Today -100: June 20, 1914: I have never found a man with a tail, but I still have hopes

Two Russian military aviators die in airplane accidents. Honestly, could war really increase the fatality rate for these guys?

25 lawyers who signed protests against the ludicrous ritual murder prosecution of Mendel Beilis in Kiev are convicted for insulting the Ministry of Justice and given sentences of 6 or 8 months.

An explosion in an Alberta coal mine kills at least 36, with 200 still entombed – which is a really scary word – and presumed dead.

Brandon Thomas, actor and playwright, author of the 1892 play “Charley’s Aunt,” dies.

The NYT is upset that Prime Minister Asquith agreed to meet Sylvia Pankhurst, who the Times declares is no Joan of Arc: “She is an obstinate, illogical, and contentious woman of the shrewish type... She conquered, because she could not be returned to prison and the Government was afraid to let her die in the street.” The Times appears to have no such fears.

At the annual meeting of the Eugenics Research Association, Dr. Howard Knox of the US Public Health Service reveals the hobby he practices while screening immigrants: “In my experience at Ellis Island I have never found a man with a tail, but I still have hopes, for I have seen them with nearly every other reversion anomaly that one could imagine.” He tells of a Finn he deported for too closely resembling the Missing Link, but complains that the law doesn’t allow him to reject all such throwbacks. He notes that immigrants from “certain countries” are almost all “physical inferiors.”

Headline of... no, wait, it’s a week early: “Shot Hit Grand Duke's Car.” The Grand Duke of Olbenburg’s car is hit, it is thought accidentally, while his daughters the two duchesses were being driven. No one is hurt.

Headline of the Day -100: “Empress Erratic, Say Alden Crew.” A ship, the Empress of Ireland, not an actual royal person.

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Today -100: June 19, 1914: Of yielding, civil wars within civil wars, neutrals, gunboats, treaties, assassination plots, ethnic cleansing, and damaged kaisers

Headline of the Day -100: “Asquith Yields to Suffragettes.” The prime minister agrees to meet a deputation of East End working-class women, Sylvia Pankhurst is informed as she hunger- and thirst- strikes on the steps of Parliament, having come straight from Holloway Gaol to continue her protest. Shuttle diplomacy between the prime minister and Sylvia was undertaken by Labour MP (and former secret lover of Sylvia) Keir Hardie.

Pancho Villa denies that there are any differences between himself and Carranza... at least any that will interfere with the war. What seems to have happened is that he demanded and got absolute control of the rebel military while Carranza has control of the government.

The American delegates to the Niagara conference, while complaining that the Mexican delegates released their note to the Americans to the press, do the same. They insist that the US is only interested in the pacification of Mexico and deny that they intend to impose a rebel government. But, they say, if the Huerta delegates got their way and a “neutral” interim president were chosen, the Constitutionalists would simply ignore him and continue to capture Mexico City. Also, at this late date, who’s left who’s neutral?

As the rebel gunboat Tampico is sinking after being attacked by a Federal gunboat, its captain, Hilario Malpica, rather than be captured, shoots himself in the head. The story going around is that he was a Federal lieutenant but in love with the daughter of a Constitutionalist leader, who made turning over the boat a condition of being granted his daughter’s hand. Seems unlikely.

Congress is considering a treaty with Nicaragua that includes a $3 million loan to allow that country to pay off loans from American banks. Some congresscritters are threatening to investigate just how it was that those banks got control of Nicaragua’s railroads and national bank, maybe even question a banker or two. It is also noted that Nicaraguan institutions are now infested with over-paid American employees. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan blames the situation on Taft administration policies.

There’s a report that someone tried to assassinate the Russian tsar by placing a bomb on railroad tracks. Russian officials deny anything of the sort happened, but a mail train preceding the royal train did wreck itself.

Greece is now expelling ethnic Turks from Macedonia. Fortunately, the refugees are finding that there are whole villages in Turkey now denuded of Greeks, so they can move right in. Amazing how these things work out.

Given the shortfall in revenues from the new income tax, the commissioner of internal revenue is asking for extra powers to force companies to tell it who owns their stock and what dividends they are paid and to allow access to all their records, and the power to compel testimony under penalty of a $10,000 fine.

I guess the US military is still occupying the Colorado coal zone. Small coal companies are complaining that the order excluding all miners who hadn’t previously worked there is hurting them, while the larger mines, operating happily at half-capacity, have no incentive to settle the strike while their smaller competitors are being driven out of business.

Headline of the Day -100: “The Damage to the Kaiser.; BIG LINER BUELOW IS FAST ON ROCKS.” Again, that’s a ship, not the actual royal person.

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Today -100: June 18, 1914: Woodrow Wilson forgets about the Jews

Parliament authorizes the Admiralty to invest $11 million in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, to ensure plentiful oil supplies for the Navy’s ships. Winston Churchill complains that trusts have driven up the price of oil.

Rebel brigade commanders refuse Carranza’s order to come to Saltillo to consult about who should replace Pancho Villa. They tell Carranza they no longer recognize him. Evidently some of the friction between the two leaders comes from Villa’s having sneakily appropriated the entire shipment of arms that arrived on the Antilla, depriving Carranza’s eastern forces of ammunition. By the end of the day, it seems to be over, with Villa restored to command.

The Huertaist delegates to the Niagara conference make public their note to the US delegates rejecting the idea of a Constitutionalist as interim president: “In a country unused to electoral functions, such as Mexico,” they say, if Constitutionalists were in control of the government they would rig the next elections (Huerta is about nothing if he is not about free and fair elections). Why, they say, it wouldn’t even be good for the rebels, who would be accused “of having brought about the intervention of a foreign nation to enable them to achieve power, and of wielding an authority submissive to a foreign Government.”

Theodore Roosevelt won’t make any campaign speeches in the fall. Doctor’s orders, bad larynx, he says, or possibly whispers. It’s almost like he doesn’t care about the Bull Moose Party’s prospects unless he’s running for something himself.

William Lorimer, the former US senator from Illinois who was expelled in 1912 for having gotten the seat through bribery, is about to be indicted for the failure of the La Salle Street Trust & Savings Bank, of which he is president and which he and his partner looted through loans to corporations owned by themselves, using valueless securities as collateral.

Woodrow Wilson responds to a letter wondering whether, in his address at dedication of the American University, he forgot about the Jews when he said, “scholarship has usually been most fruitful when associated with religion, and scholarship has never, so far as I can this moment recall, been associated with any religion except the religion of Jesus Christ.” Wilson says he was speaking off the cuff and did “not stop to consider the whole field”. Used to be president of Princeton.

Greece threatens Turkey with war if it doesn’t stop persecuting ethnic Greeks. Greek PM Eleftherios Venizelos says in the National Assembly, “If a stop is not put to these conditions the Hellenic government will be forced not to content itself with joining in the lamentations of unhappy refugees.” Meanwhile, Turkey is declaring martial law in Asia Minor in an attempt to prevent Greeks fleeing the country.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court upholds the state’s eugenic marriage law, saying it’s not discriminatory even though it makes only men undergo physical examinations. They seem to have addressed the problem that the $3 fee set by the law is too low by saying that doctors should just give $3 worth of examining, which is close enough for government work.

