Today -100: September 30, 1919: Slightly better

Headline of the Day -100: 

That’s a quote from his doctor.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Federal troops have Omaha locked down. And they have the crowd-control tool of choice of 1919: machine guns. Also a strong storm helped, because no one enjoys ethnic cleansing in the rain.

Three black men are lynched in Alabama, accused of assaulting white women. One of them is shot to death in a hospital.

The Italian Parliament is dissolved, and new elections will be held in November. While anything could happen between now -100 and then, it seems likely the elections will be fought largely on the Fiume issue. Prime Minister Franceso Nitti says the choice is between annexing Fiume and continuing to try to safeguard Italy’s rights. If the former, “the country will have to endure in terrible sacrifices. If, despite this, they still desire annexation, nobody more than I will enthusiastically approve it.”

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Today -100: September 29, 1919: Of worn & shaken presidents, confidence, and lynchings

Headline of the Day -100: 

His doctor, Admiral Cary Grayson, forbids anyone talking to Wilson about the peace treaty or other governmental business and has banned the president playing golf.

Italian Prime Minister Franceso Nitti wins a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies, 208-148. His failure to acquire Fiume has left him very weak, but defying Britain and France, his foreign minister explains, would leave Italy alone in the world.

A mob demonstrates in Vienna, calling for the expulsion of Jews (I think this is aimed at Romanian and Polish Jews). They also target a newspaper and coffee shops, and stop cars to see if there are any Jews in them.

Both sides in the steel strike took the weekend to persuade workers to continue/abandon the strike. In Pittsburgh, the sheriff forbade any language but English at strike meetings.

A large mob in Omaha, Nebraska attacks the brand-new court house with fire bombs in order to capture and lynch a black man who had allegedly raped a white woman. While the attack is going on, there’s a race riot in which several people are killed (though fewer than the article suggests), shops and pawnshops are looted of their firearms, random black people are beaten up, police are shot at, and the crowd attempt to lynch Mayor Edward Parsons Smith – twice – after he appeals for calm. Cops drive a car into the crowd and rescue Smith as he’s hanging from a traffic signal. Smith (now in the hospital) will not run for re-election next year. There is some evidence, believe it or not, that racial tensions in Omaha were stirred up by henchmen of the local crime boss attacking women while in blackface. No one (and I know you’ll believe this) will ever go to jail for any of this.

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Today -100: September 28, 1919: Of good sleeps, scabs, and strike bans

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Allegheny Steel Company puts up placards advertising for American citizens to replace striking foreign-born steel workers, presumably permanently.

The Alabama Legislature bans strikes.

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Today -100: September 27, 1919: America is big enough

Woodrow Wilson cuts short his barnstorming tour of the country at Wichita, suffering from “nervous exhaustion,” no doubt brought on by the excitement of being in Wichita. His doctor insists his condition is not alarming, but he will have to rest for some time. Which means he can’t meet the king of the Belgians, who’s coming to the US. On this grueling tour, he traveled 8,200 miles and made 40 speeches, some of them no doubt in considerable discomfort. His train is returning to Washington (and not to a spa resort, which reassures the NYT that his condition is not especially serious).

Incidentally, the reports on the president’s health are pretty specific and seemingly honest and transparent, which will not be the case next week when he has his (Spoiler Alert) stroke.

The Senate discusses Hiram Johnson (R-Cal.)’s amendment to the peace treaty giving the US 6 seats in the League of Nations Assembly to match Britain & its colonies because, sez Johnson, “America is big enough, powerful enough, America is good enough to have just as many votes as the British Empire.” And doggonit, people like us. Johnson seems pissed off at some of Wilson’s recent accusations against League critics: “The time has gone by when you can frighten the American people by epithets or abuse, by calling them pro-Germans, or any other names.” And with that, Johnson resumes his interrupted anti-League tour of the West, which has raised his profile so high that it is assumed he will run away with the Republican nomination for president next year.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: September 26, 1919: Hyphens are the knives that are being stuck in this document

