{
  "id": "news-1918-10-19-1",
  "title": "\"The Answer\" — a poem by William Duncan Cheney, October 1918",
  "publisher": "The Bend Bulletin, 1918-10-19, image 1; Historic Oregon Newspapers",
  "sourceClass": "primary",
  "url": "https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn90051770/1918-10-19/ed-1/seq-1/",
  "accessedOn": "2026-09-12",
  "notes": "The Bulletin reprints a poem by W. D. Cheney from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, introducing him as \"the founder of the Emblem club and a heavy property owner\". A ferocious response to the German peace notes of October 1918. The only published writing by Cheney this archive holds outside the club's own 1913 book.",
  "record": "https://bendemblem.com/archive/news-1918-10-19-1/",
  "evidence": {
    "id": "news-1918-10-19-1",
    "kind": "history",
    "date": "1918-10-19",
    "summary": "The Bulletin reprints a 1918 war poem by W. D. Cheney from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, naming him the Emblem Club's founder.",
    "findings": [
      "A poem, \"The Answer\", by William Duncan Cheney appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and was reprinted in the Bend Bulletin on October 19, 1918.",
      "The Bulletin introduces him as \"the founder of the Emblem club and a heavy property owner\" — six years after the club's founding and while he was living in Seattle.",
      "The poem answers the German peace notes of October 1918 and names Edith Cavell and Joan of Arc.",
      "It is the only published writing by Cheney in this archive outside the club's own 1913 book."
    ],
    "limitations": [
      "The original Post-Intelligencer printing has not been located; this is the Bulletin's reprint and its date of first publication is given only as \"a recent issue\".",
      "The poem is wartime propaganda verse of its period, reproduced as a document. Its characterisations are the author's.",
      "Nothing here connects Cheney to the Emblem Club's song repertoire, and no such connection is documented anywhere in this archive.",
      "The page says nothing about the emblem."
    ],
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        "title": "“The Answer”, by William Duncan Cheney, reprinted October 19, 1918.",
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  "exhibit": {
    "id": "news-1918-10-19-1",
    "title": "The Answer",
    "intro": "The club's founder, in print in a Seattle daily, six years after he wrote the club its oath.",
    "body": [
      "The poem is a reply to the German peace notes of October 1918, and it is written at the top of its voice. “They ask for peace. / Liars and thieves, who slay, and rape, and burn, / Now seek to parley what they shall return.” Four such stanzas, then a prayer, then four lines beginning “Lay down your arms” — one of them “Lay down your arms, you killers of Cavell!”, for the British nurse shot in Brussels in 1915 — and a close that borrows Joan of Arc. It is period atrocity rhetoric, published three weeks before the Armistice, and it is reproduced here as a historical document rather than for its argument.",
      "What the archive gains is Cheney as a writer in public. He wrote the Emblem Club's address at its first annual dinner, which the 1913 book preserves, and the club's oath and creed are his. Outside that book this project has held almost nothing of his own words. Here he is in a metropolitan daily, reprinted at home, and the paper introduces him to Bend readers by the club he founded rather than by his business — six years after founding it, and with him long since living in Seattle.",
      "It also puts verse in his hands, which is worth holding beside the Emblem Club's song repertoire. The archive has four lines of one club song, recovered from a 1921 editorial. Nothing connects Cheney to that verse, and this page does not, but a founder who wrote publishable poetry is a different kind of candidate for having written the club's songs than one who did not."
    ],
    "related": [
      "book-1913",
      "news-1921-07-28-2",
      "news-1918-05-27-1"
    ],
    "date": "1918-10-19",
    "collection": "recollections",
    "publication": "The Bend Bulletin",
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        "caption": "“The Answer”, by William Duncan Cheney, reprinted October 19, 1918.",
        "alt": "A newspaper column printing a poem headed “The Answer” by William Duncan Cheney, introduced as the founder of the Emblem club.",
        "credit": "The Bend Bulletin · Historic Oregon Newspapers, University of Oregon",
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    "quote": "THE ANSWER. The following poem, by William Duncan Cheney, appeared in a recent issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Mr. Cheney is well known in Bend, being the founder of the Emblem club and a heavy property owner."
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