Today -100: April 3, 1916: What difference does war make?

Kapitanleutnant Joachim Breithaupt, commander of the Zeppelin L15 which was shot down over England, defends the bombing raids, after a NYT correspondent tells him that the only damage done by them is killing women and children: “Women and children become the victims of our operations, but not because we kill them intentionally. It is war.” So that’s okay then. Breithaupt says that he visited London before the war and had many friends there. Asked if he still thought of them as friends: “Why not? What difference does war make?” Each Germany officer POW will have a sitting room and a servant, and anyway the Germans all think the war will be over within three months.

I don’t have a sitting room and a servant. If I dropped bombs on Britain from an airship would they give me a sitting room and a servant?

France has rounded up 200 German spies, or at least waiters and hotel porters it thinks are German and hence probably spies. It is illegal now to speak any other language than French on the telephone.

Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the 63-year-old English actor and theater manager, who specializes in Shakespeare, is in New York and has just seen, evidently for the first time in his life, Othello played by an actual black man (Edward Sterling Wright).

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