Woodrow Wilson says (for the first time) that if the Senate adds reservations to Article X (mutual self-defense) of the League of Nations covenant, he will consider the Peace Treaty to have been rejected. I’m not sure how that works constitutionally. (Update: possibly by withdrawing the treaty after it’s amended but before it’s ratified). Speaking in Denver, he repeats his new taunt that opponents of the League are the “hyphenated Americans” who “tried to defeat the purposes of this Government in the war.” “Hyphens are the knives that are being stuck in this document”.He also says the weapons used in the Great War “were toys as compared with what would be used in the next war.”

For some reason, the Italians have decided that Wilson is their biggest obstacle in Fiume. There are rumors that he threatened Italy with an economic blockade if it annexes Fiume, but I haven’t seen any evidence that he’s especially interested in the issue.

Meanwhile, D’Annunzio has ramped up his goals, demanding that not just Fiume and its hinterland, but all of Dalmatia be annexed to Italy. Thus, the Headline of the Day -100:

To be clear, Dalmatia is part of Yugoslavia.

The latest rumors from Russia: 

1) Lenin has been assassinated.
2) Lenin is alive but being held prisoner in the Kremlin by Felix Dzerzhinsky.

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Today -100: September 25, 1919: Of toguires, Kolchak’s rear, strikes, and angry Mexicans

Renegade Italian soldiers seize the port of Toguire on the Dalmatian coast, defeating a small number of Yugoslav soldiers. Toguire is 150 miles from Fiume, so this may indicate a copy-cat action. And that the Italian government has no control over the Italian army. To the extent that there is a functional Italian government, since ministers are at daggers drawn over Fiume policy; yesterday Foreign Minister Tommaso Tittoni was (falsely) reported to have resigned.

D’Annunzio claims to have a “Fiuman navy” consisting of 4 warships and the battleship Dante Alighieri.

Dirty-Sounding Headline of the Day -100:

They capture Tomsk, which the NYT explains is 500 miles from Omsk.

Steel companies claim more workers are returning to work, while unions claim more workers are coming out on strike. Most plants are running, but well below capacity. Pennsylvania Gov. William Sproul responds to strike leader William Foster’s letter complaining about the police. Sproul insists that police actions in clashes resulting in deaths were entirely reasonable and banning public gatherings was entirely reasonable. He says that agitators, “hostile alike to our institutions of Government and to the organization which you represent, have taken advantage of the disturbed conditions to come into Pennsylvania to spread wicked propaganda and to endeavor to incite the ignorant and the vicious to riot and pillage. These persons are enemies of the State”. He also says that “dangerous and evil disposed persons” in other states are trying to recruit armed mobs to come into Pennsylvania. These mobs will be treated as “armed invaders”.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Gov. Hobby called for military intervention in Mexico. So Mexico pulls out of the Texas State Fair.

The White Sox win the American League pennant and will play the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series.

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Today -100: September 24, 1919: Of medals, cyclonic furies, the impulses of courage and cowardice, and medicinal whisky

Gabriele D’Annunzio issues bronze medals to the invaders of Fiume, “by national decree”. What nation? Does he think he runs Italy now?

Er, evidently yes. Evidently last week (I assume it’s Italian censorship that’s making some of the news from Fiume arrive days late) the poet-aviator called for the overthrow of the Italian government.

Steel strike: more fighting between cops and strikers at various locations, mostly in Pennsylvania, more dead. From his prison cell, Eugene Debs says the strike could expand to miners and railway workers. He says workers, pissed off at the killings by company guards, may “be swept into a revolution with cyclonic fury.”

