Belgium

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

At this point in 1914 the war is 3½ months old and virtually no one has any idea that there will be another four full years of absolute horror to come. Remember that we are talking about 16,000,000 people dying and another 20,000,000 being injured, many horrifically, for the sake of a handful of cousins using the excuse of 2 murders to steal land and resources from each-other and everyone else. Remember the gory truth not the "glory" and ask yourself "what for?", lest ye forget.

The news out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today:

• Map of the current lines of the Western front on the front page.
• [Hidden on the 3rd page, so insignificant at the time that the article cuts off in mid-sentence, the Ukrainian internment has truly begun.] All enemy aliens must register, and "As soon as the approximate number of aliens of enemy countries in Canada is known, the Government will proceed with the establishment of concentration camps."
• much more...

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

A lot of interesting stuff in the paper "today" and I am a bit late getting this up.

• Front page feature map of "Extreme Left in Western Theatre" where the Germans are still unable to push forward toward the French ports on the English Channel.
• Meanwhile on the Eastern Front, the Russians have the Germans and Austrians on the run.
• Enemy aliens in Canada are becoming a "hard problem" since they cannot find work because no one will hire them and they cannot leave the country because of travel restrictions. [The "solution" will be concentration camps and forced labour building things like Banff National Park.]
• British forces in the Pacific and Africa are taking over many German colonies, securing shipping and cutting off German supplies and communication.
• American insurance companies whining about having to pay out life insurance policies on dead soldiers.
• Gilbert and Sullivan revival at Royal Victoria theatre much anticipated. Photo of cast of "H.M.S. Pinafore" featured.
• Meanwhile "The Great Question" to play at the Pantages. "The Great Question" being, "Are society women who paint their faces and dress immodestly really to pitied if they are insulted in the streets?" [This, plus last week's black face minstrel act really brings home that the some things really have improved in the last hundred years.]
• Full page feature on "The Submarine" [too much to reproduce in full]
• Scenic photos of Salisbury Plain where Canadians are camped for training, including a picture of Stonehenge.
• Half page article by Sir Ernest Shackleton on the provisioning of his trans-Antarctic expedition.
• [Amazingly patronizing] Article on the "Eskimos and Indians" living in the far north.
• The usual excellent summary of the week's events in the children's section including several events I haven't already covered [and just imagine a children's section of a newspaper today starting out with "The death of the Marquis de San Giulano" and ending with "Not so much has been heard this week about cholera in Galicia."]
• And the ads that caught my eye.

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

Heavy fighting continues on both fronts. Line on the Western front are largely unchanged. On the Eastern front Germans have been repulsed from Warsaw by Russians.

• Indian troops fighting for the British Empire lauded by Lord Crewe, Secretary of State for India.
• Turkey still not officially in the war, but Germans are running the government and in control of the forts.
• Sedro-Woolley bank robbers caught in a gun-fight just north of the border from Blaine. Two of the robbers killed, one immigration officer killed.
• United States imposes a 15% duty on lumber with no warning to B.C. producers.
• Two new battalions to be raised and trained, one in Victoria and one in Vancouver.
• "Members of German and Austrian birth and parentage" are barred from a London golf club.
• Flooding from a typhoon a couple days ago is hampering Japanese and British advance on German fort at Tsing Tau.
• Full page ad for "Made In Victoria Fair"
• Cute Hallowe'en ad.

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

German attempts to advance along the coast of Belgium toward the English Channel continue to not go well. Serbians have taken forts in Sarajevo (and even though that's were the war started, it does seem like a side-show now.)

• An estimated two million Belgians are refugees outside Belgium
• Body washed ashore near Carmanah
• Bomb explodes in Montréal.
• Proposal to build "airships of all types" in Victoria.
• Miss Frankie Seigel, "first-rate blackface comedian of the Bert Williams type" to perform at Pantages Theatre.
• "More Reports of Atrocities" by Germans at length and in gruesome detail.

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today:

• German advance toward French ports on the English Channel still stymied.
• Hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees in England and Netherlands. Those still in Belgium facing starvation.
• Trade negotiations for British Columbia to provide lumber to Australia at a preferential within-the-Empire rate going well.

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today:

• Map showing current lines of the Western front.
• Summary of the current state of the war
• Boer rebellion
• Armed bank robbers in Sedro-Woolley
• Naval fighting on Lake Nyassa [Lake Malawi]
• Summary of the weeks events in the Children's section of the Sunday magazine

News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today:

• Estimated the 150,000 Belgian refugees are now in England
• German reconnaissance aeroplane downed over Ostend.
• It is suggested that London's art treasures be moved to safer locations to protect them from possible raids by airships.
• Canadian troops arriving in Plymouth
• Seventy-five or so men from Vancouver and twenty-five from Victoria currently training in Victoria to serve in Bermuda.
• First British ships arriving in U.K. from the west coast via the Panama Canal.
• Panama canal currently closed do to landslide.
• Boston considering starting a professional hockey team

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

Lead news is about how well protected French ports such as Calais are, but it comes off as hollow propaganda after the fall of Antwerp, one of the best fortified cities in Western Europe and...

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

Antwerp is the big news today. The Germans have been attacking the outer defences for days now. Refugees from surrounding villages have been streaming into the city and also trying to escape north to the Netherlands. My maternal grandparents are living through this, my grandmother would have been 10 and my grandfather 14 at the time.