Today -100: March 8, 1916: Of cowardly proposals, Germany conspiracies, militarism, conscription, and meat

The House votes 2 to 1 to support Pres. Wilson’s position upholding the “right” of citizens to travel on armed belligerent merchant ships. The vote is much higher than was expected, many voting yes not because they support Wilson’s position but to stand behind the president and strengthen his negotiating position.

The NYT has a snide editorial about the defeat of “the cowardly proposal to contract the sphere of American rights to make room for the expansion of Germany’s sphere of lawlessness.” Its tone all along, in its reporting as well as editorials, has been remarkably snotty. A year away from the entering the war, and already opponents of the slide towards war are being accused of “sedition... alien intrigue and factional conspiracy”.

Elsewhere on the op-ed page, the Times rants about the “German conspiracy against the United States” in the form of the National German-American Alliance’s plans to possibly campaign for Wilson if the Republicans nominate a jingo like Roosevelt or Elihu Root. The New York World is claiming that the Alliance is behind the attempted resolutions warning US citizens off armed merchanters. The World publishes stolen letters written by a lobbyist for the Alliance, T.L. Marsalis, who claims to have influenced members of Congress. They either deny having ever met him or that they knew who he was. Marsalis evidently spoke to Sen. Thomas Gore about the need for the white races to ally to protect their supremacy. Gore does not say how he responded to that. The charter of the National German-American Alliance (which also fought prohibition, because, you know, Germans and beer) will be revoked by Congress in 1918, a couple of months after it had already disbanded itself.

Rep. Isaac Ruth Sherwood (D-Ohio), says he’ll resign (but like Rep. Page’s similar announcement yesterday actually won’t) because he “cannot seek re-election on a platform that pledges the party to militarism.” In the meantime, though, he feels obligated to vote for a military spending bill he doesn’t believe in, and against warning US citizens off armed merchant ships, which he does believe in, in order to support the president, whose policies he doesn’t believe in. Sherwood, 80, was a Civil War general.

Vermont voters reject prohibition in favor of local option.

Lord Derby, who last year oversaw the Derby Scheme in which men signed up to potentially be drafted if needed, now says he’s sorry that they’re drafting married men so soon, after promising everyone they wouldn’t.

Headline of the Day -100:

Riotous Housewives would be a great name for a rock band.

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Today -100: March 7, 1916: Of pages, weeping bombs, newtons, non-candidates in any sense, and accommodations

Rep. Robert Page (D-North Carolina) says he’ll resign because he can’t support policies he believes are leading the US into the war, such as upholding the right to travel on armed merchant ships. He also opposes the banks’ $500 million loan to the Allies; he quotes Jesus, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Rep. Page’s brother is the ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Page will not actually resign.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The British claim Germany is making “weeping bombs” i.e. tear gas bombs, from a Venezuelan seed.

Woodrow Wilson picks Newton Baker, former mayor of Cleveland, as his next secretary of war.

A former organizer for the National Security League says he tried to get Baker to support the League’s preparedness campaign last July and Baker said no because it was based on hysteria and anyway he was a pacifist.

Massachusetts is another state that requires candidates seeking to be elected delegates to the party conventions to get permission from the candidates they plan to pledge themselves to, and Justice Charles Evans Hughes refuses that permission because he is not a candidate “in any sense” for president.

The confirmation hearings for Louis Brandeis hear from James Cannon, Jr, chairman of the legislative committee of the Anti-Saloon League of America, who says that 25 years ago Brandeis was attorney – lobbyist, Cannon says – for a couple of liquor associations.

Columbia University will admit women to its medical school... as soon as the buildings can be adapted to accommodate them.

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Today -100: March 6, 1916: Think of love when not between Huns

The new group Friends of Irish Freedom holds its first convention, in New York City. Its delegates claim to represent 90% of all Irish-Americans. They warn the US against trusting perfidious Albion. Perfidious is a word you just don’t hear often enough these days. Several of the (many) speakers speak admiringly of Germany, or at least of Germany’s ability to bring England low.

