Today -100: March 1, 1912: Of censors and partitions

British playwright Lawrence Cowen, after having his play Tricked banned by the official censor (the Lord Chamberlain), resubmits it under the title Quits, with new character names but otherwise exactly the same, and has it approved.

US Attorney General George Wickersham is trying to get the American Bar Association to rescind its decision to expel Assistant Attorney General William Lewis for the malfeasance of being a negro. When he was elected to membership, “His color was not the subject of inquiry.” Some Southern members of the Bar Association have been saying that he applied under false pretenses. Mind you, he didn’t say that he was white, so the false pretenses are presumably that any negro must under all circumstances announce themselves as such.

Germany, Britain, Russia and Japan have agreed to principles proposed by US Secretary of State Philander Knox regarding China: no power is to grab territory from China or make loans to it (the main non-gunboat means of gaining control over a country’s policies) without agreement from the other powers. There is some fear that China’s weakness due to its revolution (there is currently shooting in Beijing) will lead to a scramble to partition it.