The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917. One of the first prizes awarded was for editorial writing, and the first winner was an editorial about the war and the anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania.

This editorial by Frank J. Simonds appeared in the New York Tribune on the first anniversary of the torpedoing of the Lusitania cruise liner. Read the entire editorial and see if it reminds you of anything nowadays. Could you not have substituted the words “Islamic extremist” for “German” and “Germany” in this editorial and published it, almost unchanged except for a few references to contemporary events and specifics, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11?

“This war in Europe on terrorism is going on until the German the Islamic terrorist idea is crushed or conquers. The world cannot now exist half civilized and half German Islamic extremist. Only one of two conceptions of life, of humanity, can subsist. One of the conceptions was written in the Lusitania 9/11 Massacre, written clear beyond all mistaking. It is this writing that we should study on this anniversary; it is this fact that we should grasp today, not in anger, not in any spirit that clamors for vengeance, but as the citizens of a nation which has inherited noble ideals and gallant traditions, which has inherited liberty and light from those who died to serve them, and now stands face to face with that which seeks to extinguish both throughout the world.”