There are now a few militant suffragettes in Canada, who have taken to turning their backs when “God save the King” is sung in theaters.

In Champaign, Illinois, a special policeman, Michael Murphy, raises his hand to stop a car he considered to be exceeding the limit stop, but he isn’t in uniform and the driver ignores him, so he shoots at the car, which turns out to contain Graf Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador. He misses. Mr. Murphy is no longer a special policeman.

Headline of the Day -100: “Kaiser Wilhelm II Collides in Fog.” A ship, not the actual royal person.

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Today -100: June 17, 1914: Of races, ex-republics, civil wars within civil wars, and massacres

Over 1,000 cops protect the races at Ascot (and the king and queen) against possible suffragette disruption.

The Italian general strike, such as it was, is over. And I guess the republic is un-declared.

The US delegates to the Niagara talks shuffle off to Buffalo to chat unofficial-like with Carranza’s delegates.

There’s some sort of conflict within the Constitutionalists between Villa and Carranza. Villa’s men seize the Constitutionalist bureau of information in Juarez from Carranza’s men and indeed seize some of Carranza’s men (although Villa will soon claim that his men misinterpreted his orders). There’s a story, which sounds like one of those rumors but is actually more or less true, that Villa resigned last week but all the military chiefs said they would accept no one else as their leader.

Turks are reported to have massacred 100 Greeks in the town of Phokia, and thrown the bodies down wells, as was the custom. The LA Times says that Greece is about to invade Turkey. Russia is sending a warship to Smyrna.

And the civil war in Albania, Muslims revolting against the imported prince William, is bubbling along.

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The height of folly

John McCain says it would be the “height of folly” to partner with Iran to stabilize Iraq. John McCain – bad choice of partner – folly... no, I can’t think of anything to say about this.

Speaking of bad decisions, how many of the liberals now complaining about all of the talking heads talking their heads off about Iraq on their teevees being the ones who were wrong about Iraq ten years ago were berating Terry Gross last week for asking Hillary Clinton when and why she stopped being wrong about gay marriage?

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Today -100: June 16, 1914: A man is a fool who attempts to avoid the income tax

Dr. Charles Mercier, a British psychiatrist and public supporter of the forcible feeding of suffragette prisoners, has a letter in the London Times which says that if Home Secretary McKenna is correct that scores of women would volunteer if one were allowed to hunger strike to death, it would be another example of “epidemic mimicry,” such as fashion, witch-finding, suicide, tarantism, flagelantism, lycanthropy, and the violence of the French Revolution.

Countess Mollie Russell sues the 2nd Earl Russell (Bertrand Russell’s brother) for restoration of conjugal rights. The earl has a famously complicated personal life, and was convicted by a trial in the House of Lords of bigamy for marrying Mollie in 1901, because English law didn’t recognize his Reno divorce from his first wife. He is the first and I believe only Labour Party member of the House of Lords.

The new federal income tax has (so far) fallen short of the income it was expected to bring in, by $23 million, and the Treasury Dept is readying itself to go after tax-dodgers. “A man is a fool who attempts to avoid the income tax,” says Commissioner Osborne. “He is sure to be detected sooner or later. There is no chance that tax dodgers can escape.” And sure enough, rich people have been paying every cent of their taxes ever since.

Headline of the Day -100 (L.A. Times): “Wilson Alleges a Plot To Break His Will.” Pres. Wilson notes that a coordinated flood of letters has been coming from businessmen demanding that Congress adjourn before dealing with the anti-trust bill (“wantonly harassing business,” as one circular letter calls it) and claiming that business is being harmed by the prospect of legislation. Wilson says that business is doing just fine, and that any depression is purely psychological.

Storms in Paris. A street caves in at the Place Saint Philippe du Roule killing 14.

The ABC mediators respond to Gen. Carranza’s letter naming delegates to the Niagara conference by politely reminding him that he seems to have somehow neglected to mention whether he will agree to their conditions (an armistice and accepting everything already agreed to). Well, he’s busy, he probably just forgot. In the meantime, the US and Huerta delegates are deadlocked over who should be the next president of Mexico, and the mediators are considering calling it a day.

Latest rumor in Mexico: Pancho Villa has been forced to flee to the US after his troops revolt because they discovered papers showing he had agreed to sell part of Mexico to the US.

The House of Commons passes the third reading of the Plural Voting Bill, which would eliminate multiple votes for people who own property in more than one parliamentary constituency or are university graduates. Nothing will come of this until 1948.

An alleged plot by suffragettes to blow up London reservoirs is thwarted, if it ever existed.

Men from the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine doing their mandatory military service will no longer be allowed to serve in those provinces, because Alsatians are to blame for having leaked to the press about all the anti-Alsatian bigotry in the barracks during the conflict between the military and locals last year.

The Bijou theater in New York re-opens as a colored theater, with an all-negro production, “The Darktown Follies of 1914.” The NYT notes that the ticket-seller is still a white man and the owners are, um, named Rosenberg, but the ushers are black.

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Today -100: June 15, 1914: Of mobs and rioters (yeah, I said it, what’re you gonna do about it?)

The rebels are advancing on Guadalajara.

The NYT’s Italian correspondent breathlessly tells of the depredations during the short-lived republic declared by the socialists/anarchists, with food requisitioned and distributed for free and so on. It notes the relative lack of loss of life both when the mobs were in control and when the forces of order reasserted themselves, attributing the lack of bloodshed during the latter to “patience, endurance, and self-control, which heretofore has been supposed to be an attribute of the humble followers of St. Francis of Assisi rather than characteristics of military men,” but fails to enumerate the virtues which stopped the mobs killed all the rich people.

The Brotherhood Welfare Association in New York City (i.e., hoboes) turn down a kind offer to transport them all to Kansas via cattle cars (250 hoboes to a 60-foot car) to help bring in the wheat harvest, with no guarantee of proper wages in Kansas (and I didn’t note a mention of return fares either), saying it’s Pullman cars or nothing.

The fight between the miners’ union and the IWW in Butte, Montana, continues. As with any conflict involving miners, dynamite was available, and was used on the house of one union official and the safe in the union’s offices. A crowd rescued two prisoners from the jail and hijacked a fire truck. The mob also visited the three newspaper offices and suggested politely that they refrain from using the words “mob” or “rioters.”

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Today -100: June 14, 1914: Of furies, Chios and Lesbos, republics, darlings, and Vice President Adlai Stevenson

Queen Mary is threatening to leave London for the rest of the Season if any more of those horrid “furies,” as she calls them, show up to disrupt her entertainments and remind her that women are being tortured in British prisons.

Oh, and suffragettes burned another cricket pavilion, this one in Reigate. One begins to suspect they have something against cricket.

Greece formally annexes the islands of Chios and Mitylene (I assume by the latter the NYT means Lesbos, on which the town of Mitylene is located), which it seized in the first Balkan War but hadn’t formally annexed. Turkey is not best pleased.

There’s been a debate in the NYT letters page over whether NYC should have a public defender’s office.