Hearing that some Democratic senators are now supporting reservations to the peace treaty, such as Hiram Johnson (R-Cal.)’s amendment giving the US equal votes in the League of Nations Assembly with Britain and its dependencies’ six, Woodrow Wilson, in Salt Lake City,  says such reservations would force the treaty back to the Peace Conference for renegotiation. He says his tour has shown him that “the people are against changes.” He figures 80% are in favor of the League, but “All the elements that tended [during the war] toward disloyalty are against the League,” thereby serving Germany’s goal of disuniting the Allies. He escalates his criticism of his senatorial critics:

I am not afraid to go before the jury of mankind at any time on the record of the United States with regard to the fulfillment of its international obligations; and when these gentlemen who are criticizing it once feel, if they ever should feel, the impulse of courage, instead of the impulse of cowardice, they will realize how much better it feels.

If that doesn’t win them over, I don’t know what will.

The majority of Mormons are in favor of the League, the NYT thinks.

In Haiti, which the US still occupies, two marines shoot and kill two other marines they thought were bandits.

Headline of the Day -100:  

A federal judge in Pennsylvania tells a jury that it’s legal to sell whisky for medicinal purposes, so they acquit a bartender who sold whisky to someone who said it was for... a sick friend.

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Today -100: September 23, 1919: Of strikes, planetary strikes, leaky blockades, and Wagner

Steel strike, day 1: guards and cops and strikers at the Carnegie Steel plant in Newcastle, Pennsylvania shoot at each other after guards try to protect scabs who are being pelted with stones and bricks. Smaller-scale incidents occur throughout the Pennsylvania steel region. The steel companies claim that only foreign and unskilled workers are striking.

NYT Index Typo of the Day -100:

Wow, that’s an impressive strike (ok, it’s plants, not planets).

Italy has (supposedly) asked the Allies to please send in soldiers to remove poet-aviator Gabriele D’Annunzio and his merry men from Fiume, because Italian troops can’t (won’t) do it. The Italian blockade of Fiume, which is already regularly breached by boats, I believe from Venice, and a continued influx of soldiers and other volunteers, is now broken by a train carrying supplies. How hard is it to stop a train?

The NYT editorializes on the poet-aviator’s place in the Italo-Greek rhetorical tradition: “His case is bad. His rhetoric is carefully calculated. This is what interests him. He keeps the secular tradition of Italy. He belongs to a race and a land where the airy phantasms of speech and song are facts listened to by a people still enthralled by the orators of the Rostrum, still swayed by remembrances of Roman, African, and Asiatic eloquence.”

The Royal Irish Constabulary are being supplied with grenades. Swell.

The Paris Police order a planned concert at the Tuileries Gardens canceled because people objected to the inclusion of music by Wagner. Everyone’s a critic.

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Today -100: September 22, 1919: Of debating societies, strikes, and foreigners

Woodrow Wilson explains that it doesn’t matter that Britain has 6 seats in the League of Nations Assembly (including Canada, Australia, South Africa & India) to the US’s 1, because the Assembly is just a powerless “debating society,” while real decisions are made in the Council. Also, the Assembly includes places like Cuba and Panama, which are as much under US “influence” as Canada is under Britain’s. That’s Wilson saying that.

The steel strike begins.

Poet-aviator Gabriele D’Annunzio expels foreigners from Fiume, except Yugoslavs, who he’s locking up.

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Today -100: September 21, 1919: Of lusks, protectorates, colonists, and infamous words

The anti-Red Lusk Committee of the New York Legislature takes credit for shutting down 10 radical publications, one of them in Finnish.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Lord Curzon says the treaty signed this week between Britain and Persia does not amount to a protectorate and Britain toooootally respects Persia’s independence. No, Britain is just giving Persia “financial aid” (i.e., a loan, with customs revenues as collateral) and providing “expert assistance” (including military experts, paid for by Persia and given what the treaty calls “adequate powers”). For some reason he doesn’t mention the bit about gaining access to Persian oil. Probably slipped his mind.

Germany is allegedly “colonizing” Germans into Upper Silesia before the big plebiscite. Employers are being gently encouraged to continue paying the salaries of workers born in Silesia who take a little voting vacation there.

