Today -100: August 6, 1915: So full of a glory so pure that it will forever illumine the human race

The German Army moves into Warsaw, which the NYT notes is the 3rd largest city in the Russian Empire. There was no battle; it was a strategic retreat by the Russians, after they stripped the city of everything useful and blew up all the bridges over the Vistula.

Kaiser Wilhelm is reported to plan making Poland (that is, the Polish lands previously divided between Russia, Germany and Austria) a semi-autonomous state under joint German-Austrian-Polish rule.

The French parliament celebrates the anniversary of the start of the war. President of the Chamber of Deputies Paul Deschanel, manic pixie dreamgirl that he is, says “This year has been so full of a glory so pure that it will forever illumine the human race. It has been a year in which France, the France of Joan of Arc and Valmy, has risen, if possible, to even greater heights.” A statement by President of the Republic Raymond Poincaré is read, praising the unity of France at greater length than seems strictly necessary, and saying that “on the victory of France and the Allies rests the future of civilization and humanity.”

Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch-Lincoln, former missionary and member of the British Parliament, is arrested in New York on a charge of being a fugitive from justice from Britain, where he is wanted for forgery, although he says that that’s just an excuse because he’s actually a spy for Germany (he was born a Hungarian citizen), a charge for which he could not be extradited. He will be extradited and be put in a British prison until 1919, then deported. He’ll spend the next few years hanging around fringe right-wingers (including Hitler), happily selling their secrets to any government that would pay. Then he’ll become a Buddhist monk, because of course he will, and found a monastery, although it sounds like he was mostly in it for the chicks and dough, and announced that he was the new Dalai Lama. Although he worked for the German and Japanese secret services, he also wrote a letter to Hitler protesting the extermination of the Jews, so Germany asked the Japanese to poison him (he was in Shanghai) in 1943. The end.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Naked Headline of the Day -100: 

Aussies, of course.

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