Today -100: September 13, 1914: It’s just a flesh wound

War Headlines of the Day -100:

• “CORPSE EVERY SIX FEET.; Wounded Frenchman Tells of German Right Wing's Fearful Losses.”
• “PRIEST TAKES 26 CAPTIVES.; Austrian Slavs Won Over by His Eloquent Appeal.”  A Russian priest supposedly shames his fellow Slavs to surrender.
• “BRITISH COOLLY DRINK TEA ON BATTLEFIELD; Highlanders, Game Under Terrible Fire, Receive Candy for Good Marksmanship.”  Kill a Kraut, get a chocolate.  Literally.
• “German Called "Slightly Wounded" Had Lost Both Arms.”  The German government may be downplaying casualties a bit.
• “Prisoners Bother Russia.”  They have captured rather a lot of them and don’t know where to put them all.

Prof. Brander Matthews, a literature professor at Columbia, thinks the European war should be great for literature.  Although he predicts that it will take the form of drama rather than novels (the thought that it might be films doesn’t seem to have occurred to him).

South African PM Louis Botha says South Africa will back Britain in this war.  The whole Boer War thing is like totally forgotten.

Rumor of the Day -100: Two or even three of Kaiser Wilhelm’s sons are reported killed. I’m guessing we’re going to keep seeing these stories, so I’ll just do a major spoiler now and say that none of the princes were killed in action during World War I.  One did commit suicide soon after, though, and one became a Nazi.

Britain, France, Russia and Italy tell Turkey that it can’t unilaterally abrogate the treaties giving their citizens immunity from Turkish courts.  The US will say the same.

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