The House of Representatives passes a resolution authorizing the president to draft state militias into the US military and allowing them to be used out of the country in Mexico, to meet what Woodrow Wilson is calling an “emergency” and is pointedly not calling a “war.” The House also appropriates $1 million for the families of men in the National Guard (the families of men in the regular Army can suck it, evidently).
If there is a full-scale war with Mexico, there may well be an ammunition shortage, because US munition-makers have all recalibrated their machinery to supply the European market with ammo of a different caliber than that used in US Army rifles. US Army ammunition is made by government arsenals, whose capacity is fairly limited.
A convention of Irish Nationalists from Northern Ireland, held in Belfast, agrees by a vote of 475 to 265 to John Redmond’s demand (backed up by a threat to resign as leader of the party) that they accept Lloyd George’s proposal to implement Home Rule but “temporarily” exclude 6 Ulster provinces. Lloyd George, always a sneaky fuck, let the Nats think that the exclusion was for the duration of the war only while telling the Unionists that it wasn’t and that there would be a whole new set of negotiations after the war, which they could obstruct to their hearts’ content. Sir Edward Carson and the Unionists have already accepted the proposals, even though they entail a Home Rule Parliament in Dublin.
Disconcerting Headline of the Day -100:
That’s William Dick and his new bride, Madeleine Force Astor, widow of John Jacob Astor IV, who went down with the Titanic.
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