The Italian government sends Rear Admiral Cassanova (there’s a dirty joke in there somewhere) to Fiume to put a stop to the D’Annunzio occupation. Instead, the rear admiral has been “detained.” The Italian head of staff in the armistice zone informs D’Annunzio that officers who remain in Fiume will be considered deserters. D’A responds that “this infamous word” “does not touch me or my companions.” A bunch of planes (one carrying Prince Aimone) also fly in to help out the poet-aviator (there may come a time when I grow tired of that phrase, but that time has not yet arrived), just in case Fiume needs an air force, I guess. The poet-aviator’s men “marched up and down through the streets of Fiume, shouting their cause and demanding who had aught to say against them. It seems that if any one had they didn’t say it.” 

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Today -100: September 20, 1919: Of delights, agitators, cataclysms, German efficiency, and field guns

The Seattle longshoremen’s union members will stop loading arms for the Russian Whites, which were to sail for Siberia aboard the steamer Delight.

New York Mayor John Hylan responds to attempts to create a unified union for all city workers by writing to the heads of all city departments, telling them to identify employees who “spend more time agitating and making trouble” than working and zero out their positions in the next budget.

The Peace Conference hands Bulgaria its peace terms. The Bulgarian delegates blame any wrongdoings committed by their country on the deposed monarchy and say the alliance with Germany was forced on the Bulgarian people and “came to them as a cataclysm.” Those words from Gen. Georgi Todorov, who seems to have suppressed his misgivings quite well while commander-in-chief of the army.

Allied warships are pointing their guns at Fiume, pointedly. D’Annunzio says he will fight, the Italian army I guess, if attacked, and if necessary will blow up Fiume in order to save it, as is the custom. A day after the censorship on Fiume was lifted, it’s reimposed. The Italian government can’t commit to any course of action on anything related to Fiume.

In more fallout from the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, six members of the Soviet are found guilty of having murdered hostages, sentenced to death, and executed, in the same day.

The British government is, presumably, offering German military items as displays for parks and such. The municipal council of Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland, accepts the offer of two field guns – as long as they are in working order and come with shells.

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Today -100: September 19, 1919: Of one pure thing

A belated report on the first day of the invasion of Fiume includes some quotes from poet-aviator Gabriele D’Annunzio: “In the present mad, cowardly world, there is one pure thing – our love for Fiume.” “I, a war volunteer and a mutilated fighter, appeal to Victor Hugo’s France, to Milton’s England, and Lincoln’s America, and, speaking as an interpreter of the valorous sentiments of the whole Italian people, proclaim the annexation of Fiume to Italy.” To be fair, the poet-aviator had a high fever at the time. He says he has “assumed military command of freed Fiume.”

The German government concedes to Allied threats and nullifies Article 61 of the new Constitution, which provided for possible future annexation of Austria.

Headline of the Day -100: 

I guess this is what the Allies wanted when they forced Béla Kun out, right?

Charles Comiskey sets prices for World Series tickets, ranging from $1.10 in the bleachers to $5.50 in the boxes. You have to buy tickets for at least 3 games. 4 tickets a customer max. On sale now even though the White Sox haven’t won their league yet.

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Today -100: September 18, 1919: I go because I must

On its front page, the NYT reports “persistent rumors” that Peruvian President Augusto Leguía has been assassinated. He has not.

There’s some heckling at Woodrow Wilson’s pro-League of Nations speech in San Francisco, mostly on the Irish question. He had answered a written set of questions, denying that League membership would require the US to aid British against an Irish uprising or stop it recognizing Irish independence. De Valera finds those answers inadequate: the US might not be obligated to aid Britain, but the League would force it to help prevent other nations assisting rebels.