Obit of the Day -100: Masuji Miyakawa, lawyer, lecturer and author, the first (and only) Japanese person admitted to the bar in the United States after immigrating in his 20s. He won a case in the California Supreme Court overturning the San Francisco School Board’s ban on Japanese children in public schools. Which for some reason the LA Times fails to mention in its obituary.

The third issue of the Wipers Times is out, a bit late, with apologies – shelling damaged their printing press.

“We hear that the war (to which we alluded guardedly in our first number), is proceeding satisfactorily, and we hope shortly to be able to announce that it is a going concern.”

“Love and War” (anonymous)

In the line a soldier’s fancy
Oft may turn to thoughts of love.
But too hard to dream of Nancy
When the whizz-bangs sing above.

...
Take the case of poor Bill ’Arris
Deep in love with Rosy Greet,
So forgot to grease his tootsies,
Stayed outside and got ‘trench feet.’

...
Then again there’s ’Arry ’Awkins*
Stopped to dream at Gordon Farm.
Got a ‘blightie’** found his Polly
Walking out on Johnson’s arm.

Plenty more of such examples
I could give, had I but time.
War on tender feelings tramples,
H.E.*** breaks up thoughts sublime.

“Don’t dream when you’re near machine guns!”
Is a thing to bear in mind.
Think of love when not between Huns,****
A sniper’s quick, and love is blind.


* Wipers Times authors do enjoy their Cockneyisms
** An injury allowing one to return to Britain
*** High explosives
**** Hello!

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Today -100: March 5, 1916: Of eager Romanians, babes in court, and reputations

The House of Representatives delays voting on whether citizens should travel on armed belligerent merchant ships. For a start, the Indiana primaries are Tuesday and the sitting congresscritters, with their many German-American voters, really don’t want to have to go on record before then.

Headline of the Day -100:

In a legal case involving the will of Lawrence Odell, who died in 1886, the appellate court judge rules that Odell’s great-grandchild must appear in court personally before the case can be settled. Said child is currently gestating inside the womb of the widow of Lester Odell, Lawrence’s grandson, who died last August. This is the first time a court has ordered the appearance of someone who hasn’t been born yet.

The confirmation hearings of Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court grind ever onward (by contrast, Justice Lamar, who he’ll be replacing, was confirmed 3 days after he was nominated, without a hearing). The committee has called opponents of Brandeis to talk about his “reputation” amongst the Boston elite (they fail to use the phrase “jumped-up Jewboy,” but it’s implied) and it’s now going to call some of his clients to question them about attorney-client conversations.

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Today -100: March 4, 1916: Of votes against America and Verdun heroes

An unnamed Wilson administration official says that a vote for the congressional resolutions warning Americans against traveling on armed belligerent merchant ships is “a vote against America.” Sen. Thomas Gore (D-Oklahoma) reverses the phrasing of his resolution, turning it into a slight parody of Wilson’s position (a move you could see his grandson Gore Vidal making): “Resolved, That the sinking by a submarine without notice or warning of armed merchant vessels of her public enemy, resulting in the death of a citizen of the United States, would constitute a just and sufficient cause of war between the United States and the German Empire.” The Senate votes to table it, 68 (49 D’s, 19 R’s) to 14 (2 D’s, 12 R’s). Wesley Jones (R-Washington) withdraws his own resolution, pissed that Senate debate is being stifled by tabling motions. Jones thinks a question that might lead to war should be, you know, discussed.

Headline of the Day -100:

No doubt the name Philippe Pétain will forever resound in the hall of heroes of the French nation.

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Today -100: March 3, 1916: Of rumors of war, rules of engagement, fires, and coon songs

Rumors in D.C. claim that the German ambassador has warned that if the US breaks off diplomatic relations Germany will declare war. The German embassy denies it.

