CALVIN COOLIDGE President Wilson issues a Thanksgiving Proclamation less than a year before the start of World War I. Proclamation signed: "Woodrow Wilson" as President, 1p, 7½ x 12. Washington, D.C., 1913 October 23. In part: “The season is at hand in which it has been our long respected custom as a people to turn in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for his manifold mercies and blessings to us as a nation. The year that has just passed has been marked in a peculiar degree by manifestations of His gracious and beneficent providence.” President Woodrow Wilson issued this ceremonial Thanksgiving proclamation on October 23, 1913, during his first year in office. Wilson referred to the blessing of peace in the nation and the world, yet in less than a year, World War I had begun. For nearly two years of his first term, President Wilson worked to maintain America's neutrality and to mediate between the warring European nations. That war would occupy most of his attention following the United States' entrance into the war in April 1917. Two vertical and two horizontal creases.