Today -100: May 29, 1916: Nobody but an avowed advocate of blood and carnage could oppose it

The NYT supports Wilson’s “league of nations” idea as a common-sense approach to preventing future wars. “Nobody but an avowed advocate of blood and carnage could oppose it, save on the grounds of impracticability.” Fortunately, the Times thinks the US will never fall afoul of the rules such a league would enforce: “War without warning is not our habit, aggression is contrary to our interests and practice. There is not the slightest probability that in any New World dispute to which we were a party we should bear ourselves so arrogantly as to invite the interference of the league of nations.” That sound you hear is the people of Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic trying not to snicker.

Seymour & Seymour, the law firm wiretapped by the NYPD and the Burns Detective Agency, denies NYC Mayor John Purroy Mitchel’s claim that they had anything to do with a plot to ship munitions to Mexico. They say the wiretapping was done at the behest of J.P. Morgan & Co., worried that there might be some munitions contract with the British War Office not passing through their greedy, monopolistic hands. They want an apology from Mayor Mitchel, the head of the phone company, and J.P. Morgan himself.

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