The First World War took him away from Rome. In 1914 he returned to Grenoble where he was mobilized and he served until 1918 as a captain in the Chasseurs Alpins (Alpine Hunters), receiving various medals and decorations. Then he remained in Grenoble as a teacher until 1920.

At this time France was engaged in promoting its political, economic and cultural role through so-called "university missions" in Europe and in the New World, under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The intellectuals who were part of these missions were like ambassadors for their country. Pierre David left for Poland on one of these missions having been appointed professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where he arrived in March 1920. For almost twenty years, he taught Coptic, Ancient History of the East and Mediterranean Civilizations, and Medieval French and Provençal language and literature. He remained in Poland until the invasion of September 1939. He did much important pedagogic and academic work there especially in terms of reviving medieval Polish history, thereby contributing to a new awakening of the country's national conscience.

Taking advantage of his sojourns in France during the holidays, and parallel to his studies on Rome and Poland mentioned above, he published various monographs in the 1930s on the history and hagiography of the Dauphiné. Pierre David was in France at the time of the invasion of Poland in September 1939. He did not return to Krakow, and so left behind the whole of his library which he tried to recover in 1947. However, despite authorization from the Polish government, he could not undertake the journey. Such a loss made it impractical for him to continue his work on Poland and Egypt, as stated in a letter (dated 8 January 1948) sent to him by one of the editors of the Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique of Louvain. Nothing is known of the fate of these books, unpublished works and documentation.

Mobilized once again, he was appointed by the Vichy Government to be the head of censorship of the oriental press on account of his vast knowledge of languages (about seventeen) among which were some oriental languages.

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