The Daily Colonist, April 13-19, 1915

#dailycolonist1915 - The news out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago:

• Tuesday, April 13, 1915
  • Surrounded by stories of "piracy" and "murder" by German submarines is a story on a secret British countermeasure that is proving effective against submarines [which, with a century of hindsight, this is probably an early form of sonar, which the British started developing in earnest in 1912 after the Titanic disaster as a means for ships to avoid marine obstacles.]
     
• Wednesday, April 14, 1915
  • A small indication that Italy may be nearing entering the war: Paris newspaper Le Temps reports that the Italian government has packed away art treasures from Venice and Florence for safe keeping.
  • Germans protest the British treating captured submarine crews as criminal prisoners and not prisoners of war and threatens to retaliate by treating British officers held prisoner similarly.
  •  The British Foreign Office asks the American government to look into the conditions of British officers held by Germany.
  • A house is blown up by dynamite in Vancouver "in the East Indian quarter, Kitsilano" in what is believed to be a feud over the outcome of the Komogata Maru incident. One man is decapitated, two injured, and seven more in the house are unharmed.
     
• Thursday, April 15, 1915
  • Canadians observed training with lacrosse sticks near the front lines for an undisclosed purpose.
  • United States State Department officially asks U.S. ambassador in Berlin to look into treatment of British prisoners of war.
  • [A little bit of name-calling and drama:] An editorial apologising for an ad that ran on the 2nd and drawing attention to a new ad from the same advertiser that also apologises for the previous ad. The apology in the ad states that the clerk at the Colonist that wrote the ad was sacked. I've also included the ad from 2nd, which prints a copy of a Vancouver court document where a retailer is suing the wholesaler for being overcharged and the advertiser in question, another wholesaler, accuses their competitor of acting like "might is right" Germans. 
     
• Friday, April 16, 1915
  • An air-raid on Essex and Suffolk by two Zeppelins. This is close on the heels of another Zeppelin attack in Northumbland earlier in the week. The Zeppelin from that attack is reported to have returned safely to Germany.
  • In a dispatch from Rome, the Italian government announces that they might definitely, sometime in the next few weeks, maybe decide that they might do something official regarding the war, but they aren't sure what yet.
     
• Saturday, April 17, 1915
  • Map on the front page illustrating origins and paths of aircraft used in an air-raid on Kent. 
  • American ambassador reports that British officers are being held in detention barracks the same as ordinary prisoners of war in retaliation for German submarine officers being treated like ordinary criminal prisoners by Britain. 
     
• Sunday, April 18, 1915
  • Six German children are killed in a French air-raid. The article back-handedly blames the Germans for being too cocky and not taking cover during the French attack. 
  • An amazing ad for B.C. Tel showing "Telephonia Emancipating the World from the Drudgery of Trudgery" and detailing the number of telephones installed in Victoria from 1880 (46) to 1915 (8820). [And it is interesting to note that the first telephone in Victoria, with the phone number of "1" was for the editor of The British Colonist, is still in service as 250-380-5201 and still belongs to The Victoria Times-Colonist.]
     
• Monday, April 19, 1915
  • [no paper on Mondays]

[ source: http://www.britishcolonist.ca/dateList.php?year=1915 ]