The Niagara conference is discussing who the next president of Mexico should be, almost as if their opinion is, you know, relevant. The US wants a prominent Constitutionalist, the Huertaists want an obscure one, and I think the ABC countries want a neutral guy (later the Huertaists would insist on a neutral). Carranza’s delegates still haven’t shown up, evidently having been given orders to come no closer than Buffalo until word came whether they’d be admitted.

Crowds have taken to the streets in major Italian cities and many minor ones. Railroads and telegraph wires and churches are destroyed. A republic is proclaimed in many of these places (the Times is a little unclear on whether anarchists or socialists or some unholy combination is behind these events, but then it’s not clear that the Times understands the difference). And then the military crushed them. Many (well, some unknown number) are dead, but the NYT persists in seeing it as a “farce,” because Italians are funny or something.

France: René Viviani succeeds in forming a cabinet. Nobody expects it to last very long.

In Butte, Montana, Wobblies attack a miners’ union parade and invade the Miners’ Union Hall. Would have blown it up, but there was a saloon next door.

The German army breaks another zeppelin, and two more French aviators die in a crash.

Name of the Day -100: Jasper T. Darling, the secretary of the National Bureau for the Advancement of Patriotism, who is complaining that Sen. Smoot plagiarized an old speech of his on Decoration Day.

Death of the Day -100: Adlai E. Stevenson, vice president in the second Cleveland administration and William Jennings Bryan’s running mate in 1896 after the D’s failed to give him the nomination for president, making him one of only two vice presidents to run for the thankless job again under a different presidential candidate. Grandfather of Adlai II, who ran for president against Eisenhower twice.

Charles Fairbanks, if you were wondering who the second one was, and don’t pretend you weren’t.

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Today -100: June 13, 1914: Of delegates, eternal friendship, ribots, balloons, and tangoes

Carranza appoints three delegates to the Niagara conference, simply ignoring the mediators’ demand for an armistice as a condition of allowing them to participate. I believe he’s calling their bluff.

Japanese Vice Admiral Kuroi, visiting San Francisco with some cruisers, as is the custom, says the friendship between the US and Japan will never be broken.

New French Prime Minister Alexandre Ribot forms his cabinet, takes office, and resigns office after losing a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies. 2½ days in power. Next up: Viviani, again.

Many people think Greece and Turkey are about to start another war. Greece is complaining about Turkey’s expulsion of thousands of Greeks.

Rep. Matthew Neely (D-West Virginia) presents impeachment charges against US District Judge Alston Dayton, who during the recent coal strikes issued injunctions against miners and said he wouldn’t let the United Mine Workers operate within his jurisdiction.

A large balloon crashes during a balloon race and is currently lost somewhere in the forests of the Cascade Mountains, its captain injured, which we know because the news was sent by carrier pigeon. (Update from tomorrow’s paper: they crashed into a pine tree and were caught in its branches 100 feet above the ground. They sent the pigeon and then climbed down, the end.)

Headline of the Day -100: “Queen Mary Sees Tango and Likes It.”

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Today -100: June 12, 1914: Advertisement of their acts is a thing they desire above all

The House Insular Affairs Committee has worked up a proposed constitution for the Philippines. Not surprisingly, it’s a “condensation” of the US Constitution. Members of the Congress will have to be literate in English or Spanish and own property.

The Senate passes Wilson’s bill to repeal the exemption of American ships from Panama Canal tolls, 50-35.

Headline of the Day -100: “Militants Blow up Coronation Chair.” In Westminster Abbey. The news reached Parliament while it was debating what should be done with the suffragettes who commit crimes. Home Secretary Reginald McKenna insists that government policies are working and should be given time. He claims that of 83 prisoners temporarily released from prison under the Cat & Mouse Act, 15 gave up militant activity, 20 are in hiding, and 6 have fled the country. And the number of women sent to prison has decreased since the Cat and Mouse Act (even he calls it that) was implemented, which he says shows its deterrent effect (arguably, it led to a shift from open militancy such as protests at the House of Commons which courted arrest to more violent secret acts which avoid it). McKenna asks the press to stop reporting on militant activities: “Advertisement of their acts is a thing they desire above all.” He talks up plans to go after the Women’s Social and Political Union’s subscribers in court, portraying them as “rich women paying their unfortunate victims to undergo all the horrors of hunger and thirst striking” (The WSPU will respond by asking pointedly if he’d be willing to undergo those horrors for £2 a week). He quotes an (unnamed) medical expert who says that the class of militants now entering prison shows a decline from earlier, that they are more “highly nervous,” even physically “degenerate,” in other words that cripples, epileptics and women with heart and lung disease, who can’t stand up to forcible feeding, are being deliberately employed. McKenna, not the brightest bulb, claims that all the militants are paid, but also says that if they weren’t forcibly fed they are such fanatics they would starve themselves to death, and for each one allowed to die, scores more would come forward for the honor of earning the crown of martyrdom.

The general strike in Italy is back on. Barricades, fighting, attacks on trains. Six warships have been sent to threaten Ancona.

Woodrow Wilson hasn’t decided if he’s going to campaign for any congressional candidates this fall.

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Today -100: June 11, 1914: I don’t want to watch spooners; it is a mean job

Evidently Woodrow Wilson accepted an invitation to a Catholic mass for next Thanksgiving. The Reformed Church Synod considered criticizing him for this but instead decided to set up a rival service and force him to choose. If that doesn’t say Thanksgiving, I don’t know what does.

A general strike fails in Italy and is called off.

Police seize Sylvia Pankhurst as she attempts a deputation to PM Asquith.

Bayonne’s lady policewoman Ruth McAdie resigns, tired of being given the duty of breaking up couples in the park: “I don’t want to watch spooners; it is a mean job.”

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Today -100: June 10, 1914: England all over

The US Cabinet decides to prevent any further arms shipments to Mexico from the US, such as the one that nearly derailed the Niagara talks. So a shipment of ammunition intended for Tampico has been ordered detained in Galveston, although no actual law allows for such an order. And gun-running via third countries (or pretending to be going to third countries but actually going to Mexico, as is the case with the liner Arcadia) can continue.

At the Niagara Falls conference, the American and Huerta delegates are drawing up their fantasy cabinet tables. They’ve now agreed that the new president must be a Constitutionalist, but not Carranza or Pancho Villa. So now the US and the bitter enemies of the Constitutionalists are choosing which Constitutionalists should best represent the Constitutionalists.

Starvation in besieged Mazatlan forces the Federal governor to permit any non-combatant who wishes to leave for the Constitutionalist lines to do so (knowing that many will be recruited by the rebels).

The Danish Parliament votes 102-6 for women’s suffrage (and to democratize elections for the upper house). But the Conservatives boycott the vote in the upper house, so there’s no quorum. Prime Minister Carl Theodor Zahle will advise the king to dissolve the upper house and call new elections.

Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond gives his party’s official approval to the Nationalist volunteer movement.

A suffragette “destroys” George Romney’s “Portrait of a Boy” in the Birmingham Art Gallery.