Italy blockades Fiume, hoping to starve D’Annunzio out. Or, to put it another way, Italy is afraid to order its troops to expel the poet-aviator, because they might well mutiny. Yugoslavia is also blockading the city. D’Annunzio telegrams a newspaper, the Idea Nazionale, “I go because I must.”

Italy is still censoring news of events in Fiume, but Germany is not, and Germans are following with great interest to see if they might be able to get away with the same shit in Danzig.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Ralph Madsen wanders around Broadway, attracting crowds. He is 7’6”. The article says he’s a movie actor, although imdb only lists 4 credits starting in 1928 (3 circus movies and a Little Rascals short).

Last week I reported on the oldest man in the world, 131-year-old “Uncle John” Schell. Well evidently the oldest man in the world is in fact a Turkish laborer, aged 144, named, um, Zorro. I stand corrected.

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Today -100: September 17, 1919: Fiume or death!

The Italian government, embarrassed by its inability/unwillingness to get its soldiers to follow orders, censors all news about Fiume.

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Today -100: September 16, 1919: Of mutineers, cops, and lynchings

Headline of the Day -100: 

“Mutineers” means that many of the poet-aviator’s filibusters are regular Italian army soldiers (including a “cyclist corps”) who are not supposed to be invading anywhere. The Allied Supreme Council will leave all this up to Italy, calling it an internal matter. D’Aunnunzio declares Fiume annexed to Italy, which is a power all poet-aviators have.

Boston starts recruiting a whole new police force. With higher pay.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Everyone needs a hobby. (The Mexican ambassador and consul are heading to Pueblo, Colorado to investigate that lynching of two Mexican citizens, which is more than the police seem to be doing).

Lots of people die in a storm in Corpus Christi.

In a letter to Adolf Gemlich of Ulm, Adolf Hitler writes about Jews for the first time. It won’t be the last. He says Jews are a race, not a religion, that antisemitism should be based on reason rather than emotion, which should be manifested not in pogroms but “Its final aim must unshakably be the removal of the Jews altogether.”

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Today -100: September 15, 1919: Of lunatics betraying the cause of the fatherland, strikes deferred, and sympathetic bartenders

Italy sends troops to disarm Gabriele D’Annunzio and his merry men and get them the hell out of Fiume, but the troops refuse. Prime Minister Francesco Nitti calls supporters of the poet-aviator’s actions “lunatics, betraying the cause of the fatherland.”

Steel workers at US Steel will defer strike action until after the national labor conference, on Woodrow Wilson’s request.

Other Boston unions are backing away from the idea of a general strike in support of the striking police, although the Bartenders’ Union no. 77 votes for a sympathy strike.

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Today -100: September 14, 1919: Of cops, lynchings, poet-aviators (poets-aviator?), and positions

Boston Police Commissioner Edwin Curtis (a former mayor) says all the striking cops will be fired, including those now offering to return to work. Gov. Calvin Coolidge says he will support that decision. Samuel Gompers complains of the “autocratic” attitude of Boston officials. Only a few people are shot today by trigger-happy guardsmen and volunteer cops, including one while the fake cops broke up a craps game, and why are craps games such a priority, anyway? The state guards threaten crowds with machine guns.

Two Mexicans are lynched in Pueblo, Colorado, hanged from a bridge.

Austria refuses to extradite Béla Kun to Hungary.

“Poet-aviator” Gabriele D’Annunzio and several thousand of his friends (soldiers, students, Futurists, etc) invade Fiume, which is supposed to be a neutral city under the League of Nations. The general who was supposed to block him didn’t after D’Annunzio dared him to shoot him.

Foreshadowy Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: September 13, 1919: Of going and solvent national concerns, the most drastic measures, and police strikes

Giving an anti-League of Nations speech in St. Louis, Sen. Hiram Johnson (R-Cal.) says the League would make the US “subject to the will of Great Britain and Japan,” who want to use the League to protect the spoils given them by the Peace Treaty. He says the US is “the only going and solvent national concern” and joining the League would be to “enter into a partnership with four bankrupts.”

