Today -100: January 2, 1916: Of murdering the prestige of the white race

Headline of the Day -100: 

According to French President Raymond Poincaré, in his New Year message to the troops.

The P&O passenger liner Persia is torpedoed without warning in the Mediterranean, off Crete, with 343 lost. If this sounds just like what happened to the Ancona, which led to all that fuss between the US and Austria, it might be because the Persia was sunk by the same Austrian u-boat under the command of the same German, Max Valentiner, although of course that’s not yet known in the US, or even whether this sub was German or Austrian. Robert McNeely, on his way to take up his post as US consul at Aden, is among the dead, along with 2 other Americans.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: French newspapers are insisting that Kaiser Wilhelm has throat cancer, based on nothing more than the kaiser being the same age (56) his father was when he died of cancer.

The fifth largest industry in the US, after steel, is motion pictures, with 500 million tickets sold each year.

Bernhard Dernburg, the former German colonial minister who spent the first part of the war doing propaganda work on Germany’s behalf in the US, has an article in the NYT Sunday magazine section accusing Britain of being a traitor to the white race. He says that using colonial troops in Europe undermines colonial rule for every European power, that rule being based as it is “on the native’s belief that the will of the white man is good, unshakable, unconquerable.” The result of Britain (and France’s) actions: “England... murdered the prestige of the white race to which she belongs”.

Al Ringling, the oldest of the Ringling Brothers of circus fame, dies at 63. He was a juggler, among other things.

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