Today -100: July 9, 1918: It would appear that the government wishes to know the extreme limits of the people’s endurance

The Bolsheviks rather easily defeat a counter-revolution in Moscow, if something organized by the “Left Social-Revolutionary Party” can properly be called a counter-revolution, which was timed to coincide with the assassination of the German ambassador. Chief Moscow Military Commissar Semyon Aralov issues a communique: “I beg to announce that the mutiny was caused by a group of cheeky fools, and was suppressed without difficulty by the Moscow garrison.” The SRs are now fucked.

Trotsky has been calling for universal conscription, but says the bourgeois can’t be trusted with actual fighting, so it’ll be trench-digging for them. It’ll be fun to see how the government defines proletariat/bourg.

The Allies, including the US, are working out how to “help” or “aid” Russia, which is the way everyone’s referring to sending a “commission” and a bunch of soldiers, to help/aid the Russian people if not necessarily the de facto Russian government.  Other phrases used in this article to describe the proposed military intervention: “encourage the Russian people to re-establish their nationality,” “leaving to the Russian people to carry out the program of regeneration which the Allies will initiate and support,” “bring back Russia, economically and politically, into the sisterhood of nations,” “the peaceful penetration of Siberia”...

The Berlin potato ration, reduced last week from 7 pounds per person to 3, is again reduced, to 1, not that it matters since there are none available. Meatless weeks will begin in August. In the Reichstag, one deputy objects to any food being sent to Austria, and a socialist deputy says “It would appear that the government wishes to know the extreme limits of the people’s endurance.”

Field Marshal Hindenburg calls for 1 million more men. There aren’t 1 million more men available, so they’ll be drafting 16-year-olds, as well as prisoners, foreigners etc.

Edward Rumely, publisher of the New York Evening Mail, is arrested for perjury for telling the government his paper is American-owned. The government claims the German government really owns it.

Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels tells a YMCA rally at Carnegie Hall that the war is to make the world safe not just  for democracy but for Christian civilization.

Two trains crash into each other, head on, near Nashville, killing 101 or more people, which is a record still unbroken in the US. In part, this was due to the passenger cars being made of wood rather than steel. Most of the victims were black workers traveling to work at a gunpowder factory.

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