The British “suppress” the Irish Parliament and raid the Dublin Sinn Féin headquarters and many other locations. Papers and pamphlets and explosives are seized. Viscount French, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, threatens “the most drastic measures.” Detective Hoey is shot dead in Dublin. A related story is headlined “‘Dail Eireann’ Shortlived,” suggesting a belief that the Irish Parliament no longer exists because the British say it no longer exists, which is just adorable. President De Valera, in Rhode Island, says the proclamations are “a cover for military ruthlessness in Ireland.” He says law & order could be restored in 24 hours if the “alien government” withdraws its army of occupation.

Samuel Gompers of the AFL meets Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge and offers to suspend the Boston police strike if the rule against police union membership is also suspended until Pres. Wilson’s labor conference next month. Coolidge has said that the cops are not strikers but deserters, and should not be reinstated.

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Today -100: September 12, 1919: Of crimes against civilizatin and coups

There may be a general strike in support of the police strike in Boston. Then again, there may not. Woodrow Wilson calls the strike “a crime against civilization,” leaving Boston “at the mercy of an army of thugs.”

The US lands troops in Honduras to do something or other during its revolution/coup. Pres. Francisco Bertrand flees the country.

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Today -100: September 11, 1919: Austria cannot hate

Massachusetts State Guard troops are patrolling Boston during the police strike, shooting at mobs with rifles and machine guns. There are also cavalry charges. With sabres. Bottles and bricks are thrown back. Guardsmen break up dice games with bayonets. Gov. Calvin Coolidge sends in more troops, blaming Mayor Andrew Peters for taking two days to ask for assistance. Peters blames Police Commissioner Edwin Curtis, who is appointed by the governor.

Austria signs the peace treaty with 27 of its former enemies. Romania and Yugoslavia do not sign. China, which did not sign the treaty with Germany, signs this one because it does not give away any part of China to Japan. The Chinese and Japanese delegates are seated far away from each other. Chancellor Karl Renner, signing on behalf of Austria, says “Austria cannot hate. It always respects the man with whom it has to fight.”

A mob near Athens, Georgia lynches black man Obe Cox, shooting him and burning him at the stake.

Ex-kaiser Wilhelm is finally moving into his own place, in Doorn, Netherlands. 51 moving wagons.

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Today -100: September 10, 1919: We are the predestined mediators of mankind

The Boston police, at least 3/4 of them, go on strike after 19 cops are fired for union activity (joining an AFL-affiliated union). Boston youth break some windows, loot a few stores. Harvard’s President A. Lawrence Lowell calls on students to be prepared to assist the authorities.

The NYT opposes the striking cops, condescendingly saying they are “inspired unconsciously by anti-social ideas” and that they have “no more right to belong to a union than a soldier or a sailor. He must be ready to obey orders, the orders of his superiors, not those of any outside body.” After all, they may be called on to put down strikes and so receive contradictory orders. And if they don’t like their pay and conditions (which by the way are pretty crappy), they can just quit.

Police shoot dead three striking workers of the Standard Steel Car Company in Hammond, Indiana. The article repeatedly tells us that the troublesome workers are foreign-born (mostly Poles).

Woodrow Wilson tells the Minnesota Legislature and a St. Paul public meeting that the cost of living will continue to rise and labor relations will continue to suck until the peace treaty is ratified. Also, the US is the only country the world trusts to stabilize peace: “We are the predestined mediators of mankind.”

The former aide of Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, brother of Tsar Nicholas, says Michael Alexandrovich is actually still alive, having escaped “with his secretary and a sailor” on a motor boat and is now living somewhere incognito. Yah, no, he isn’t.

“Uncle John” Schell, the oldest man in the world at, um, 131, goes on a ride in an airplane at the Kentucky State Fair. It feels a lot like being drunk, he says, “but it’s all right at that.” He’s just sorry he didn’t bring his 5-year-old son to the fair.

