1916- Charlotte speech heard in Berlin

A Berlin newspaper covered President Woodrow Wilson’s speech in Charlotte.

The Charlotte Observer 5/26/1916, p. 6

CHARLOTTE SPEECH IS HEARD AROUND WORLD Berlin Papers Discuss Significance of President’s Address on Phifer Avenue Last Saturday.

In one of its advance stories concerning the Twentieth of May, The Observer said last week, “It is highly probable that the voice which is sounded at the Presbyterian College campus on the Twentieth will be heard around the world.”

Literal vindication of that prediction came yesterday in the wireless dispatch from Berlin stating that the Berlin newspaper gave great prominence to the President’s Charlotte speech and commented on its editorially, as indicating that America is ready to extend its good offices to bring the titanic European conflict to a close. For the first time in the history of the world, Germany has discovered that there is such a place as Charlotte, just as America, since the outbreak of the war, has discovered that there are such places as Verdun, and *Erzerum and that other place which begins with a **C. followed by an impressive array of consonants. It may be that Germany is not overly interested to know that Charlotte exists, but it knows it, nevertheless, and the name will sink into the reservoir of the subconscious memories of millions of people not only in Germany but in the British Empire, for the discussion will inevitable spread there. The speech which Mr. Wilson will make in Washington Saturday of this week will doubtless submerge the former one, but the Charlotte effort will have had a week to gain currency. If peace should eventually develop from this beginning, the Charlotte speech will live in history as the first real beginning in that direction.