Sen. Thomas Gore (D-Oklahoma) says he’s heard that Wilson expects war and thinks it wouldn’t be a bad thing because it would bring the war to a much more rapid conclusion. The White House denies this.

Britain helpfully releases the orders it issued to armed merchant ships last October, which make clear that ships may fire their “defensive” guns at any German u-boat that approaches or follows them, without any other hostile act. Germany will point out that this is a funny definition of self-defense.

There are rumblings in the British House of Lords over the functioning of the “voluntary” recruitment scheme, including the easy granting of exemptions to men in particular occupations, especially in agriculture. Local tribunals in rural districts, filled with rural squires, are exempting their own employees.

There’s a suspicious fire at the Providence Journal, discovered by editor John Rathom. Unlike other things discovered by Rathom, such as German spies under various and sundry beds, this one is real. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Rathom set it himself.

Sweden bans citizens of any belligerent nation from making public speeches.

A quartet of singers who had been appearing at the Strand Theatre in NYC are fired after it turns out that they’re not refugees from Belgium after all, but from Brooklyn. “The suspicion of the management was not allayed when the singers who were dressed in the picturesque fashion of men who had undergone many hardships, stepped upon the stage and sang American coon songs. However, the quartet sang well, and the audiences liked them.”

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Today -100: March 2, 1916: Come on in, Portugal, the water’s fine

A week ago Portugal seized 36 German & Austrian merchant ships. Germany now demands their return, or else.

War. Or else war.

Emma Goldman and others speak at Carnegie Hall about birth control and the right to free speech on the subject.

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Today -100: March 1, 1916: Absolutely American in the highest and best sense, in the home sense, in the pride sense

Headline of the Day -100:

Not satisfied with getting his congressional allies to stifle the proposed resolution requesting US citizens not to travel on armed belligerent merchant ships, Woodrow Wilson demands that Congress hold votes on the resolutions, and reject them, so everyone knows that only he speaks for the United States. He says reports of divisions in Congress are being “made industrious use of in foreign capitals”, which “cannot fail to do the greatest harm and expose the country to the most serious risks.” So he wants a vote of confidence slash blank check. To make his imperiousness towards Congress even more obnoxious, he makes this demand in a letter to the acting chairman of the Rules Committee, bypassing the Foreign Relations Committee, and demands immediate action.

The NYT lauds Wilson’s action as “a bold and opportune challenge to the un-American element in Congress... beguiled, as we trust, by its own stupidity, but inspired by the voice of the alien within our gates.” Which is dickish even by the standards of the NYT editorial page.

Germany says it’s too late to modify its orders to u-boats on sinking armed merchant ships, since its subs are at sea now with the new orders. A German official says that subs will not wait to be fired on before sinking those ships, and adds that since there are no longer pirates on the high seas, there’s no justification for arming merchantmen. He also cites alleged captured British orders allowing the ships to fire on submarines that haven’t attacked them, proving that merchant ships are not armed merely for self-defense as the British have been claiming.

St. Louis voters approve, by 3 to 1, two segregation referenda banning blacks or whites moving into blocks 75% of whose residents are the other race. It’s the first ever segregation ordinance in the US passed by a referendum. White people can still have black servants and white buildings black janitors, you’ll be relieved to hear. However people who buy property in the “wrong” block will be banned from living in it. The referenda are called “an ordinance to prevent ill feeling, conflict, and collisions between the white and colored races in the City of St. Louis”. The real estate interests behind segregation claimed that if it was defeated, a “veritable army of Southern negroes” would invade the city, but deny that segregation is anti-negro and claimed that blacks too would vote for segregation, which is “absolutely American in the highest and best sense, in the home sense, in the pride sense, both for white and colored.” The ordinance will quickly be overturned in court after the NAACP files suit, but other means (racial covenants) will be found. These will also be ruled unconstitutional but St. Louis somehow still remains highly segregated.