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Today -100: September 9, 1919: Of pro-German elements, reservations, pershings, and home runs

In Sioux Falls, Woodrow Wilson warns that “the pro-German element in the United States has again lifted its head,” in the form of attempts to keep the US out of the League of Nations, which would somehow result in better peace terms for Germany. He says the US is the only real idealist among the nations of the world.

Romania wants to sign the Austrian peace treaty with reservations (like many US Republican senators), and is being told no. The provisions it objects to would require it to treat its Jews nicely, which it says would interfere with its sovereignty in its newly acquired territories. The Yugoslavs have similar objections to being made to be nice to their minorities.

Gen. Pershing is in town for parades and shit.

Babe Ruth hits his 26th home run of the season, which is a record.

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Today -100: September 8, 1919: Of corks, peaces founded on brute force, and lynchings

In County Cork, Sinn Féiners attack soldiers parading to church, evidently in an attempt to grab their weapons, but in the ensuing firefight they kill 1 soldier and wound 3 more and then escape scot free, despite 18 planes being deployed.

The Austrian National Assembly ratifies the Peace Treaty, 97-23, while protesting “a peace founded on brute force” and the “violation of Austria’s right of free disposal of herself,” saying Austria must join Germany.

A mob in Jacksonville, Florida breaks into the jail looking for a black man accused of assaulting a white girl/woman, but finding that he’d been removed, lynch two other black prisoners instead, shooting them and then dragging their bodies through the streets, as was the custom.

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Today -100: September 7, 1919: Do you not know that the world is all now one single whispering gallery?

In another of his League of Nations speeches, Woodrow Wilson in Des Moines says the world is waiting for our leadership. He also blames the internet wireless and telegraph – “Do you not know that the world is all now one single whispering gallery?” – for the spread of “the poison of disorder, the poison of revolt, the poison of chaos” beyond Russia to Eastern Europe and maybe even the US, “and so long as the disorder continues, so long as the world is kept waiting for the answer to the question of the kind of peace we are going to have and what kind of guarantees there are to be behind that peace, that poison will steadily spread, more and more rapidly until it may be that even this beloved land of ours will be distracted and distorted by it.”

The actors’ strike is over. Chorus girls also get a wage increase. Stage productions that have now opened or will shortly open include “Chu Chin Chow,” “The Scandals of 1919,” “She Would and She Did,” and “Monte Cristo, Junior.”

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Today -100: September 6, 1919: The supremacy will be ours

The Peace Conference  tells Germany that if it doesn’t annul the bit of its constitution allowing for Anschluß, the Allies will occupy the right bank of the Rhine. French Gen. Charles Mangin, in charge of troops in occupied Rhineland, orders German officials not to take the oath to the new constitution.

Mexican Gen. Salvador Alvarado issues an open letter to his boss Carranza, warning that Mexico is totes fucked up and the US will probably invade soon.

Woodrow Wilson reassures St. Louis that the US would be the “senior partner” in the League of Nations: “The supremacy will be ours.” The choice, he says, is between armed isolation and peaceful partnership. He says if the US doesn’t join the League it will be a “quitter.”

Women get the vote in Italy, the NYT reports, incorrectly.

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Today -100: September 5, 1919: Of remarriages, open and avowed enemies, and worthy subjects of the Emperor

The state of Lower Austria now allows divorced people to remarry. Which they proceed to do.

The NYT declares the new Communist Party “open and avowed enemies of the United States, its Government, its traditions, and its institutions.” It doesn’t know how things have come to this. It just doesn’t know.

The new Japanese governor-general of Korea, Baron Saito Makoto, tells the AP all about his new liberal policies for Korea, such as not crushing the Korean language and culture, abolishing gold braids and swords for officials, abolishing flogging, and developing the Korean people until the point where ultimately they might become “worthy subjects of the Emperor” and even have equal rights with Japanese, some day.

