WWI

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

It's Sunday in 1914, and there are some interesting things in the paper and the magazine section today, both from a 1914 point of view and a 2014 point of view:

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

• Aeroplane over Antwerp, "escaped in the direction of Wilryck"
• Government of Britain decides to cancel pension to cousin of Queen Victoria living in Germany.
• Mention that "German's Trenches Are Formidable"
• Notices for Germans and Austrio-Hungarians to register are multiplying.
• Ads that caught my eye.

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

• Tensions rising between Germany and Italy
• Chinese immigration curtailed
• more news and some advertising excerpts...

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

• Rheims retaken, Germans pushed well back from Paris
• 40,000 Canadians to fight overseas
• Black-out regulations for London questioned
• Cowichan Fall Fair
• Hilarious attempt to market American beer

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

News from the European fronts continues to be more of the same. The Germans are in retreat and the Austrians are in disarray. Most of the news is about the German push toward Paris being a failure, but no real details and virtually nothing new since yesterday.

• Austrians drafting younger men
• Canada sending cavalry
• Financial cost of the war
• Irish independence postponed
• Ukrainian interment picking up steam
• Records replacing cylinders

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

• German retreats
• Germans capture trans-Pacific cable relay station
• 1916 Olympics likely to be cancelled
• Ads that caught my eye

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

The war reporting is frustratingly vague again: an advance here, a retreat there, nothing substantial and all of it happening on an abstract, unimaginable scale. German news reporting is lampooned as ridiculous propaganda and the Germans are made out to be callous villains while the Austrians are cowards.

• Aerial battle over France
• Canadian troops to be deployed
• New moon discovered around Jupiter
• and more...

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

Once again the news from the Western and Russian fronts is sweeping in scope, vague, and doesn't really say anything. Topics I've picked out today include:
• censorship
• suspicious activity in Calgary
• Deepest, darkest Africa
• and some local interest and beautiful illustrations.

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

More of the same in Europe. A Belgian town recovered, German losses and advances in France, Russian advances, it is hard to keep track of what's going on.

• Fighting in Africa
• The world "attrition" appears for the first time that I've noticed
• Saskatchewan brings a knife to the gun-fight
• An editorial about the scale of the war
• Germans and Austro-Hungarians are ordered to register in Victoria.
• The White Star Line H.M.S. Oceanic is wrecked

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

News from the front is pretty sparse today. Fighting on the Western Front is spread over a large area with no notable developments. What's remarkable about today's paper requires taking the blinders off and reading with 21st century hindsight. Colonialism, nationalism and racism are assumed truths in 1914. Sometimes it is just a vague, permeating force, and sometimes it is so blatant and bizarrely casual that it is stunning that anyone ever thought this way (but then it only takes reading a few YouTube comments to realize maybe not so much has changed.)
• The beginnings of the Ukrainian Internment
• Paranoia over "Asiatic" immigration and other casual colonial racism
• Weird local news...