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Today -100: February 29, 1916: Of armed ships, protectorates, non-slaves, and Henry James

The Canadian Parliament rejects women’s suffrage.

Germany tells the US it will only attack armed merchant ships without warning if it has “proof” they are armed, which it implies would consist of the ships actually shooting at them. That seems less like the clarification they’re pretending it is than backpedaling, since presumably subs were never required to warn ships that were already shooting at them that they would shoot back.

The US Senate passes the treaty establishing a de facto protectorate over Haiti, whose finances and police are now under American control. The US will also have the “right” to intervene militarily, just as in Cuba.

Headline of the Day -100:

Justice Clarence Shearn of the NY State Supreme Court. In this case, the Rev. Burton Lee, a former chaplain at Sing Sing, and his estranged wife had a separation agreement which said that each would get custody of one of their children. He broke the agreement, refusing to return the kid she got after a visit. He claims that under English Common Law fathers owned their children, so any such contract is void, citing Barry v. Mercein (1842), which said that husbands and wives couldn’t enter into contracts because wives had no separate legal existence (as English legal authority William Blackstone explained this principle in the 18th century, “The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband”). However, Justice Shearn says that we have “emerged from the dark ages when women were the same as slaves and chattels.” Good to know.

Henry James (The Ambassadors, Wings of the Dove, The Turn of the Screw, The American, The Portrait of a Lady, etc), dies in London at 73.

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Today -100: February 28, 1916: EXTRY!!!!!

Headline of the Day -100:

Otherwise known as not going to war.

For now.

Russia will now allow the wives and children of Jews who emigrated to the US to join them. They have been been banned from doing so since the start of the war.

Germany bans the importation of certain luxuries, including caviar, mandolins, pineapples, candy, perfumes, liquor, paintings, artificial flowers, feathers, etc.

Charlie Chaplin signs a contract with Mutual, giving him $10,000 a week for a year, with a $150,000 signing bonus, to direct and star in one movie per month. These will include The Rink, One A.M., The Floorwalker, and The Vagabond, which is pretty good value for money.

A NY magistrate refuses to hold two newsboys arrested for “selling papers in a loud tone of voice.”

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Today -100: February 27, 1916: Non

French-Canadians are threatening not to contribute funds or soldiers to the war unless their right to education in the French language is restored in Ontario.

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Today -100: February 26, 1916: Wiggle, woggle, wump

British newspapers are pleased, indeed smug, about Woodrow Wilson’s rejection of Germany’s intention (“impudent demands” – Daily Chronicle) to sink armed merchant vessels. The Morning Post: “It is the fate of America, whether it will or not, to make a choice between her own gods and Germany’s idols.” The Times: “The President remains immovably true to his lofty, moral attitude.” Ain’t it the truth.

Austria responds to the US protest over its attack on the Standard Oil tanker Petrolite, claiming that the u-boat which fired on it thought it was under attack, that the American flag the Petrolite was flying was a fake, and that the Petrolite gave the u-boat provisions voluntarily, without any coercion at all, and refused to accept any payment. The US believes the facts are otherwise.

The second issue of the satirical trench newspaper The Wipers Times is out. It announces that its subscribers will receive, free, life insurance entitling them to 11s. 7d. in the event of death caused by a submarine anywhere in the Ypres district.

And here’s a poem from it, entitled “Stop-gap”:

Little stacks of sandbags,
 Little lumps of clay;
Make our blooming trenches,
In which we work and play.

Merry little whizz-bang,*
 jolly little crump;**
Made our trench a picture,
 Wiggle, woggle, wump.

* A shell.
** A loud thudding sound caused by a shell.

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Today -100: February 25, 1916: We covet peace, and shall preserve it at any cost but the loss of honor

The New York section of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association holds a meeting of delegates to discuss how to pass the federal women’s suffrage amendment. A proposed memorial to Congress is read out, but there’s a bit of controversy over the bit saying that US women had become “subjects of men of alien races... often not speaking our language, not being able to read or write, knowing nothing of our institutions” and noting that “in November, 1915, men white, black, red, yellow, and brown were able to vote in New York State and the white women descendants of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were not.” The memorial is referred back to the Executive Committee for a less racist rewording, although some delegates protest that racist arguments are their most successful ones.

