https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/king-at-baseball-match-krzfp3llt
JULY 5, 1918
King at baseball match
Yesterday’s baseball match on the Chelsea Football Ground was an awakener for London, a revelation of America at play. The afternoon was as strenuous as a pillow-fight in a boys’ dormitory, and took us away to those distant times when we could rejoice under a blue sky without looking for Zeppelins and Gothas.
The afternoon passed in such a pandemonium as was perhaps never heard before on an English playing-field; not even on a football ground. The United States seemed to be shouting in chorus and Great Britain joined in. Never, moreover, was a football ground so arrayed. The dingy surroundings were shut out by a square mile or two of flags, “Old Glory” and the Union Jack predominating. The grandstand was gorgeously draped, and the King and Queen went to their seats by a flowery way. Both for distinction and for enthusiasm the gathering was without precedent in baseball, or rather “the ball game,” as the more knowing spectators were careful to call it. The Army players wore green with blue caps, the Navy blue trimmed with red. They assembled before the Royal box, and the King, descending among them, shook hands with the captains.
Baseball is one of the fastest and most exciting methods of getting breathless ever invented. It calls for great skill, and its rewards are salaries beyond the dreams of avarice. The dignity of cricket it disowns; the tremulous tumult of football is as the recreation of well-mannered mice by comparison. The players think by lightning and field, catch, and throw with the certainty of a stopwatch. As if the chaff of the spectators were not sufficient for them, they chivy one another. The catcher is padded like an armchair, and must be able to take punishment with the calm of a prize-fighter.
We should not care to say which was the better side because, frankly, we do not know. But the Navy won by two to one and appeared to deserve its victory. Naval officers rubbed shoulders with Army officers, the uniforms of the United States with those of the United Kingdom. The Stars and Stripes was waved by every man, woman, and child; and there could be no doubt of a whole-hearted acceptance of America as a comrade in play and a near relation in the great work that lies before the two big English-speaking families.
JULY 4, 1918
Influenza epidemic spreading
The influenza epidemic shows no sign of abatement and in many large towns schools have been closed and business is seriously hampered. The Irish Registrar-General reported five deaths due to influenza in Dublin last week. There have also been fatal cases in London. In Birmingham and district the doctors are at their wits’ end to know how to deal with the number of patients. One found 178 waiting for him when he arrived at his surgery. Last week there were 10 deaths in the city traceable to the disease. Many teachers and hundreds of children are away from school. The munition factories and ironworks are seriously affected. Numbers of men and women have had to be sent home in ambulances owing to the suddenness of the seizure. The doctors’ surgeries in Manchester are not only crowded, but queues have to be controlled outside dispensing centres. Schools have been closed, and large business firms are severely handicapped. The authorities agree that the present disease resembles a form of West Indian fever known as “deugnes”. Sixty tramway-car drivers and guards are off duty, and at the sheds absentees number 200. A prisoner at the assizes could not be tried for bigamy because he was suffering from influenza. There are many victims in Newcastle, on Tyneside, and in Northumberland. Several of the city policemen and firemen have been overcome, and a few persons have collapsed in the streets. Numbers of nurses and medical students are affected. In the surrounding country the epidemic is equally severe. Coalminers especially have been attacked. One colliery had 18 underground lads “off” in a single day. The Nottinghamshire collieries have had similar experiences. In a pit at Mansfield 250 men were out one day, and the hosiery and boot factories have lost many of their women workers. One of the biggest mills has had to close and several deaths are reported. The epidemic is spreading in Surrey, particularly in the Egham and Woking areas.
At an inquest at Deptford on two boys of 10 years of age the doctor said that the evidence pointed to influenza being the cause of death. He expressed the opinion that germs entered by the mouth and nose. To rinse the mouth and nostrils every morning with a tepid solution of salt and water was a good safeguard.
JULY 3, 1918
Rumours of ex-tsar’s fate
From our own correspondent, Petrograd. Persistent rumours have circulated here and in Moscow for several days past that the ex-Tsar Nicholas met with a violent death in a special train from Ekaterinburg to Perm. His removal in a hurry from Ekaterinburg was considered necessary when that town was threatened by the Czecho-Slovak movement. Details of this sensational incident have been much elaborated by the “bourgeois” Press.
It was stated that Nicholas Romanoff had a vehement altercation with one of the soldiers on duty in the train and was killed by a bayonet thrust. It was ascertained from Perm that when the ex-Empress with her children got out of the train the ex-Tsar was not with them. The People’s Commissioners at Moscow said they had no news on the subject. Nor was any forthcoming from the German Embassy, which was also applied to as the best focus of information now in Russia. This morning the Press Bureau of the Soviet Commissioners states that no mention has been made in the daily communications from Ekaterinburg; therefore the story must be a baseless fabrication.
The report of the disappearance of the ex-Tsar’s brother Michael from Perm seems to be better founded. It is not known how the ex-Grand Duke made good his escape, but Archbishop Andronica of Perm has been arrested for complicity. One report says Michael Romanoff is at Omsk, and has been put at the head of the Siberian revolt. Another locates him at Kieff with his friend General Skoropadski, who was one of his supporters in Petrograd when the Grand Duke was out of favour with his brother the Tsar on account of his morganatic marriage. His wife, the Countess Brasova, was arrested in Petrograd a few days ago.
There is also a rumour that the ex-Tsar’s young son Alexis died a fortnight ago, either at Tobolsk or after his removal from Tobolsk, but no confirmation or contradiction of this has yet appeared. Every time this kind of public prominence is given to the Romanoff family people think something serious is on foot. Bolshevists are getting impatient of these frequent surprises about the deposed dynasty, and the question is again raised as to the advisability of settling the fate of the Romanoffs, so as to be done with them once for all.
