Reception in Honor of President Wilson’s 1918 Day of Prayer for the Serbian People with Prime Minister Ana Brnabić.
On Wednesday, July 25th the Embassy of Serbia in Washington, DC co-hosted an event with the Serbian American Congressional Caucus and the WWI Centennial Commission of the Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America in honor of the hundredth anniversary of President Woodrow Wilson’s Day of Prayer for Serbia in 1918 at the United States Capitol Visitor Center.
On July 28, 1918 President Woodrow Wilson issued a special proclamation calling on a national day of prayer and for the Serbian flag to be flown over the White House. In fact, the only other foreign flag to be flown over the White House was the French flag in 1920 to honor Bastille Day. So why was this rare honor bestowed on the relatively tiny nation of Serbia? The start of World War I has a complicated history but many people point to the 1914 assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip as the event that started the war. Serbia had already suffered through the First and Second Balkan Wars begun in 1912 and the region was in turmoil. During the fighting in World War I the Kingdom of Serbia lost 29% of its overall population and 60% of its male population, more than 1,200,000 people when counting both military and civilian deaths. Among these deaths were Serbian-Americans who had emigrated to the United Sates but returned to their homeland to join the Serbian Army. From 1915–1918 the Kingdom of Serbia was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian military administration. When asking the American people to honor the sacrifice of Serbians during the war, Wilson had the following to say, “It is fitting that the people of the United States, dedicated to the self-evident truth that is the right of the people of all nations, small as well as great, to live their own lives and choose their own government, and remembering that the principles for which Serbia has so nobly fought and suffered are those for which the United States is fighting, should on the occasion of this anniversary manifest in an appropriate manner their war sympathy with this oppressed people who have so heroically resisted the aims of the Germanic nations to master the world.”
Speakers for the evening included Laura Cooper, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, & Eurasia, Congressman and Co-Chair of the Congressional Serbian American Caucus Ted Poe, and Prime Minister of Serbia Ana Brnabić. All of the speakers pointed out the special relationship that Serbia and the United States have enjoyed for so many years. The Prime Minister took the opportunity to thank the United States for their support 100 years ago but continued by saying, “The world is not the same as the world one hundred years ago, but we still face profound challenges, challenges that I think we should address together, hand in hand, as we did before.” The Prime Minister ended her remarks by presenting a medal from Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic to US Congressman Ted Poe with the words, “In the years behind us, you worked tirelessly, and with passion, to promote friendship between our two nations, and strengthen our ties.”
During her visit to the United States Prime Minister is meeting with World Bank director Jong Kim, United States Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, and the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde.
