Today -100: May 11, 1917: Of separate peaces and peaces that pay, concentration camps, and conscription

The US will not make a separate peace with Germany. This needed to be made explicit because the US has no formal alliance with the Allies.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The French were never going to be onboard for a No Annexations, No Indemnity peace deal given their demand for the return of the lost territories of Alsace-Lorraine, but they’d also like to make Germany pay for the French cost of fighting the war. They might also take the Saar. This from a report by the Finance Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, which also says that “the towns and villages destroyed by a criminal race of barbarians shall be rebuilt by German hands.” Which sounds rather like slave labor.

The US government rented a property from the Kanauga Club in North Carolina for use as a concentration camp – yes, that’s the term they’re using – for interned Germans, but there’s some dispute over whether the club manager had the authority to rent it out, so the government has to postpone sending the first contingent of prisoners from Ellis Island.

The War Department says there is no possibility that the local draft boards will practice favoritism. None at all. Spoiler Alert: they will totally practice favoritism. Especially in the South. But in truth, class favoritism is built into the law. People can be exempted from service because they are more “valuable” at home, and many boards determined this by how much money people earned. People with religious objections to war will be required to perform jobs the president deems noncombatant.

Joseph McGuiness is elected to the British Parliament at the South Longford by-election. He is a Sinn Fein activist currently in jail for his participation in the Easter Rising.

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