Today -100: December 1, 1914: Of Gurkhas, war taxes, yellow books, and football

The Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung claims that Britain’s Sikh and Gurkha troops sneak into German trenches at night to slit soldiers’ throats and drink their blood. As you do.

Germany announces more extortion from Belgium, a $7 million per month war tax, which will go to the expenses of occupation.  This is supposedly being imposed as punishment for the shooting of German soldiers by Belgian civilians.  The fines imposed up until now on Belgian cities, it is explained, were just for the widows and children of fallen German soldiers.

Luxembourg, which unlike Belgium rolled over for Germany, has been given $318,000 by German in compensation for damage to fields, roads, etc by the passage of German troops.

France publishes its Yellow Book on the causes of the war.  Evidently it was Germany’s fault.

The owners of British football clubs are not best pleased with the press campaign against them, and say they will stop playing, as is being demanded, when all the theaters, cinemas, golf courses and race tracks also close.

A majority of the US Supreme Court says that the Oklahoma Supreme Court was wrong to uphold a Jim Crow law allowing railroads to provide luxury accommodations – sleeping cars, dining cars, etc – only to whites.  However, they still throw the case out since the petitioners had not been refused such services and lack standing.

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