Today -100: January 12, 1920: Of rockets and colored and other unchecked profligates

Prof. Robert Goddard has invented a multiple-charge, high-efficiency rocket he thinks can reach beyond earth’s atmosphere, maybe even to the moon.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Allied occupying forces in the Rhineland have issued an edict – I think this is real but I may be wrong – setting forth fines or imprisonment for anyone whose “words, manners or attitude” towards members of the occupying authorities or the occupation troops or indeed their flags are “insulting or improper.” According to irate Prussian Finance Minister Albert Südekum, this means any British, French or American negro soldier is placed “in a position to terrorize even the most harmless person against whom his brutal African instincts may wish to vent themselves. ... Rapine and murder may well become a pastime of these black fiends if this edict takes effect” as they can simply send the male relatives of any woman who catches their eye into detention, leaving her “unprotected game for colored and other unchecked profligates.” He notes that the edict is based on the armistice agreement which Woodrow Wilson signed, though it “practically encourages all those crimes for which, in the United States, negroes are burned at the stake. What do Americans think will be the effect of the return of those negro soldiers, whose licentiousness in Germany is officially encouraged, on the rest of their race?” In fact, the US Army points out, there are no negro units stationed on the Rhine.

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