George Bernard Shaw writes in The Evening Standard: “As we have neither conviction enough to starve the militants to death nor common sense enough to pledge ourselves to the inevitable reform, there is nothing to be done but wait until the women provoke a mob to lynch them and the Government hangs a satisfactory number of the mob in expiation. Then the women will get their votes after the last inch of mischief and suffering has been squeezed out of a situation which several civilized and reasonable countries already have disposed of without the slightest trouble. That is England all over.”

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Today -100: June 9, 1914: Of titled suffragettes, sieges, and unwanted Cohens

The (London) Standard publishes a list of the most socially eminent subscribers to the Women’s Social and Political Union (lists which were seized by the police in the raid a week or two back). They include a couple of princesses, various Ladies-with-a-capital-L, a bishop, and Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman doctor in England and the sister of the president of the non-militant National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. The Standard accuses the princesses of being class traitors, because, it claims, the suffragettes had plans to burn Hampton Court Palace.

The Huerta Junta now claims it never intended to blockade Tampico, and won’t withdraw from the Niagara talks after all.

The US follows Huerta in accepting in principle the Niagara conference plan.

Under siege by the rebels, Mazatlan is starving.

NY state Attorney General Thomas Carmody directs district attorneys to prosecute summer resorts advertising that they don’t accommodate people of certain races, creeds, or colors.

The Supreme Court rules that Indians count as “mixed-race,” and thus allowed to sell lands on the White Earth reservation in Minnesota, if they have even a drop of white blood (the federal government was arguing that less than 50% does not count).

Rep. Fred Britten (R-Ill.) introduces a bill to make it illegal for cabinet secretaries to accept pay for giving lectures, as William Jennings Bryan has been doing. It would also ban the practice for members of Congress, but only when it’s in session.

Headline of the Day -100: “No Country Wants Cohen.” Poor Cohen. Nathan Cohen, who was born in Russia, arrived in the US from Brazil two years ago and went insane a year later, which was within the three-year period after arriving in which he could be legally deported for insanity. So he was shipped back to Brazil, which refused to let him land, then back to Ellis Island, then to Russia, which refused to let him land, saying he had no papers proving he was Russian, then back to Ellis Island, then to Brazil again, which still refused to let him land. Now he will evidently live the remainder of his life at Ellis Island, which I’m sure had excellent facilities for long-term care for the mentally ill, at the expense of the steamship company that originally brought him from Brazil.

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Today -100: June 8, 1914: No one wants to be prime minister of France

The US delegates at the Niagara conference tell the Mexicans that they intend to keep Tampico an open port, by which they mean open to arms shipped to the rebels from the US in violation of its promise to prevent such shipments. When the US said after the Constitutionalists captured Tampico that it would ensure Tampico remained an open port, they mostly meant oil being exported to the US rather than arms being imported, but hey an open port is an open port.

Constitutionalist governors will declare currency issued by banks invalid.

Yesterday (a Sunday) suffragist speakers in several parks London were attacked and their stands destroyed. The NYT says that they were saved from beatings or duckings by the police. Although in the past such attacks have been by youths and young men out for a bit of violent Sunday fun, tolerated by the police up to a certain point, the NYT is willing to accept the actions of a small number of thugs as “striking evidence that the public has been goaded by the militants beyond the limits of endurance,” while failing to accept the actions of a small number of militant women as striking evidence of anything larger.

British suffragists have been accusing Holloway Gaol of drugging hunger-striking prisoners, but so have they. A solicitor’s clerk is charged with smuggling an emetic to Grace Roe.

France: Delcassé turns down the invitation to form a government, citing health reasons. So does Paul Deschanel, citing being a manic pixie dream girl, no wait that’s Zooey, and so do Jean Dupuy and Paul Peytral. Next up: Alexandre Ribot. This will be the 72-year-old Ribot’s third time as prime minister, the previous times being in the ‘90s. I’d suggest he enjoy it while it lasts.

The Greek government denounces the Carnegie Peace Foundation’s commission’s report on atrocities during the Balkan Wars, especially something about Bulgarian atrocities being committed under “provocation.”

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Today -100: June 7, 1914: Of blockades, French governments, naval tutors, and sinking steamers

The Huerta Junta announces a blockade of Tampico, to prevent US ships (including, rather gloriously, the schooner Sunshine) landing arms for the rebels.

The mediators at Niagara Falls think that if the Constitutionalists will only agree to a suspension of hostilities, the fighting will never resume. The mediators at Niagara Falls are delusional idiots, and their delusional idiocy is reportedly shared by Woodrow Wilson, who thinks that if he just mansplains to the rebels that their goals can be achieved through this plan of pacification they’ll agree not to seize the power they’re on the brink of seizing.

Following the French parliamentary elections, President Poincaré offered the office of prime minister to René Viviani, but he proves unable to form a ministry. That’s okay, nothing important ever happens in June. Viviani’s efforts foundered on divisions over the length of compulsory military service, recently extended from 2 years to 3. Ironically, that issue will become moot very soon.

Next up at bat: Théophile Delcassé. The NYT assures us that Germany has forgiven him for his anti-German policies when he was foreign minister. (Spoiler alert: he won’t be prime minister either, but he will have a chance to be an anti-German foreign minister again).

Mother Jones is visiting Canada, after immigration officials’ decision to exclude her was overruled by Ottawa. British Columbia has its own coal strike...

The Italian royal family announces that for the first time the heir to the throne, Prince Humbert, will be a sailor instead of a soldier. This summer he will be put on board a man-of-war with a “naval tutor.” He is 9.

Headline of the Day -100 (NYT Sunday Magazine): “Making Life in Russia Intolerable for Jewish People.”

Naval and Not-At-All Scatological Headline of the Day -100: “Corinthian Sinks a Steamer.”

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It’s outrageous to say that limiting speech is necessary for democracy

Sen. Chuck Grassley condemns Pat Leahy’s proposed constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United ruling. “It’s outrageous to say that limiting speech is necessary for democracy,” Grassley says, noting that this would be the very first amendment to the original Bill of Rights. But Grassley was for amending the Bill of Rights before he was against it.

Grassley has repeatedly tried to get a constitutional amendment outlawing flag-burning.

Of course, Grassley doesn’t believe that the First Amendment was intended to cover “nonverbal speech.” Campaign donations, on the other hand...

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Today -100: June 6, 1914: I pray God it may not be necessary for our boys at Vera Cruz to use any more force

Britain has recently banned mixed-race boxing matches.

A Milan jury, evidently convinced by Vincenzo Perugia’s claim that he only stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in order to return it to Italy and certainly not for money, gives him only a one-year sentence.

The London Times ponders how suffragettes might be dealt with. They can’t be deported to an uninhabited island because they’d just come back. Flogging isn’t really on. The general public would be okay with letting the hunger strikers starve themselves to death, but under the current law prison authorities are legally liable for prisoners’ survival. The Times supports new legislation to remove that liability. Indeed, it rather licks its lips at the thought of suffragettes dying in prison.

The NYT mentions the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’s campaign to oppose Liberal candidates for parliament and back Labour ones as a means to achieve women’s suffrage. Which I mention because, while the NYT deplores the militant suffragettes and keeps insisting their tactics won’t achieve anything, this is their first mention of the non-militant NUWSS, which is far larger than the militant wing of the suffrage movement, in months, and even this mention is a parenthetical aside in an article headlined “Another Church Burned.” The London Times isn’t much better. Organize 100 quiet meetings and 1,000 quiet petitions and *crickets* but burn one church....

Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond refuses to meet suffragists, saying previous meetings only led to unpleasantness – and if there’s one thing Irish politicians hate, it’s unpleasantness – and that the issue of suffrage should be decided by the Home Rule Parliament rather than in the Home Rule Bill. Of course that means a Home Rule Parliament elected exclusively by men.

Woodrow Wilson, speaking to graduates of Annapolis: “I pray God it may not be necessary for our boys at Vera Cruz to use any more force.” He calls the US army and navy “the instruments of civilization, not... instruments of aggression.”

The Mexican Federales will probably send gunboats to intercept the Antilla and its cargo of arms for the rebels. If that happens, they will probably be stopped by US warships. Also, another ship has left another US port with arms for the rebels, even though the US was supposed to be preventing that while talks are going on.

Speaking of gun-running, some Ulsterman with a yacht smuggles 3,000 rifles to the Ulster Volunteers, most of which are unloaded in Belfast “under the eyes of the police,” whatever that means.

Margaret Brown, aka “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” of Titanic fame, is running for the US Senate in Colorado.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first Tarzan book, Tarzan of the Apes, is published.

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Today -100: June 5, 1914: Mexico is entitled to clean up its own back yard

Carranza is taking his time in replying to a note from the ABC mediators, although his agent says, “Mexico is entitled to clean up its own back yard, and does not seek nor desire any interference from any quarter.”

Sylvia Pankhurst, distancing herself from the authoritarian leadership style of her mother and sister, plans to have the deputation to Asquith from her East London Federation of Suffragettes elected by mass meetings, with each meeting electing two women and one man.

Somehow I think that when the NYT calls Theodore Roosevelt “as wise as a whole zoological garden of serpents” for refusing to run for governor of New York, it’s not really a compliment.

Headline of the Day -100: “Albania’s King Not Saluted.” King (technically, still just a prince) William had luncheon aboard the Austrian dreadnought Tegethoff, but they skipped the usual 21-gun salute for fear it would damage talks with the insurgents (who still demanded that William be replaced by a Muslim prince).

Railroad people are testifying against young Sam Rayburn’s Anti-Trust Bill to curb the powers of railroad companies. The lawyer for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad says the bill would give the Interstate Commerce Commission dictatorial powers such as in the most tyrannical days of Venice and Russia.

An (unnamed) member of the British royal household is accused of cheating at cards at London clubs. The king has personally interviewed the accused and his accusers, after he’d invited the man to dinner after the Derby, which resulted in a boycott of the event by members of the Jockey Club, including various people with “duke” and “prince” in front of their names. The king has now tried to banish the man from England, but he refuses to go.

At Buckingham Palace during the running of the debutantes, or whatever they call it, Mary Blomfield (daughter of Lady Blomfield) starts to appeal to the king on the subject of suffrage or possibly forcible feeding before she’s tackled. And that was after the police, expecting such an attempt, carefully scrutinized everyone arriving at the palace. Royal garden parties will be canceled for the rest of the season.

The second half of that story is a description of what all the women who attended the Court were wearing, because of course it is.

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Today -100: June 4, 1914: Of bloody brats, crassness, antillas, morning canters, dunkards, and wet wobblies

Bernard Shaw got away with including the line “not bloody likely” in Pygmalion, but the Lord Chamberlain bans an entire play, “The Supplanters” by Irish unknown J. B. McCarthy, for including the phrase “bloody brats.”

The NYT finds the depiction of Red Indians in movies to be insulting to civilized Native Americans (who are now the majority of Native Americans, it says), although it praises “Hiawatha” (which the Internet Movie Database says was the first film with an all-Native American cast)(but as usual doesn’t say whether it’s one of the many silent films which have been lost, which would be useful information to include, IMDb) for its accurate depiction of Indian culture. That film and “L’inferno,” the first and quite possibly only film with an all Dante-scholar cast, prove that “The period of crassness in this new art is near its close.”

Although it was understood that no arms would be shipped from the US to either side in Mexico while the Niagara Falls talks were going on, the liner Antilla leaves New York for Tampico with 3 million rounds of ammunition (and two airplanes) for the rebels. William Jennings Bryan claims to know nothing about it, saying that orders to prevent such sailings were sent to Southern ports first and may not have reached NY yet. Totally believable.

A suffragette attacks an attendant who tries to stop her hacking at paintings with a hatchet at the Doré Gallery in London, evidently not having gotten the message about harming only property. Elsewhere, two suffragettes attack Dr. Forward, the medical officer of Holloway Gaol with a horse whip (or dogwhip, according to the London Times). And another cricket pavilion goes up in flames, as was the custom.

The British government is thinking about charging every contributor to Women’s Social and Political Union funds with conspiracy. The theory is that most of the arson and picketing and whatnot is performed these days by women on the WSPU payroll rather than volunteers as in the glory days, making the WSPU vulnerable to an attack on its finances. Also, it allows the government to portray the militants as well-paid mercenaries (they are, of course, neither).

Sylvia Pankhurst is threatening to hunger-strike on the steps of the House of Commons unless Prime Minister Asquith receives a deputation. This is potentially a significant escalation in tactics: all previous hunger strikes have taken place in prison.

That article on various suffragette doings ends with the Sentence of The Day -100: “The King has discontinued his morning canter in Rotten Row.”

Czar Nicholas is thinking about responding to the decline in foreign investments by gradually removing the restrictions on Jews participating in joint-stock companies.

The national conference of the German Baptist Church (“Dunkards”) in Frankfort, Indiana votes to discourage its members owning automobiles, “at least until such time as they become in general use or until we get more light on the subject.”

Headline of the Day -100: “500 Wait to Duck I.W.W. Men in River.” (The LA Times’s typically dickish headline for the same story: “They Despise Clean Water.”) To prevent the Wobblies holding a free speech demonstration in the Tarrytown, NY, Fountain Square, the locals have laid down a layer of tar one inch deep. The 500 Tarrytonians waited at the train station to give any arriving activists the traditional Tarrytown welcome of a bath in the Hudson, but none came.

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A careful balancing of weighty and diverse factors

Netanyahu is pushing a bill allowing the forcible feeding of Palestinian prisoners (there is a major hunger-strike among prisoners being held indefinitely without trial).

The government’s proposal says, “A decision on this sensitive question, which requires a careful balancing of weighty and diverse factors, should not be taken by administrative or medical officials responsible for the well-being of a prisoner on hunger strike, but should rather be made by a court of law at the appropriate level.” This is an outright admission that forcible feeding is intended not as a medical treatment, if a violent and involuntary medical treatment, but a punishment.

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Today -100: June 3, 1914: Of legal strikes, dynamite, political pacification, lepers, and mayflowers

The House of Representatives accepts an amendment to the anti-trust bill legalizing peaceful strikes, picketing, and boycotts.

Two suffragettes chain themselves to the gates of Buckingham Palace. Others try to heckle Lloyd George in his Welsh constituency; when ejected from his outdoors meeting, they smash windows, as was the custom.

