Today -100: June 21, 1917: America Is Not A Democracy

Headline of the Day -100:

As a delegation from Russia visits the White House, a suffrage banner hoisted by the National Woman’s Party’s White House picketers informs them (in English), “President Wilson and Envoy Root are deceiving Russia. They say, ‘We are a democracy. Help us win a world war, so that democracies may survive.’ We, the women of America, tell you that America is not a democracy. ... Help us make this nation really free. Tell our Government it must liberate people before it can claim free Russia as an ally.” Reporters are on hand, having been told this was coming. Crowds tear the banner apart, because freedom, to the annoyance of police who wanted it as evidence. No arrests are made, though police warn the suffragists there will be if they do it again. They will do it again. A lot of Washingtonians are quoted disapproving of the banner, none in favor. Rep. Jeanette Rankin, a former suffrage activist herself, expresses no opinion either way, which is disappointing.

Russia indicts government officials from the Czarist era, including former Prime Minister Boris Stürmer and various cabinet ministers and governors. The most interesting charge is against former Interior Minister Alexander Protopopov for stealing the original telegraph dispatches between Rasputin and the czar and czarina. 

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