Volume 17 , Issue 12

100 Years Ago, Tuesday, 26 April 1915

One hundred years ago today, Sunday, 26 April 1915, Monday, The Rock Island Argus, out of Rock Island, Illinois, had the bold front page headlines: "Kaiser and Von Hindenburg Directing Great Battle On User Canal." Below that main headline was: "Rome Belief War Is Sure; Army Ready."

Von Buelow said it was impossible to accept Italy's demands. Shops and farms were idle. Mobilization deadens industry and food riots were resulting.

London, April 26 (1915) -- What some military critics were inclined to pronounce the greatest battle of the war was under way on the User canal. Official reports were meagre and contradictory, but it was generally believed in London that the Germans again were making desperate efforts to break through to channel ports. Some special dispatches said the German movements were so important that Field Marshal Von Hindenburg had been brought from the East to conduct the operations and Emperor William himself was reported proceeding to the User front.

Private advices received in New York from London convey a report current in England that Kitchener's saw army to the number of 100,000, and even 200,000, was in the Aegean. it was supposed these troops, which had been leaving English shores in large numbers, were going to the continent.

London, April 24 (1915) -- Opinion was growing in Rome that Austria and Italy were drifting, inevitably toward war. A diplomat accredited to the quirtnal quotas the German ambassador, Von Buelow, as saying it would be impossible for Austria to accept Italy's demands. Fuppino Garibaldi, a grandson of the famous Italian statesman, who recently talked with the Italian king and premier, was said to have received the impression that Italy would enter the war with the allies.

A British correspondent accredited officially to the Dardanelles expedition admitted the problem of forcing the straits was a tremendous one.
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