JULY 2, 1918
Hospital ship outrage off the Fastnet
The Secretary of the Admiralty made the following announcement yesterday: At 9.30 pm (ship time) on June 27, when 116 miles south-west of the Fastnet, his Majesty’s Hospital Ship Llandovery Castle (Captain E A Sylvester) was torpedoed by enemy submarine while showing all her navigating and regulation hospital lights, and sank in about 10 minutes. She was homeward bound from Canada, and therefore had no sick or wounded on board, but her crew consisted of 164 officers and men, and she carried 80 Canadian Army Medical and 14 female nurses. Of this total of 258, only one boat with 24 survivors has so far reached port.
An officer of the Lysander, the destroyer which picked up the survivors, gave an account of the rescue to a representative of The Times. “We were returning to our base after duty at sea and sighted a boat under sail. When we got near we found it held five officers and 19 men. They included Captain Sylvester, Major Lyon, of the Canadian RAMC, Army orderlies, and some of the crew. All were cheery, and we gave them food. The circumstances of the attack appear to be these: While steaming with all lights on, the Llandovery Castle suddenly felt a tremendous explosion, as though a Zeppelin bomb had been dropped on board. Attempts to send out an SOS signal were in vain, as everything had been brought down. Seven boats were lowered, though some were swamped and capsized when the ship went down. One of these carried 14 nurses. All are feared drowned. When everyone but a few hands had left the ship the captain went to his cabin to get an electric torch and his pipe, and then made for the last boat. While they were rescuing the last man a voice was heard calling, ‘Come alongside,’ and the submarine was seen. Shots were fired and the enemy threatened to use his big gun. The captain and Major Lyon then boarded the submarine and were questioned.
“It is the opinion of the survivors that the enemy tried to destroy all trace of the outrage. The submarine dashed to and fro among the wreckage, scattering everything in its path, and the captain’s boat had the narrowest shave from being rammed and sunk. A thorough search has been made of the area, but there is no sign of wreckage.”
Novel war devices
JUNE 30, 1918
The Inventions Department of the Ministry of Munitions receive almost every day ideas of the most novel kind. All are carefully considered. Some are useful, but almost nine-tenths are wholly impracticable. In an article on the subject, published in the Ministry of Munitions Journal, it is said that the following suggestions for dealing with hostile aircraft have been received: the clouds are to be frozen artificially and guns mounted on them; heavy guns are to be suspended from captive balloons; the moon is to be covered with a big black balloon; aeroplanes are to be armed with scissors or scythes, like Boadicea’s chariot; heat rays are to be projected for the purpose of setting Zeppelins on fire. One of the most popular suggestions is to attach a searchlight to an anti-aircraft gun, get the light on the object, and shoot along the beam: but unfortunately the path of a shell is quite different from that of a ray of light. Most elaborate “decoy” schemes are sometimes worked out for the confusion of the enemy, comprising in at least one case sham factories with chimneys and hooters complete. To prevent the polished lines of a railway showing at night the last carriage of the last train, according to another correspondent, was to camouflage them by dribbling blacking as it went along. Other proposals were: a balloon carrying magnets hung on strings to attract the rifles out of men’s hands; a shell to contain fleas or other vermin inoculated with disease; a shell with a man inside it to steer it at the target; the squirting of cement over soldiers so as to petrify them; the sending of snakes into enemy trenches by pneumatic propulsion; the throwing of live-wire cables among advancing infantry by means of rockets. Germany should be attacked in one case by making a “tube” all the way, and in another by employing trained cormorants to fly to Essen and pick out the mortar from Krupp’s chimneys.
One correspondent sent quite a number of original methods of repelling attacks, including a series of nets spread in front of our lines which could be drawn so as to enmesh the Germans, and a lawn-mower as large as a Tank to make mincemeat of them. The purpose of the article is to warn off inventors of this sort, and frequently they are genially argued with.
JUNE 29, 1918
A league of nations
To the Editor of The Times Sir, I have been following with the keenest interest the discussion of the League of Nations project in the House of Lords, the Press, and elsewhere. There seems to be a disposition to regard the proposal as premature. We are being counselled to go slowly, to let the proposal ripen — as we have let the problem of Ireland ripen for a century, and as we are now letting India get ripe. These are sage and British methods, but the peculiar conditions of the present struggle call, I think, for haste. This war becomes more and more manifestly unlike preceding wars. The increased range of the means of communication, from railways and wireless to pamphlets and guns, during the last 100 years has destroyed territorial autonomies, and made the world one system physically, while politically it remains many. While this process of adjustment continues it seems bound to be increasingly cruel and bloody. The only adjustment that the wit of man his so far been able to discern is this scheme of a federal League of Nations over-riding “sovereignty” in such matters as trade and armament and tropical control. To such a League we must come if we are to come out of this welter of blood and destruction.
Let me set down some reasons for urgency. They are: (1) The increasing destructiveness of modern scientific war. (2) The impossibility of controlling armaments and securing a world disarmament without a properly empowered supernational authority. (3) The impossibility of relieving the economic struggle in the world without a world authority.(4) The impossibility of settling the problems of tropical and derelict countries — Africa, Mesopotamia eg — without a world authority. (5) The impossibility of developing the rich and splendid promise of air traffic in anything but a belligerent direction without a world authority.
No doubt the constitutional and sentimental difficulties in the way of establishing a League of Nations are colossal. But they must be overcome, because there is no other way out for humanity. The world now is not like an old unsatisfactory house that we have plenty of time to rebuild; it is like a house on fire, and the time to get to work to save it is now.
Yours &c, H G Wells,
52, St James’s Court, SW1.
Yours &c, H G Wells,
52, St James’s Court, SW1.
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