The Daily Colonist, August 23, 1914
Sat, 2014/08/23 - 11:16am
« previous next »#dailycolonist1914 - News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today. August 23 was a Sunday, so this is the big Sunday paper with a pull-out section, but the really interesting stuff today is not the top headlines or the pull-out magazine articles, but several of the minor articles.
Top stories include:
- Major fighting in Belgium,
- Russian and Serbian advances against Austria,
- Pope Pious X being entombed, and
- The deadline of Japanese ultimatum to Germany passing without a response.
But the more telling minor stories tell a tale of the rise of modern warfare. Interminable trench warfare hasn't begun just yet, but strange clashes between ancient warfare and modern are happening making a bad week to be German cavalry:
- German cavalry charge in Belgium is met with a squad of armoured cars with machine guns,
- and a two German cavalry camps are bombed by a French dirigible.
The vilification of Germans continues with some small articles:
- German mines sink a neutral Danish ship, in violation of the conventions of war,
- The French accuse the German of mistreating prisoners of war, in violation of the conventions of war, and
- German dum-dum bullets (hollow-point) found by the French and in the bodies French dead, in violation of The Hauge convention of 1899, signed by United States, Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Japan, and China. Note that in down the road a bit, Germany will accuse Belgium of using dum-dum bullets in combat.
- Germans being rude to the mayor of Brussels and goose-stepping through the city square.
And some other interesting side-lines:
- Troops leave Vancouver for the war,
- Revenues in the first week of the Panama Canal are lower than anticipated due to the war, but still pretty impressive.
- American painter John Singer Sargent is missing in Austria, along with his British traveling companion, and is believed to be held by the Austrian military.
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