Today -100: August 13, 1911: Of Jewish colonies, arbitration, and warplanes

200 Jewish families from Philadelphia will soon form a colony in Utah.

The Senate has stripped from the arbitration treaties with France and Britain their provisions for, um, arbitration. Specifically, they removed the power of the Joint High Commission to decide which disagreements would be arbitrated, and any arbitration would have to be approved by the Senate. In truth, this does sound like the Senate preserving its constitutional prerogatives, but the treaties, part of an attempt to create an international system that would prevent wars, would obviously be meaningless if so amended. Some senators expressed the fear that if the principle of arbitration became widespread, there might be treaties with China and Japan, and where would our precious racist immigration policies and exclusion of people of Asiatic races from public schools be then?

British aviator Claude Grahame-White says that the next big war will be decided by air power.