Today -100: October 21, 1914: The Germans want to conquer what now?

Le Matin says that 35 French army cooks tricked 140 Germans into surrendering by pretending to surround them.

Tageblatt (presumably the German newspaper rather than the Luxembourger one) says that when the French took 3 German envoys prisoner, the kaiser threatened to kill 300 POWs unless they were released, which they were.

The NYT has “certain information” from “an authoritative source” that Germany is building 200 extra-large airplanes, each capable of carrying 1,000 pounds of bombs to drop on London.  The bombs will still have to be dropped by hand.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Villa Threatens to Seize Chiefs.”  While the Constitutionalist’s Convention of Military Chiefs meets to work out Mexico’s future, Pancho Villa moves troops worryingly close to where it’s being held.

Actual dead prince: Wolrad of Waldeck and Pyrmont, 22, killed in action in Belgium.

At the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, former Pres. Taft calls for making US treaties the supreme law of the land.  At present, the federal government can’t force states to abide by treaties, for example California’s discrimination against Japanese.

The upper house of the Prussian Diet debates German hat fashions (or maybe it’s just a meeting in the Diet building?)  One speaker (all of whom are unnamed, dammit) says it is the job of those who cannot fight to prepare for the consequences of war and the newly awakened German national feeling as it affects, you know, ladies’ hats.  “He predicted that the first consequences of the war would be a tendency to simplicity and a suppression of individuality.  Other speakers did not seem satisfied with this and declared that Germany must make fashions capable of conquering the international market.”

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