Today -100: January 31, 1915: Of elusive cars, relief, curfews, race feeling, and motorcycle accessories

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Sunday NYT Magazine has an article about an “elusive gray car” on the Yorkshire coast, which totally exists and which is totally sending signals to German U-boats, or something.

German newspapers claim that Russia is arresting socialists.

Pancho Villa is said to have been shot and wounded by his bodyguard.

The Rockefeller Foundation is withdrawing from relief work in Belgium, leaving it to the Commission for Relief in Belgium (which is headed by Herbert Hoover and is doing an impressive job of feeding an entire country). Since October, it has brought $1 million of food and supplies to Belgium in four steamship cargoes.

The mayor of an (unnamed) French town near Nancy is suspended for shooting at a German airplane, because a civilian acting as a combatant violates the rules of war and could lead to retaliation.

The war finally hits home in Berlin, where a 3 a.m. curfew is imposed, “for reasons of discipline, public order, and safety.” Haven’t they heard that life is a cabaret?

Rev. Charles Edward Locke, a Methodist pastor and author of Is the Negro Making Good?, objects to the film “The Clansman,” which is to air soon at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles, because it might arouse race feeling. Says Rev. Locke, “It exhibits the negro character in such perfidy and diabolism as to do a crying injustice to a large portion of our fellow-citizens”. The censors order several cuts. The movie in question will, of course, be released under the title “The Birth of a Nation.”

Yes, yes it does.

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