A bomb scare at the Department of Agriculture turns out to be a hoax perpetrated by the watchman who raised the alarm (and planted the very real dynamite), hoping for a reward and a better job.

Gen. Huerta informs the Niagara conference that he is willing to step down – when Mexico is “politically pacified.”

The talk of Paris is that opponents of President Raymond Poincaré are attempting to force him to resign by threatening to make public something about his wife’s personal life. I don’t know what Parisians knew, or thought they knew, at the time, and the NYT is being coy, but the Radicals, Caillaux’s supporters, were trying to track down rumors that she had bigamously married her second husband (Poincaré is her third), and had sent agents to America to look for her first husband, who they wrongly thought was still alive. In fact, they had definitely divorced. The real scandal, if the Radicals had but known it, was that while Raymond & Henriette had married in a civil ceremony in 1904, they had a secret religious ceremony in 1913, to please his parents, after her first husband died. Given Poincaré’s anti-clerical politics, that wouldn’t have looked good. France, huh?

The famous leper John Early is arrested for being a leper in Washington D.C., where he has been staying under an assumed name at the same hotel where Vice President Marshall and a bunch of senators live. He says he came to lobby on behalf of a federal leprosium (first problem: I don’t think that’s an actual word). In the two weeks since he escaped from his leper colony, he’s been to Toronto, Montreal and New York, where he took in a baseball double-header. (Update, if you can have an update to a 100-year-old story: the June 5th LA Times reports that Early’s efforts have resulted in the introduction of two bills in Congress for a national leprosarium [that’s the word; for fun, you can google the connection between James Carville and lepers]).

Although the Wilson administration had successfully suppressed the story in December, it comes out that a Navy assistant paymaster was fired for partying with two... ladies... on the presidential yacht, The Mayflower.

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Today -100: June 2, 1914: They do not seem to be aware of the fact that the Constitutionalists are conquerors

The ABC envoys tell the Constitutionalists that they’ll only be allowed to attend the Niagara conference if they have a cease-fire with the federales and agree to everything the negotiators have already decided.

The Constitutionalists respond to the conference’s proposed commission to run Mexico with a resounding, not to say contemptuous, no: “They do not seem to be aware of the fact that the Constitutionalists are conquerors, that they have inaugurated and carried almost to successful completion a revolution, and that this means the establishment of a government entitled to recognition by the rest of the world.”

The goal of the failed military mutiny against Huerta seems to have been to grab the dynamite stored at the Mexico City citadel, which Huerta intends to use to blow up city if it falls into the hands of the rebels. Swell.

Mexican government employees, told that they will be required to take up arms and go to the front, are fleeing Mexico City, hoping to get to Cuba or anywhere.

A private in the 19th Infantry, currently occupying Vera Cruz, marries a local girl. A couple of ensigns are punished for letting the couple use a Navy launch for the ceremony (so they could be married under the American flag).

The Free Speech League, an offshoot of the Wobblies, demands permits to speak in Tarrytown, NY. The village president says he will have none of the IWW’s brand of so-called free speech in Tarrytown. Leonard Abbott, president of the League, says they will fight to the finish. Tarrytown plans to turn firehoses on them, as was the custom. State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Thompkins says that the “guise of free speech” gives no men, “no professional agitators or mischief makers the right to encourage the vicious, idle, and lay to acts of violence. ... It gives no one the right to disturb the peace of the Sabbath day”.

British suffragettes burn a church in Wargrave built in 1538. The vicar, who I swear is named the Rev. Basil Batty, runs into the flames to rescue a few of the church’s ancient ornaments. A note is left: “Stop persecuting women.”

Congress agrees to exempt labor unions and farmers’ cooperatives from the new anti-trust bill, by a vote of 207-0.

Yet another French government resigns. Not for nothin’, but from the start of 1913 through the start of World War I, France had six foreign ministers.

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They’re heeeere!

The Church of England objects to a high speed rail plan because it would require the removal of three consecrated burial grounds.

Well, you certainly wouldn’t want to do that, you might be haunted by mildly perturbed Anglican ghosts, who start to mutter “Boo” under their breath but when you look at them turn away embarrassed and look around like it must have been some other incorporeal being and what is the world coming to these days.

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Today -100: June 1, 1914: Of tallying costs and playing football

The Colorado coal strike has a known death count of 66: 18 strikers, 10 mine guards, 19 scabs, 2 militiamen and various non-combatants, including the 12 children who died at Ludlow (historians estimate as high as 100). Costs from the strike include nearly $7 million for the union, millions for the coal companies, and $700,000 for the state militia. The strike is not over, but seems to be winding down.

Police in Tarrytown, NY, attack Wobblies & anarchists who came to denounce John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Afraid of attempts to pack their jails, a known IWW tactic, the police decide to “play football” with the activist instead of arresting them (after the first 15). “Playing football” means pretty much what it sounds like. The prisoners are charged with endangering the public health, blocking traffic and acting in a disorderly manner. Becky Edelson points out that the town doesn’t have any traffic to block.

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Today -100: May 31, 1914: Of surrenders, tango foot, black princes, paines, immigrants, and disgusted Germans

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Surrender of Wilson.” Woodrow Wilson gives a Memorial Day speech at Arlington Cemetery. He had turned down an invitation from the Grand Army of the Republic but came under criticism from GAR posts, especially when it was learned that he’d be unveiling a monument in Arlington to the Confederate dead next week. He receives a lukewarm reception. Only 126 Union soldiers from the Civil War made it.

American warships mark their territory Memorial Day in Vera Cruz, each ship firing 48 guns (that’s 1,152 all together), to which the French, German, British and Spanish warships respond in kind. How joyous the Mexicans must have found this!

A German doctor asserts the existence of a malady he calls “tango foot,” an affliction of the leg muscles caused by excessive dancing of the tango.

Headline of the Day -100: “Black Prince To Visit Us.” Prince Joseph Wolugembe of Uganda. And if you didn’t catch the subtle reference, he’s a gentleman of the negro persuasion.

Headline of the Day -100 (New York Times Sunday Magazine): “Paine’s Long Lost Remains Home By Parcel Post.” Actually just some hair and a wax cast of his face. The rest of Tom Paine... kind of went missing. It’s a long story.

Queen Mary’s servants are on strike. She keeps reducing their numbers and expecting them to accomplish the same work. They now have to get up at 5 a.m. instead of 6. When their afternoon break was reduced, they refused to work during that period.

The Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau will stop trying to redirect Jewish immigrants from New York City to Galveston. The problem was that Jewish immigrants didn’t want to go to Galveston and the immigration officials in Galveston were especially hostile to Jewish immigrants.

Headline of the Day -100: “Albania’s Ruler Disgusts Germans.” By his cowardice during the recent disturbances. Although I seem to remember reading just yesterday that Kaiser Wilhelm is afraid of elevators.

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Today -100: May 30, 1914: Of Irish empresses, beer, re-elections, and royal elevators

The ocean liner Empress of Ireland sinks in the Saint Lawrence River after colliding with a Norwegian coal ship in the fog (the captains of the two ships would each claim the other was at fault; the inquiry in Canada would blame the Norwegian while the inquiry in Norway blamed the Brit). Over 1,000 are lost and 465 rescued. The worst maritime disaster in Canadian history.

