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The Daily Colonist, November 27, 1914

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#dailycolonist1914 - News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today.

Today it is not the battles in Europe and elsewhere that make the most interesting news. Today is about propaganda, technology, accidents and speculation:

  • An article claims that 120,000 cases of suspicious aliens have been investigated in Britiain, with over 6,000 homes searched, resulting in the internment of 342 persons. It's noted that the suggestion to summarily lock up all Germans and Austria would be a "gross injustice" but it seems to me that the article is very much a justification of the injustice being done to so-called "enemy aliens" in Canada.
  • On a similar note, there is a rather strange little article on the front page about unnaturalized aliens from Germany and Austria having been allowed to vote in municipal elections even though "there is nothing the Dominion laws" which allows it. This is pretty clearly scare mongering also in the name of justifying the interments.
  • Italy is preparing for war.
  • A British aviator destroys a German ammunition train. The explosion is felt for miles. 
  • A French jeweler has invented a bomb specifically for taking out Zeppelins.
  • The ammunition magazine of a battleship guarding the mouth of the Thames River explodes, resulting in an explosion felt up to eight miles away and utterly destroying the ship. The article includes an eyewitness account and a photo of the battleship.
  • The question of aeroplanes and airships from warring nations crossing through neutral air-space comes up in the House of Commons in London. Winston Churchill [the same man who will be Prime Minister of England during WWII, who is First Admiral of the Navy at this point] states that while British airmen have been instructed not to fly over neutral countries, no international agreement specifically prevents it.
  • In Corona, California, the winner of 300-mile annual Corona Road Race, pulls off a record-breaking average speed of 87 mph., a feat requiring frequently travelling "at a rate of nearly 100 miles an hour" in order to make up for pit-stops. 
  • Science fiction author H. G. Wells provides his thoughts on what would happen to a German invading force in England.
  • An article titled "Islam is a Pawn in Germanic Struggle" evaluates the political instability of the Ottoman Empire and speculates on what will come of it because of the war.

http://www.britishcolonist.ca/dateList.php?year=1914