Today -100: May 23, 1917: Of censorship, deserters, dissolving empires, black empire menaces, and lynchings

The Republican caucus votes to oppose press censorship being reintroduced in the Espionage Bill’s reconciliation process. Pres. Wilson, however, demands censorship.

Russian War Minister Kerensky orders an operation that captures 30 army deserters. Since the Revolution, soldiers have been deserting with impunity.

Finland would like to be independent of Russia now, please and thank you.

And Hungary, whose equivocal commitment to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was based in part on a fear of Russian territorial acquisitiveness which is now assuaged by the Russian Revolution, is also thinking seriously about independence.

Headline of the Day -100: 

South African Gen. Jan Smuts says Germany wants a large empire (citing a captured map) in central and southern Africa so that it can use Africa’s “huge population” to create “the most powerful army the world had ever known,” a black army that would threaten South Africa and of course “the whole of the civilized world.” He hopes that the future League of Nations will ban the military training of African colonial populations (perhaps unaware of the role of Senegalese Tirailleurs, among others, in the French Army).

Wisconsin Governor Emanuel Philipp vetoes a bill for a referendum on prohibition.

Headline of the Day -100:

She did, however, decline an offer to apply the match herself. Southern ladies do not do such things themselves, they have baying mobs for that.

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