Pope Benedict asks Austria to stop bombing Italy, please and thank you.

Woodrow Wilson writes to Sen. William Stone (D-Missouri), chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, saying he “cannot consent to any abridgment of the rights of American citizens in any respect,” specifically, the “right” to travel on armed civilian vessels from belligerent nations without being sunk by German or Austrian submarines. “The honor and self-respect of the nation are involved. We covet peace, and shall preserve it at any cost but the loss of honor. To forbid our people to exercise their rights for fear we might be called upon to vindicate them would be a deep humiliation indeed. It would be an implicit, all but an explicit, acquiescence in the violation of the rights of mankind everywhere, and of whatever nation or allegiance. It would be a deliberate abdication of our hitherto proud position as spokesman, even amidst the turmoil of war, for the law and the right.” Quite the slippery slope, there.

In the Senate, Thomas Gore proposes a sense-of-the-Congress resolution (not requiring the president’s signature) asking citizens not to travel on armed vessels, the resolution saying “The right of American citizens to travel on armed belligerent vessels rather than upon unarmed vessels is essential neither to their life, liberty, or safety, nor to the independence, dignity, or security of the United States”. Put that way, it does seem like kind of a stupid thing to go to war over.

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Today -100: February 24, 1916: Still less does it want Congress to announce to the world that we are a nation of cowards

First NYT coverage of Verdun.

Headline of the Day -100:

Congressional Democratic leaders threaten that if Pres. Wilson doesn’t warn American citizens not to travel on armed merchant ships, which Germany will start sinking without warning on March 1st, then a Congressional resolution will do so. They’re afraid that Wilson’s obstinate insistence on what he considers American rights will result in war when a German sub, inevitably, kills Americans. Worse, a war over an issue many in Congress don’t consider war-worthy. This revolt is entirely a Democratic thing, with Republicans much more willing to go to war over stupid shit (I KNOW!) and backing the position of their supposed presidential front-runner Elihu Root. And if they happen to pick up the German vote, so much the better. One unnamed Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says, “The country doesn’t want war, but still less does it want Congress to announce to the world that we are a nation of cowards.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

King Nicholas of Montenegro has not been responding to “inquiries” from Austria, and they’re threatening to start treating Montenegro as a conquered country rather than a surrendered one.

Portugal seizes 36 German and Austrian merchant ships lying in the Tagus River. It will say that this is not an act of war, just a measure in the public interest. Germany will not be impressed.

Headline of the Day -100:  

In Berlin, supposedly. Not much point in having ration tickets if you don’t ensure the availability of the goods being rationed.

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Today -100: February 23, 1916: Russia’s better future is coming

Tsar Nicholas attends the opening of the Duma. This has never happened before because tsars liked to pretend that they’d never even heard of the Duma. Prime Minister Boris Stürmer tells the Duma, “Russia’s better future is coming.” The great prophet Boris Stürmer will die in prison next year.

The British government will create a new cabinet post, which will be held by Lord Robert Cecil: Blockade Minister. Which is a weird thing to put on your resumé.

Dr. David Allyn Gorton, founder and president of the Eugenic Society of America, dies at 83. At 78 he married his 38-year-old secretary as “a practical test of his eugenic theories”; when he was 80 they had twins. He planned to experiment on them to prove that old fathers are the best fathers, eugenically speaking.

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Today -100: February 22, 1916: Of rubber plotters, somber garb, and colonial troops

Headline of the Day -100:

This is a scheme to smuggle rubber from the US to Germany.

Aren’t you glad I deleted my joke about not letting them pay by check because it would bounce?

