Today -100: July 16, 1915: Of race extermination

US ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau reports home: “Deportation of an excess against peaceful Armenians is increasing and from harrowing reports of eye witnesses it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion.”  The term “race extermination” seems to be a coinage of Morgenthau’s.

Emmeline Pankhurst leads a deputation to Munitions Minister David Lloyd George, in advance of a big march she’s organizing Saturday to demand that women be allowed to do war work. She tells him women should be paid the same for the same work. They will be, but the work will be defined so it’s never considered the same work. Still, it’ll be very well paid comparable to, say, domestic service or shop assistant, if you don’t mind the risk of blowing up or your skin turning yellow through TNT poisoning.

South Wales miners go on strike. The miners’ delegates who voted for the strike are being calumniated, as was the custom, as being in the pay of the Germans or trying to sabotage the war.

The Remington strike in Connecticut is turning into a general strike for higher wages and an 8-hour day. The workers figure they have the upper hand with all those British and French contracts rolling in.

Austria publishes a “Red Book” accusing its enemies of war crimes and the mistreatment of civilian Austrian nationals. They especially blame “the employment of troops wholly unable to perceive the legal restrictions applied to warfare.” In other words, non-white troops from the colonies.

Britain executes its fourth spy of the war, Robert Rosenthal, at the Tower of London. He passed information to Germany about fleet movements.

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