Today -100: March 20, 1919: Of bourgeois disinfection, stiffness sickness, and enlightened rule from the outside

Russia Rumor of the Day -100: a Menshevik revolution in Petrograd.

Oh lord, here’s another one: typhoid fever is rampant in Petrograd, but the Bolsheviks forbid disinfection as “bourgeois.”

Starvation in Vienna has given rise to a “stiffness sickness.” Also, they’re eating their dogs.

A NYT editorial on the independence movements in Egypt and Korea says “Whether a people has the divine right to misgovern itself is a matter on which opinions will be held according to political theory; but in the present situation of a closely interrelated world a people which wants to rule itself may justifiably be asked to give some proof that it knows how to do it.” Of recently freed nations, the Czechs and the Poles seem to be able to run efficient governments, the Times says, but it’s less sure about the Ukrainians. And it’s pretty sure the Egyptian lower classes don’t want to be ruled by the Egyptian nationalists. Since self-rule  might lead to anarchy, the “world interest... may at present best be served by a continuance of enlightened rule from the outside, with gradual progress toward native self-government.”

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