Unlike the Titanic, there were plenty of lifeboats, but the Empress went on her side so half of them couldn’t be used. Also it was nighttime and chaotic, and the ship went down quickly because passengers had left portholes open. And unlike the Titanic, the wireless brought rescue boats swiftly, but fog hampered the rescue.

167 of the dead were members of the Salvation Army on their way to a conference in London, including D.M. Rees, the head of the Salvation Army in Canada. Also dead: Laurence Irving, son of actor/manager Henry Irving and a not very successful actor-playwright, and his wife. The Empress’s captain, H.G. Kendall, who performed admirably in rescuing people from the water, was previously famous as the man who recognized a passenger as the fleeing murderer Dr. Crippen. This is not the first shipwreck Kendall survived, nor the last.

The Mexican rebels have seized the brewery in Monterrey and are selling beer to raise money for the war. I hear selling cookies door to door also works.

The Constitutionalists have finally sent a delegate, Juan Urquidi, to the Niagara Falls conference. The ABC mediators are now considering whether they want to allow into their talks someone who might bring a dose of reality to their fantasy “peace plan,” such as the sentiment expressed by Urquidi that the conference has no right to determine Mexico’s internal arrangements. The US is leaning towards allowing Urquidi to join in, because they’re sure that Carranza can be persuaded to accept the plan and give up his victory right before he grasps it.

The American occupation’s collector of the port of Vera Cruz imposes a $90,000 fine on the Bavaria, which delivered its cargo of ammunition to the Huertaists.

There may have been some sort of mutiny in Mexico City, in which Huerta’s home was attacked. Or not. All of Mexico is one giant rumor mill at this point.

Eleven-term Congresscritter Richard Bartholdt (R-Missouri) has set up a headquarters to campaign against being re-elected against his will.

Evidently Kaiser Wilhelm refuses to get into any elevator not in one of his palaces.

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Today -100: May 29, 1914: Of commissions, tea, and TeleVista

The Niagara conference will, after all, name a five-man commission to govern Mexico, which the US promises to give “moral support.” This will all be valid under the Mexican constitution, they say, because the man the conference picks as president (a member of the commission with no greater powers than the other four) will first be named foreign minister by Huerta, who will then resign so that he becomes president (there is currently no veep); he’ll then name the other four to his cabinet. (Actually, the rebels point out that this maneuver would only be constitutional if you recognize the legitimacy of Huerta in the first place, which they don’t and the US supposedly doesn’t either). Whoever this guy is will be someone sympathetic to the rebels, but not an active rebel. Since the representatives of Argentina, Brazil and Chile refuse to participate in naming members of the commission, the job will be left to... wait for it... the United States and the delegates representing Huerta, who is currently busy packing his bags and, I’d imagine, drinking heavily. I have difficulty believing that everybody at the conference really deluded themselves into believing that this plan has any chance of being accepted by the Constitutionalists.

Headline of the Day -100: “Huerta Takes Tea.” He also had a haircut, the story mentions. Why the tea and not the haircut was worth a headline on the front page, I do not know.

Misleading Headline of the Day -100: “Senators Would Accept Greece's Offer to Buy Mississippi and Idaho.” To be fair, that’s the sub-hed, but the NYT index page showed only that, leaving out the headline, which makes clear that we’re talking about battleships rather than states. That said, it’s hard to see the states of Mississippi or Idaho being anything but improved by being sold to the Greeks.

Two suffragettes break windows at Buckingham Palace. The Master of the Royal Household refuses to prosecute. They’re also badgering the Archbishop of Canterbury, who refused to give sanctuary to Annie Kenney. Kenney returns to Lambeth Palace and says she’ll stay (still on hunger strike, lying on the pavement) unless the archbish speaks to her. She’s arrested again.

Dr. Archibald Low, a British inventor, says he’s invented a method of “seeing by wire,” which he calls TeleVista (a letter to the Times offers “teleseme”). He’s thinking of it as a videophone but what he’s actually got is a very crude, very early television. Or you could say early internet, in that he can send pictures over a telephone wire. Low admits his invention isn’t commercially viable yet, which just shows he didn’t think about the porn possibilities. He will soon be distracted by the Great War into pursuing other lines of mad science, including wireless-guided rockets.

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Today -100: May 28, 1914: Of recruiting, ypirangas, and mice

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan tells a banquet of the National Foreign Trade Convention that the US government won’t necessarily interfere by force in other nations to protect American business interests. Yeah, right.

Huerta issues a decree allowing anyone to enter the militia with a rank dependent not on ability but on the number of recruits they bring in and equip: 100 recruits and you’re a major, 150 a lt. colonel, 200 a full colonel.

Huerta’s former interior minister Aureliano Urrutia has fled to Texas, a sure sign of desperation. He wants to become a US citizen. He says Huerta must resign and the US should establish a military protectorate over Mexico. The Constitutionalists claim, in a very detailed and highly unlikely story, that Urrutia, a doctor, once helped Huerta cut out the tongue of a senator, and is in the US on some secret mission.

The Ypiranga (and another German ship, the Bavaria) unload their cargo of rifles, machine guns and ammunition for the Huerta forces in Puerto Mexico, and there’s nothing the US can legally do about it.

Constitutionalists confiscate five coal mines owned by French and American firms.

Aaaaand Mrs. Pankhurst is out of prison again, like a militant yo-yo. She’s got them too scared to forcibly feed her when she goes on hunger strike.

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Longer than many Americans expected

Today Obama made a statement on Afghanistan. He plans to pull the last troops out a couple of weeks before leaving office, he says.



“The United States did not seek this fight.” And yet so many seemed really happy when we invaded Afghanistan. You know, you can accept Obama’s war of necessity/war of choice distinction or not, but after 12½ years, the “they started it” argument begins to wear thin, and it’s kind of our choice that it’s still going on.

“We went to war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies...” It’s interesting that he doesn’t use the word Taliban in this speech.

“...with the strong support of the American people and their representatives in Congress; with the international community and our NATO allies; and with the Afghan people, who welcomed the opportunity of a life free from the dark tyranny of extremism.” Really, the Afghan people supported the invasion and occupation. Was there a vote? A Gallup poll?



AND YEARS PAST THE TIME WHEN MOST AMERICANS THOUGHT WE’D ALREADY LEFT: “We have now been in Afghanistan longer than many Americans expected.”

THANK GOD IT DOESN’T HAVE FIJORDS OR WE’D BE THERE FOR-FUCKING-EVER: “We will no longer patrol Afghan cities or towns, mountains or valleys.”

IS IT? IS IT REALLY? “I think Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them.”

NOT A PERFECT PLACE, BUT A LOT MORE RUBBLEY AND CRATERY: “We have to recognize that Afghanistan will not be a perfect place, and it is not America’s responsibility to make it one.”

