Today -100: May 2, 1916: All the world would stand once more thrilled to hear the voice of the New World asserting the standards of justice and liberty

Woodrow Wilson speaks at the opening of the National Service School Military Encampment for Young Women. He says that the European war has spurred nationalism (like that’s a good thing): “how much more intensely every Frenchman and every German feels the national compulsion than he ever felt it before”. Further, “in America we are getting already the indirect benefit of that suggestion. We are beginning to realize how a nation is a unit and that any individual of it who does not feel the impulse of the whole does not belong to it and does not belong in it.” He says that if the US were somehow “drawn into” war, “in the great voice of national enthusiasm which would be raised, all the world would stand once more thrilled to hear the voice of the New World asserting the standards of justice and liberty.” You can hear him talking himself into thinking of going to war as a great humanitarian gesture.

Speaking of the standards of justice and liberty, the House of Representatives rejects independence for the Philippines, 213 to 165. Rep. Simeon Fess (R-Ohio) says the work of educating and Christianizing the Philippines should take another 25 years.

In other news, there was a member of Congress named Simeon Fess!

Irish rebels are surrendering in their hundreds.

A NYT editorial, “The Irish Folly,” says the whole thing was stupid. For a start, Ireland can never be independent of Great Britain, that’s just crazy talk.

Dominican President Gen. Juan Jimenes is impeached. Something about the budget.

The American Woman’s League for Self-Defense finally settles the trousers vs skirt question: breeches for those in the cavalry, skirts for the infantry.

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