[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5298-5299]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              COMMEMORATING THE CENTENNIAL OF WORLD WAR I

  (Mr. POE of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, 100 years ago, the world was in a war 
so big that it was called the war to end all wars. World War I started 
in 1914 and involved 32 nations. It pitted the Allies against the 
central powers and stretched across five continents.
  The United States was isolationist at that time and was not in the 
war. But in 1917, the British intercepted a telegram called the 
Zimmerman Telegram from the German Government to Mexico, encouraging 
Mexico to join Germany. In return, Germany would help Mexico take and 
conquer Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
  So after the sinking of seven U.S. merchant ships by submarines, the 
sinking of the Lusitania, and the publication of the Zimmerman 
Telegram, the United States Congress declared war in April of 1917.
  Four-and-a-half million Americans signed up to fight, including a 
friend

[[Page 5299]]

that I later got to know by the name of Frank Buckles, who was 16 when 
he joined the war in World War I. He lived to the age of 110 and died 
in 2011. American doughboys like him proved the decisive difference.
  Just a year after the U.S. was in the war, the war was over on the 
11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour. In all, there were 30 
million casualties worldwide, civilian and military.
  Mr. Speaker, after the war, the United States became an international 
power. So 114,000 doughboys died over there in the great World War I. 
When they got home, an equal number died from the Spanish flu that they 
had contracted when they were in Europe.
  Mr. Speaker, we remember them all 100 years ago this year, for the 
worst casualty of war is to be forgotten.
  And that is just the way it is.

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