Today -100: April 12, 1917: Of degenerate brains, conscription, and corn bread

Brazil breaks diplomatic relations with Germany.

Eddystone Ammunition Corp officials are still insisting that the explosion at their explosives plant was not an accident or the result of their negligence, but “the result of a diabolical plot conceived in the degenerate brain of a demon in human guise.”

Men who are married or have parents or children as dependents are ordered to quit the National Guard.

The White House not only wants conscription, it doesn’t want volunteers, even though the machinery of conscription will take months to set up. Rep. Daniel Anthony (R-Kansas) asks Secretary of War Newton Baker if he wouldn’t rather have volunteers beginning training within 30 days rather than wait 6 months for conscripts. Evidently he wouldn’t.

Herbert Hoover is appointed chairman of the new Food Board in the US. His first official act is to ask Americans to eat corn bread, so wheat can be shipped to Europe.

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