Today -100: February 3, 1915: The sea is free

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill says “For the first time in history England can say, ‘The sea is free.’” And they can say it with glee while climbing a tree.

There is a debate between German newspapers over whether the Belgians should be allowed to starve, with one writer calling for a “gospel of frightfulness,” which probably doesn’t sound better in the original German.

A Werner von Horn, supposedly a captain in the German reserves but caught on the wrong side of the Atlantic when the war started (on a coffee plantation in Guatemala), tries to blow up the Canadian Pacific Railroad bridge connecting Maine to New Brunswick, although without doing much damage. Captured in Vanceboro, Maine, mostly because he was the only stranger in town and you know Mainers and strangers, he is claiming that it was an act of war and that neutral US cannot hand him over to belligerent Canada (did I just really write “belligerent Canada”?). The funny thing there is that it would only be a legitimate act of war – maybe – if he was acting under orders. He was, his handler was the military attaché at the German embassy in Washington, but that’s not the story he’s giving out, which is that he was acting entirely on his own initiative, with help from some unnamed co-conspirators including a mysterious Irishman who passed him the dynamite.

Mexico: Carranza is distributing land to Zapatistas who turn in their weapons.

Austria says any Transylvanians or others found serving as volunteers with the Russians will be shot.

France will allow the pope’s prayer for peace to be read in churches after all.

The Cuban congress passes the amnesty bill over the president’s veto (and US objections), freeing the former governor of Havana Province, in prison for a year for killing the chief of the national police after a police raid on a club Gov. Asbert owned.

Headline of the Day -100:

It’s a great headline, but don’t bother to click on the link, you will be sorely disappointed.

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