WWI

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

A lot of interesting stuff in the paper "today" and I am a bit late getting this up.

• Front page feature map of "Extreme Left in Western Theatre" where the Germans are still unable to push forward toward the French ports on the English Channel.
• Meanwhile on the Eastern Front, the Russians have the Germans and Austrians on the run.
• Enemy aliens in Canada are becoming a "hard problem" since they cannot find work because no one will hire them and they cannot leave the country because of travel restrictions. [The "solution" will be concentration camps and forced labour building things like Banff National Park.]
• British forces in the Pacific and Africa are taking over many German colonies, securing shipping and cutting off German supplies and communication.
• American insurance companies whining about having to pay out life insurance policies on dead soldiers.
• Gilbert and Sullivan revival at Royal Victoria theatre much anticipated. Photo of cast of "H.M.S. Pinafore" featured.
• Meanwhile "The Great Question" to play at the Pantages. "The Great Question" being, "Are society women who paint their faces and dress immodestly really to pitied if they are insulted in the streets?" [This, plus last week's black face minstrel act really brings home that the some things really have improved in the last hundred years.]
• Full page feature on "The Submarine" [too much to reproduce in full]
• Scenic photos of Salisbury Plain where Canadians are camped for training, including a picture of Stonehenge.
• Half page article by Sir Ernest Shackleton on the provisioning of his trans-Antarctic expedition.
• [Amazingly patronizing] Article on the "Eskimos and Indians" living in the far north.
• The usual excellent summary of the week's events in the children's section including several events I haven't already covered [and just imagine a children's section of a newspaper today starting out with "The death of the Marquis de San Giulano" and ending with "Not so much has been heard this week about cholera in Galicia."]
• And the ads that caught my eye.

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

• Headline "Little Ground Gained or Lost" sums up progress on the Western front. However, the article includes story of a foiled attempt to lead a British ammunition convoy into an ambush that is rather interesting.
• More praise for British troops from India, this time from the Italian foreign office in Berlin, who also go on to condemn "French black troops from Senegal" as "bloodthirsty".
• Two Sikhs arrested in Vancouver for "conspiring to procure persons to murder other persons".
• German aeroplanes chased away from Paris by French aeroplanes.
• Germans have developed a way to launch torpedoes from Zeppelins and plan to use the new technology in naval attacks on the North Sea.
• Details of the shoot-out with Sedro-Woolley bank robbers.
• Further negotiations to secure preferential lumber trade with Australia.

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

Heavy fighting continues on both fronts. Line on the Western front are largely unchanged. On the Eastern front Germans have been repulsed from Warsaw by Russians.

• Indian troops fighting for the British Empire lauded by Lord Crewe, Secretary of State for India.
• Turkey still not officially in the war, but Germans are running the government and in control of the forts.
• Sedro-Woolley bank robbers caught in a gun-fight just north of the border from Blaine. Two of the robbers killed, one immigration officer killed.
• United States imposes a 15% duty on lumber with no warning to B.C. producers.
• Two new battalions to be raised and trained, one in Victoria and one in Vancouver.
• "Members of German and Austrian birth and parentage" are barred from a London golf club.
• Flooding from a typhoon a couple days ago is hampering Japanese and British advance on German fort at Tsing Tau.
• Full page ad for "Made In Victoria Fair"
• Cute Hallowe'en ad.

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

• Panoramic view of River Aisne
• Germans planning aerial raid on London. London preparing.
• Evidence that Germans had been laying foundations for gun emplacements near Dunkirk before the war started.
• Evidence that Germany established a supply and communications network in Russian Poland before war started.
• Sedro-Woolley bank robbery suspects arrested in Burnaby
• Internments of "enemy aliens" beginning in England [Canada won't be far behind]
• Quarter page ad urging merchants to push "Made in Canada" goods.
• Ad for gasoline at 18¢ per gallon [that's about 3.9¢ per litre]
• Fantastically illustrated quarter page ad for Fry's Cocoa

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

German attempts to advance along the coast of Belgium toward the English Channel continue to not go well. Serbians have taken forts in Sarajevo (and even though that's were the war started, it does seem like a side-show now.)

• An estimated two million Belgians are refugees outside Belgium
• Body washed ashore near Carmanah
• Bomb explodes in Montréal.
• Proposal to build "airships of all types" in Victoria.
• Miss Frankie Seigel, "first-rate blackface comedian of the Bert Williams type" to perform at Pantages Theatre.
• "More Reports of Atrocities" by Germans at length and in gruesome detail.

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

• German advance toward French ports on the English Channel still stymied.
• Hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees in England and Netherlands. Those still in Belgium facing starvation.
• Trade negotiations for British Columbia to provide lumber to Australia at a preferential within-the-Empire rate going well.

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

• Map showing current lines of the Western front.
• Summary of the current state of the war
• Boer rebellion
• Armed bank robbers in Sedro-Woolley
• Naval fighting on Lake Nyassa [Lake Malawi]
• Summary of the weeks events in the Children's section of the Sunday magazine

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

• Large photos of Plymouth harbour, where Canadian troops are arriving
• Belgian Queen Elizabeth staying with her husband King Albert at the front, called "an example of dignity and courage worthy of classic times."
• Correspondent recounts experience visiting Canadians encamped on Salisbury Plain.
• German push toward Dunkirk not going well.

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

• Estimated the 150,000 Belgian refugees are now in England
• German reconnaissance aeroplane downed over Ostend.
• It is suggested that London's art treasures be moved to safer locations to protect them from possible raids by airships.
• Canadian troops arriving in Plymouth
• Seventy-five or so men from Vancouver and twenty-five from Victoria currently training in Victoria to serve in Bermuda.
• First British ships arriving in U.K. from the west coast via the Panama Canal.
• Panama canal currently closed do to landslide.
• Boston considering starting a professional hockey team

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

Lead news is about how well protected French ports such as Calais are, but it comes off as hollow propaganda after the fall of Antwerp, one of the best fortified cities in Western Europe and...