Let me try to restate what I've been saying, by approaching it from another angle. As near as I can figure out, the current interpretation of the 3.5 times is from Dec. 1914 to June 1918. June 1918 is the imprisonment of Rutherford et al. Dec. 1914 is what you get when you count back three and a half years, and the Society warned that there might be persecution and announced the 1915 yeartext to be "Are ye able to drink of My cup?". Yes, that's the basis for the start date: counting backwards to the announcement of a yeartext. This reasoning is given in the WT of Aug. 1, 1994 in the Questions from Readers.
So really, 1919 has no direct connection to 1914. If anyone can find a Society writing that links those two years, I will stand corrected. The significance given for 1919 is the Cedar Point convention that started the modern preaching work (there was another Cedar Point convention in 1922 that reiterated the importance of the preaching work, which is the convention linked to the trumpet blasts). This 1919 convention is considered prophetic fulfillment of scriptures referring to a revival from spiritual inactivity and a swarm of locusts -- NOT the beginning of Jesus' reign in 1914. As near as I can tell, there is no chronology linking 1914 and 1919. Only the inactivity during WWI and the subsequent preaching beginning in 1919 are prophetically linked by the Society.
Thus, there is little obstacle to the Society simply phasing out the mention of 1914, or maybe even kicking it out the door in a "new light" article, and yet still proclaiming that the slave was appointed in 1919 after Jesus began inspecting his household at some other, possibly unknown, date (I will speculate more wildly here, that they are going to flip the date of the inspection and anointing around so that it more logically takes place after 1919 -- perhaps 1931 -- and keep the identification of the slave at 1919 because that is when the preaching began). 1919 is close enough to 1914 that it will not feel to the rank and file that anything deeply significant has changed. The beginning of the 20th century will still mark the start of some special era for God's servants and the beginning of Jesus' reign.
It's true that 1914 has a satisfying aspect to it for Witnesses, which is that WWI began in that year, but Witnesses have always known that the beginning of WWI does not align with the October 4/5 date based on the 2,520 years from Oct. 5/6, 607 BCE (Daniel book chap. 6). The assumption by some Witnesses, in order to reconcile the difference, is that Satan was stirring up things on Earth in 1914 even before he was cast down there in the autumn. Thus, even if 1914 is removed as a significant year from WT chronology, Witnesses will still have essentially the same belief -- that WWI marked the rough beginning of the signs of Jesus' presence, and Satan's confinement to Earth, a time of woe for mankind.
