Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Today -100: January 20, 1915: Of carteretism, colonial wars, civilizing flags, humorous soldiers, zeppelins, and cardinals


Deputy sheriffs employed as guards by the Liebig Fertilizer Works in Carteret, New Jersey, shoot 20 strikers, killing one; four more will die later. All of them were shot from behind, presumably as they were running away. The strike is against a 20% wage cut and they had blocked a railroad line to prevent strikebreakers being brought in. The deputies are claiming the strikers fired first; no witness who is not a deputy sheriff is backing up their story.


Germany invaded Portuguese Angola a couple of months ago but still hasn’t declared war on Portugal, evidently because Portugal would then seize as prizes of war all the ships it interned at the start of the war. The war between the two countries is confined entirely to the colonies.

Senator-Elect Warren G. Harding says “The magnificent resources of Mexico never will be given to mankind, and that country never will come into its own until it is brought under the civilizing influences of the American flag. How and when that condition will be brought about is not for me to say at this time, but it is coming.”

Rudyard Kipling claims Britain’s soldiers “are humourous because, for all our long faces, we are the only genuinely humorous race on earth.”

Zeppelin raids in England, the first on the British mainland (more on this tomorrow).

Cardinal Mercier, archbishop of Malines, Belgium, denies German claims that his house arrest isn’t interfering with his episcopal work in a letter sent secretly to all the priests in his diocese.


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