Willys-Morrow in Elmira became a Curtiss subcontractor (making engines), and so did Fay & Bowen in Geneva (making seaplane hulls).  Katherine Stinson, flying a custom-made Curtiss biplane, set the American distance record at 606 miles.

America bought the Danish Virgin Islands, and made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens.  An early spring revolution in Russia toppled the Czar, while an early winter revolution brought Lenin’s communists to power.  Three children reported visions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima.  Exhausted French soldiers began a series of mutinies.  Lawrence of Arabia captured Aqaba.  The first Pulitzer Prizes were announced.  Lions Club was formed.  Race riots in East Saint Louis killed dozens of people.

Mata Hari was executed.  Arthur Balfour declared that the British “look with favor” on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.  U.S. “patriots” brutally attacked people suspected of not fully supporting the war.  Germania Winery near Hammondsport changed its name to Jermania.  On November 14, prison guards attacked and tortured 33 suffragettes in Virginia. 

Clemenceau, “the Tiger of France,” became his country’s premiere and announced his policy: “I make war.” The National Hockey League was formed.  Allenby took Jerusalem.  In Halifax, the biggest man-made explosion until the atomic bomb killed 2000 people.

Folks in Wheeler and in Mossy Glen (South Corning) formed Granges — the Wheeler Grange is still in operation. New York men approved a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage, three years before it came on the national level. (Voters in Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, and Yates all rejected it.)

Buffalo Bill died, along with Admiral Dewey and Count von Zeppelin.  So did Scott Joplin, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, and Mother Cabrini.

Births for 1917 included Zsa Zsa Gabor, Desi Arnaz, Ernest Borgnine, Cyrus Vance, Hans Conried, Ella Fitzgerald, Raymond Burr, Dean Martin, Lena Horne, Andrew Wyeth, Phyllis Diller, Robert Mitchum, Jack Kirby, John F. Kennedy, and Man o’ War. For them, the war would be gone even before they knew about it.