Headline of the Day -100:  

The US clothes-dyestuffs industry is expanding, but not enough to make up for the drop in European imports.

The military correspondent of the London Times suggests that Britain and France need to use way more African and Indian troops. He doesn’t explain why Africans and Indians would care to fight to preserve the British Empire, but then it probably never occurred to him that they might not.

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Today -100: February 21, 1916: Futurist music?

The Battle of Verdun begins. The Germans attack, as was the custom.

Denmark is again trying to sell the Danish West Indies to the United States, motivated in part by a recent strike by the natives. Next year it will sell the colony to the US, lock stock and ungrateful black people. It will be renamed the US Virgin Islands.

At the Hippodrome in New York, Charlie Chaplin takes over as conductor from John Philip Sousa “with apparent knowledge of how to do it and with a great variety of gestures,” conducting his own composition “The Peace March” (he’s just started a music business sideline, which won’t last long - did you know his first Academy Award was for composing the music for Limelight in 1952? I did). The program also features pianist/composer Leo Ornstein, who “played some real and some futurist music.”

Rosa Luxemburg is released from prison. She won’t be out very long.

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Today -100: February 20, 1916: Of dog sleds, lynchings metaphorical and otherwise, and doras

The US plans to replace dog-sled mail delivery in parts of Alaska with airplanes.

Georgia is a little upset that everyone’s noticed that one-third of the lynchings in the US last year took place in Georgia. Some are saying that the open defiance of the state’s prohibition laws has led to a disregard of the law in the form of lynching, which is just plain logic. I can’t help noticing that there are people who are referring to the ouster last year of Atlanta Police Chief James Beavers, because of his too-zealous enforcement of prohibition, as a lynching. Beavers took part in the investigation of Leo Frank and presumably others who were actually lynched in 1915, so maybe ixnay on the inchlay alktay, guys.

The British government charges Thomas Rees of the London District Engineers’ Society under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) for calling a strike, the first such prosecution under the act, but not the last. The workers were being under-paid for night work.

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Today -100: February 19, 1916: Joy-riding with the jingoes

In his newspaper The Commoner, William Jennings Bryan says Woodrow Wilson, with his advocacy of military preparedness, is “joy-riding with the jingoes”.

Members of the Oklahoma state legislature throw inkwells and paperweights at each other during heated discussion of what measure of negro voter suppression they can get away with to replace the grandfather clause which the US Supreme Court struck down last June. The NYT gives a blow-by-blow of the fight but fails to mention any details of the proposals.

The Virginia Legislature rejects a resolution for a referendum on women’s suffrage.

The federal government drops the prosecution of Margaret Sanger for her birth control periodical “The Woman Rebel.” She has spent much of the time since the indictment in 1914 in exile in Europe, where she learned about more forms of contraception (namely, diaphragms).

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: France claims to have foiled a German plot to get native Malagasy to overthrow the French colonial regime in Madagascar and massacre French officials and settlers.

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Today -100: February 18, 1916: Even handshaking!

French General Dubois issues an army order: “The Army Commander has learned with indignation that at several places on the front conversations and even handshaking with the Germans have taken place. I am at a loss to understand how a Frenchman can sink so low as to shake hands with such bandits, who spread incendiarism and destruction, assassinate women, children and old men, treacherously kill prisoners, and kill our wounded by tortures.”

France and Germany agree to pay the salaries of POWs (that is, Germany will pay French prisoners and France will pay German prisoners). Not full salaries, but the pay given to officers on leave.

The Lusitania negotiations between the US and Germany, so nearly concluded, are reopened because of the German declaration that it will sink armed merchant ships. The US now wants additional assurances, while Germany says it won’t sink armed ships if the US can get Britain to guarantee that their guns will only be used defensively and not to attack u-boats.

The New York Athletic Commission does not, after all, rescind its ban on mixed-race boxing matches, despite the ban being in violation of the NY constitution.

Headline of the Day -100:

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