Today -100: June 17, 1917: We ask you to fight for our freedom equally with yours

Woodrow Wilson gets tired of waiting for Congress to pass legislation authorizing a Food Administration, so he just goes ahead and tells Herbert Hoover to start organizing the housewives of America to use food efficiently under his directions.

Charles Jonnart, the French former governor-general of Algeria who spearheaded the Allies’ successful efforts to force Greece’s King Constantine to abdicate, publishes a proclamation telling the Greeks that that forcible abdication and the military occupation of Athens are all in the interests of “the independence, greatness, and prosperity of Greece.” Greece has been freed from the German-Bulgarian yoke, he says. Constantine is now out of the country, on his way to exile in Switzerland.

Elihu Root, in Petrograd heading a mission from the US, tells the Russian people, “we are going to fight and have already begun to fight for your freedom equally with our own, and we ask you to fight for our freedom equally with yours.”

Kaiser Wilhelm sends a telegram to ousted Greek King Constantine, his brother-in-law: “I assure you that your deprivation can be only temporary. The mailed fist of Germany, with further aid from Almighty God, will restore you to your throne, of which no man by right can rob you. The armies of Germany and Germany's allies will wreak vengeance on those who have dared so insolently to lay their criminal hands on you.” Criminal hands are the worst kind.

The new Greek king, Alexander I, the NYT reports, likes driving cars fast.

Headline of the Day -100:

Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman are being held on $25,000 bail, which they cannot raise. The article quotes a surprisingly long extract from an anti-draft pamphlet.

The British government use the Defence of the Realm Act to ban all dog shows. Something about the dogs eating too much food that might go to soldiers. Also, all unregistered dogs are to be killed.

Alice Hill Chittenden, president of the NY State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, warns of the “servant slacker” and says the role of American women in this war is to stop “noisily pursuing useless activities” like, oh for example, women’s suffrage, and spend their time supervising their servants and keeping their cooks from wasting food. This article is everything you expect an anti-suffrage woman to say about servants.

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