A ripple of excitement on the Bay of Berlin The Berlin Daily Telegraph did a mini-exposé on William Kingsley, the man behind the injunction to stop the name change vote. A riffle through recruiting office files revealed he was a socialist slacker—this allowed a nebulous tie-in to the anti-name changer group with enemy aliens. Without […] Read more…
The ladies’ ten-day recruitment campaign ended without either fanfare or an inkling of results–except to say empty bunks meant a last-ditch sign-up campaign had to be launched. Recruitment meetings continued to attract “the usual crowd” of ladies and old tigers; eligible, fit young men were nowhere to be found. Woe betides these slackers, for “they […] Read more…
Irish Uprising News from Ireland was slow and—at least at first–sparse. Apart from cut communications lines, London’s censors vetted the uprising’s details, leaving many in the dark. By the end of this week—10 days after the rebellion began—more than 100 people were killed or wounded, the street fighting subsided, and more than 1000 insurgents were […] Read more…
St Julien Day 22 April 1915 marked the first time a large quantity of deadly gas was deployed in battle. On that date, the Germans unleashed 160 tons of asphyxiating gas on Allied soldiers at Ypres. The unsuspecting men were not equipped to handle the yellow-green chlorine cloud that smelled of pineapples and pepper. Some […] Read more…
Playing around with prohibition Legislators added and refined clauses as they continued to debate the merits of Premier Hearst’s prohibition bill. Every municipality would have at least one licensed hotel (“standard hotels”), and boarding houses could bill themselves as such. For an annual licensing fee of $1 (just less than $20—see notes on conversion), these […] Read more…
240 men in three weeks The local military recruitment committee’s aggressive “700 men in three weeks” campaign limped to an end. The 118th Battalion’s numbers stood at 735 men—short of the desired 1000. The previous 21 days’ tonal shifts seemed to track to the waves of interest in the crusade. It began with optimism when […] Read more…