Today -100: April 21, 1912: War is right and peace is wrong

The White Star Company is keeping the Titanic crew members who testified before Congress under guard aboard the Celtic. They have been told they’ll be fired if they talk to the press. A NYT editorial denounces the crew’s ill-preparedness for the fact that so many of the lifeboats were launched with only a few people in them.

In addition to the much-vaunted “chivalry” of the men, such as Astor, who died so that women & children could live (a subject under some discussion by British suffragists), there has also been praise for the women who refused to let that policy turn them into widows and chose to stay with their husbands to the end.

Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Pope Mourns for Butt.” Runner-up: “Official Praise of Butt.”

A petition signed by many German academics, lawyers, military men, scientists, etc, has been sent to Russia, denouncing the notion of ritual murder by Jews.

Roosevelt wins West Virginia’s county-level primaries.

Headline of the Day -100: “War Is Right, Peace Wrong, Says German General.” Friedrich von Bernhardi, author of “Germany and the Next War,” a best-selling (in Germany) bit of warmongery. Sadly, Gen. Bernhardi did not die in Germany’s next war.

Some French dude invents a motorless, hand-cranked airplane.

The revolution in China seems to have made little difference to the occupation in Tibet (yet another sentence that applies to Today or Today -100). The Chinese army is using machine guns to mow down thousands in Lhasa.