Today -100: May 7, 1917: Of volunteers, powerful masses, Birth Control The Motion Picture, potatoes, secret treaties, and lynchings

200,000 men have volunteered to join Theodore Roosevelt if he is allowed to raise his own army (he won’t be).

William Howard Taft says the war is the fault of the German and Austrian monarchies and if the two kaisers abdicated there would be peace in two weeks.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The NYC Commissioner of Licenses George Bell bans Margaret Sanger’s film Birth Control. IMDB has no information on it, but I see that Jennifer Laurence has bought rights to do a biopic, which is, um...

You know it’s truly war when the lawn of the Wisconsin governor’s Executive Mansion is plowed up and potatoes planted. Says Gov. Emanuel Philipp, “we shall not ask others to work on the farms producing crops unless we do our share also.” Because the governor will totally by planting those potatoes himself.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Hamburg Fremdenblatt says it has unearthed a secret treaty between Britain and the US to prevent Germany ever having colonies again. Germany’s surplus population, deprived of this safety valve, will be sent to regions controlled by the US & UK, where they will be “absorbed” like Germans have been in the US.

We haven’t had a lynching for a while. Now we have Arizona’s last ever lynching, that of Starr Daley (presumably white since they don’t give his race), who shot a man and raped his wife. He is arrested and a mob chases the sheriff’s car 40 miles from Phoenix before running it off the road and grabbing Daley, who they take back to the scene of his crime and hang. Supposedly he gives the mob instructions in how to tie a noose. A coroner’s jury rules it a justifiable homicide by unknown parties, as was the custom.

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