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Today -100: September 4, 1919: Of women’s suffrage, menaced Finlands, assassination attempts, and downed planes

The Virginia and Alabama legislatures reject the women’s suffrage Amendment.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Korean nationalists, presumably, try to assassinate the new Japanese governor-general of Korea, Baron Saito Makoto, throwing a bomb at his railroad carriage.

Evidently the Mexican troops who shot down the US plane yesterday were cavalry who were pissed that the low-flying plane was scaring their horses. The US is claiming the plane was in the US (Texas), the Mexicans that it was in Mexican air-space.

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Today -100: September 3, 1919: Of deaf presidents, angry Frenchies, racial ascendancies and oppressions, workers of the world uniting, and sedition

Headline of the Day -100: 

And yet they’re getting louder and louder.

Headline of the Day -100:  

10 days ago, the Allies ordered Romania to stop looting Hungary, but Romanian troops are still running riot over the country, issuing demands (no one can wear a uniform except Romanians, etc), and have not bothered to respond to the note. But the Allies have proven unwilling so far to clamp down on Romania because Romania has oil.

The Peace Conference demands that Germany alter its new constitution to remove references to Austria possibly joining.

It also gives Austria the terms of its peace treaty, with 5 days to accept them. The terms include a ban on Austria becoming part of Germany. In a response to Austrian objections, the Conference rejects the idea that Austria should not be treated as a defeated enemy because that was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was, like, an entirely different country.  The Conference response says the Austrian people never attempted to cure militarism before the war or object to the start of the war, and anyway the Habsburg Empire was a system of “racial ascendancy and oppression” over the non-German/Magyar populations. Which is a little rich coming from the Allies, who are currently exercising their own racial ascendance & oppression over Indians and Indochinese and Kenyans and Algerians and Filipinos and Irish and... 

In Chicago, a Communist Labor Party of America is founded, with the motto “Workers of the World Unite.” And Dennis Batt, organizer and editor in, I think, a different communist faction, is arrested under the Illinois Sedition Act. In the hall during the meeting, contrary to what this article says.

Mexicans, possibly federal soldiers, shoot across the border, taking down a US military plane.

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Today -100: September 2, 1919: We’re for the Soviet all the while

Chicago police threaten to shut down a Communist convention if red flags are not removed and replaced by American flags. The NYT quotes a hymn sung at the convention:

Bolshevik, Bolshevik, Bolshevik - bang –
We are members of Gene Debs’s gang.
Are we rebels? We should smile;
We’re for the Soviet all the while.

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Today -100: September 1, 1919: Of the sincerity of Japan, spirits of aggression and cupidity, veeps, and lynchings

Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi says China completely misunderstands its intentions towards Shantung. “The day will arrive when China will come to comprehend the sincerity of Japan.”

Speaking of people who fail to comprehend the sincerity of Japan, which he accuses of a “spirit of aggression and cupidity toward Korea,” Syngman Rhee declares the Republic of Korea. He pointedly refers to the 14 Points and the US Declaration of Independence.

The traditional NYC Labor Day parade is cancelled due to the high cost of living, specifically the cost of costumes.

Woodrow Wilson celebrates Labor Day by asking unions not to strike because he’s pretty sure he’ll get inflation down any day now. And his vice president says that he can’t live within his salary and is considering striking. He does admit he is holding a job “which has so little labor connected with it,” but he worked hard in the past and so deserves a little breathing spell.

The race rioting (i.e., white people attacking black people) in Knoxville, Tennessee continues. Blacks break into pawn shops and hardware stores to acquire firearms and wind up in firefights with the National Guard, who have machine guns. And use them. Incidentally, during the initial incident yesterday, the mob not only tore the jail apart looking for a black man to lynch, they let all the white prisoners go.

A large mob in Boaglusa, Louisiana, lynch a black ex-soldier for allegedly attacking a white woman. His body is then dragged through the town tied to a car and burned.

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