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Today -100: May 27, 1914: Of plans of pacification, unbroken heads, horses, the unfit, and rivers

More rumors about Huerta being about to resign and flee the country, possibly on the German ship Ypiranga, which still has a cargo full of weapons that the US occupation of Vera Cruz prevented being delivered to the Federal army (Spoiler Alert: but not for much longer). It is assumed he’d try to get to Vera Cruz, where the Americans would happily escort him aboard a ship, or a boat, or a dinghy, anything that would get him out of the country; the rebels are positioning troops along the way to capture him.

The exercise in irrelevancy that is the Niagara Falls conference continues swimmingly, working on what one of the US delegates, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Lamar, is pleased to call “the plan of pacification.” The US has dropped its demand for a detailed plan of land reform; the Huerta delegates insisted the peons were too ignorant to own land, or something.

Headline of the Day -100: “Not a Single Head Broken in Ulster.”

Germany’s Conservative Party leader calls for the vigorous repression of Danish nationalist sentiments in Northern Schleswig, which hope to reattach the province to Denmark if Germany is defeated in a war.

The Daily Express (London) claims there is a suffragette plot to kill the King’s horse in the Derby.

The annual meeting of the American Medico-Psychological Association recommends passing laws for the compulsory sterilization of the feeble-minded and banning marriage by the “unfit.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt Shows His River On A Map.” To the National Geographic Society. Not a euphemism.

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Today -100: May 26, 1914: Let the curtain ring down on this contemptible farce

The Irish Home Rule Bill’s third reading passes the House of Commons 351-274. It will set up an Irish parliament and a senate, which will not have powers over foreign or military affairs, foreign trade, or the currency, and will not be able to establish or ban a religion. Irish representation in the UK Parliament will be reduced from 103 to 42.

There are no provisions to exclude Ulster, but Asquith has promised to bring in an amending bill later, although he won’t say what changes he plans, just vote for this now and, you know, trust him to make it better. An odd way to run a railroad, if you ask me. Tory leader Andrew Bonar Law uses that as an excuse to refuse to debate the bill, saying, “Let the curtain ring down on this contemptible farce. It is only the end of an act, and not of the play. The Government can carry the bill through Parliament, but the concluding act of the drama will be in the country, where an appeal to the people will not end in a farce.” That last sentence could mean the next general election – and no doubt if he were called out on it that’s what he would claim he meant – or it could mean violent resistance.

1,000 armed police have been moved into Northern Ireland, but things are quiet so far. Nationalist leader John Redmond says “the assembling of the Irish Parliament is as certain as the rising of tomorrow’s sun” and suggests that those Ulster Loyalists (who he pointedly calls “our fellow-countrymen”) who are “genuinely nervous as to their position will abandon unreasonable demands and enter into a conciliatory discussion with their fellow country-men upon the points of the bill upon which they would desire further safeguards.” Because nothing says Northern Ireland like “conciliatory discussion.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Militants Hiss the King.”

The European Powers are discussing sending an international military force into Albania.

The National Association for the Study of Epilepsy calls for the establishment of colonies for epileptics (on the leprosy model, I guess) in every state.

The US Supreme Court rules that lawsuits from the Titanic sinking may be filed in the US regardless of the nationality of claimants, but the White Star Line’s liability will be limited to $91,000 – total. The law reaches that figure by adding the total value of the ship AFTER it crashed into the iceberg (which amounts to the total value of the lifeboats) plus the amount of the fares and freight money for the voyage.

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Today -100: May 25, 1914: Of chains, free love, returning princes, wider religions (whatever that means), and whistling

Headline of the Day -100: “Sylvia Pankhurst Marches in Chains.” Just out for a little Sunday stroll, chained to 15 other women. Other suffragists protested in Westminster Abbey and Newcastle Cathedral at the Church of England’s indifference to forcible feeding. Also, some windows were broken in West End shops and someone tried to wreck the Glasgow aqueduct.

Entrance for women to the British Museum now requires a written recommendation; the Tate is closed altogether. However, the Palace denies reports that the king and queen will forgo public engagements.

In the US, the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is claiming that what suffragists really want is free love.

It isn’t.

What they really want is the suffrage.

It’s right there in the name.

Evidently the plan for a mixed commission to run Mexico was William Jennings Bryan’s, not that of the Argentinian, Brazilian and Chilean ambassadors, who refuse to accept their assigned role in the plan, to name one of the three commissioners.

Huerta claims to have suppressed a planned military revolt. Gen. Eugenio Rascon, who has just died, is rumored to have been executed.

The Irish Home Rule Bill is about to pass its Third Reading in Parliament, so everyone’s preparing for civil war. Sir Edward Carson is expected to proclaim a provisional government for Ulster.

Prince William is back ashore in Albania, but his hasty retreat to the safety of an Italian warship at the first sign of trouble while leaving regular Albanians to the mercy of the rebels is not going over especially well.

Vice President Thomas Marshall says labor evils can be solved only by “a wider religion.”

Theodore Roosevelt rejects Bull Moose attempts to get him to run for governor of NY.

Headline of the Day -100: “He Whistled To The Queen.” Evidently the queen and Princess Mary went for a walk in a park with so little security that when the princess dropped a handkerchief, a man could pick it up and whistle to alert her without being aware she was anyone special. He soon found out. He will be missed. Kidding.

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Today -100: May 24, 1914: Of con artists, fleeing princes, panaceas, mummies, and Paris trends

Two con men are arrested for raising funds ostensibly for a orphanage in Syria. The interesting thing is that the first people they scammed were Woodrow Wilson, Sen. William Stone, and Secretary of War Garrison, who provided letters of recommendation the men used to con people out of donations.

Albania: Essad Pasha’s supporters (I was beginning to wonder if he had any) attack Durrës, forcing Prince William to seek sanctuary on an Italian warship.

There have been a series of letters to the NYT about why twenty years of women’s suffrage in Colorado didn’t prevent the coal wars. Today, Alice Stone Blackwell admits that woman suffrage has not prevented labor troubles, but “If this proves it to be a failure it must be on the principle that ‘only panaceas need apply.’”

London police raid the offices of the Women’s Social and Political Union. In response, a few paintings are slashed at the National Portrait Gallery and a case in the mummy room of the British Museum is smashed, as was the custom.

Headline of the Day -100 (L.A. Times): “Norway Women Equal With Men.” Not only do they have the vote, but can enter any profession except the army and of course the priesthood. There is even a lady judge.

The Niagara Falls conference is happily negotiating away in its little bubble. Talks are going so well that they may be wrapped up early. Right now they’re working on solving the Mexican land problem as the Constitutionalists come closer and closer to Mexico City. The NYT says that the mediators “are almost convinced that the rebel leaders will be virtually obliged by the opinion of the great nations of the world to accept any plan of settlement which is brought forward by the Ambassador of Brazil and the Ministers of Argentina and Chile and is assented to by the representatives of President Wilson and Gen. Huerta.”

St. Louis businessman and amateur aviator Albert Lambert volunteers to help the Navy develop its aviation wing. Lambert already organized a “reserve corps.”

When she shot the editor of Le Figaro, Henriette Caillaux started a fashion: pistol shooting. Shooting ranges have been crowded all over Paris and new ones have been started. The place where Madame Caillaux bought and test-drove her pistol on that fatal day is now a chic spot for women.

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