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The Daily Colonist, December 24, 1914

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

  • King of Belgium makes a Christmas dispatch from the front with his troops praising the Belgian army and thanking Americans for their relief work in occupied Belgium.
  • The Kaiser of Germany is traveling along the Western front, meeting troops to deliver season's greetings. Dispatch states, "Christmas will be celebrated in German trenches as far as possible." [And if this isn't enough to debunk the myth that the Christmas Truce of 1914 was a spontaneous event, read on...]
  • The Emperor of Austria-Hungary is reported to be near death, having already received last sacraments.
  • King George and Queen Mary are to spend Christmas at York Cottage, Sandringham, Norfolk and will be joined by Prince Albert, who is not scheduled to return to active duty (following his appendicitis) until January, and Edward, Prince of Wales, "based on the assumption that although the Pope's efforts failed to arrange a truce on Christmas Day there will, nevertheless, be an informal suspension of hostilities." [So much for the myth of the unplanned Christmas Truce.]
  • In local news, Miss Jones of Quarantine Station [Metchosin] fell off the dock and lost her umbrella. 
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, chimes in on the idea that the Komagata Maru incident was a German plot to place the British governement "in the terrible dilemma of either supporting Canada against India or India against Canada." 

https://archive.org/details/dailycolonist57y12uvic