Today -100: November 30, 1918: I am not going to be a Bolshevist president

The names of the US commissioners to the peace conference are announced: Pres. Wilson (to be replaced later in the process by Secretary of War Newton Baker), Secretary of State Robert Lansing, Col. House, former ambassador to Italy and France Henry White, and Gen. Tasker Bliss. While White is a Republican, Republicans would rather have had a more important, more Republican, Republican, like Taft or Charles Evans Hughes or Elihu Root. There will also be 4 Harvard and 2 Yale professors in the party. What, no Princeton?

Vice President Whatsisname will remain in Washington while Wilson is out of the country. He says it’s just so someone’s there to greet the visiting Japanese prince, not to sign or veto legislation: “I am not going to be a Bolshevist president.”

The German government asks Wilhelm for an official abdication, gets it.

Former Austrian Emperor Charles is supposedly ordered to leave Austria. Also, he’s depressed; “He sits for hours at his desk staring vacantly.”

German employers, no longer fearing a socialist revolution quite so much, are reneging on the concessions they made to workers (especially the abolition of piece-work pay) at the start of the revolution. Naturally, there are now strikes. Unemployment is rising, in part due to no longer getting coal and other raw materials from Alsace-Lorraine and Silesia.

The Berlin press is attacking The People’s State of Bavaria’s socialist Prime Minister Kurt Eisner for undermining the unity of the empire (they’re still saying empire, I guess), for leaking those secret papers from the start of the war, and ffor being a, you know, Jew.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George tells an election meeting that Wilhelm should be tried. By what court he does not say, but I guess LG is campaigning on a “hang the kaiser” plank.

The Justice Dept is considering prosecuting Eugene Debs for a speech he gave in Toledo Wednesday in which he said that the common people of the US did not declare war and “all wars are wrong.” Debs’ supporters point out that he can hardly be interfering with the conduct of the war, which is over, dudes.

The Allies ask Herbert Hoover to be Director General of Relief, in charge of feeding Europe.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.