Today -100: May 2, 1918: Of constructive criticism, cannons, geniuses, and kaiser pennies

Theodore Roosevelt offers “constructive criticism”: let’s declare war on Turkey and Bulgaria! Let’s do it now! Not to have already done it is a “criminal absurdity”!

Headline of the Day -100:

The army lets him play with the long-range cannons (not a eupemism).

Former race car driver, now pilot Lt. Eddie Rickenbacher shoots down a German plane for the first time. It won’t be the last.

In 1915 Theodore Dreiser’s novel The Genius was published, to an uninterested world. His publisher, John Lane, pulled the book after the new York Society for the Suppression of Vice threatened to prosecute them. Now, Dreiser and John Lane jointly ask the Court of Appeal to tell them whether the book is indecent or not (Dreiser wants $50,000 damages from John Lane for withdrawing it). (Update: the appellate court will respond “That ain’t our job.”)

Someone in Hoboken has been giving out pennies in which the Indian has been altered to look like Kaiser Wilhelm – spiky helmet, handlebar mustache, etc. Detectives and the Justice Dept are investigating.

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