Today -100: November 19, 1914: Three hundred miles of cannon spoke

A committee of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) submits a report in favor of the restrictive immigration bill (including literacy tests) pending before Congress.  It says that the European war will be followed by mass migration from the affected countries, but those governments will offer inducements to the fit to stay and aid in restoration while encouraging those crippled by the war – “these bits of wreckage” – to emigrate to America.

Carranza moves his capital from Mexico City to Orizaba.  The other president of Mexico, Eulalio Gutiérrez, is rumored to have been put in jail by Pancho Villa for approving the idea of Villa and Carranza going into exile.

Turkish forces in Smyrna shoot at a US Navy launch (which was flying the US flag) from the cruiser Tennessee.

German troops have reportedly captured the governor of Warsaw (Russian Poland).  He is being confined in the “best hotel” in Gnesen.

Germany is trying to forcibly recruit Belgian Civil Guards into its war with Russia.  They are resisting, hiding, and attempting to escape into Holland.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Even the overly credulous NYT doesn’t really believe this one: A Cossack general named Arintinoff captured Czernowitz, in Austrian Poland, and told the town rulers that, following the Austrian example in Kaminez Podolski, he wanted 600,000 rubles in gold and silver (reduced, after much begging, to 300,000) by the next day or he will blast the city.  So they milked every last peasant (the rich people having already fled town), collecting trinkets, jewelry, menorahs, church ornaments etc, and just managed to raise it by the deadline, whereupon the general told them to take it back, he just wanted to show them what it’s like.

A little light googling doesn’t show up a Gen. Arintinoff or Arintinov or Rintintinoff, except for this tale.

Rudyard Kipling shits out a poem in praise of the late Lord Roberts:

He passed in the very battle-smoke
Of the war he had descried.
Three hundred miles of cannon spoke
When the Master Gunner died.  Etc.

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Today -100: November 18, 1914: Of mediation, good times in Warsaw, elusive teetotalers, wet military zones, and humane projectiles

Headline of the Day -100:  “President to Await Mediation Request.”  And await... and await...

Command of Mexico City is seized by Gen. Álvaro Obregón.  On behalf of Carranza, but that part is not clear to a confused NYT yet.  The move was intended to forestall Villa, who is sending troops towards the capital.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Germans Expected Good Time in Warsaw.”  This is why you should never trust graffiti in bathroom stalls.  The Germans had been planning to hold a ball in Warsaw after they captured it – they printed invitations and everything.  The army is now retreating, leaving behind horses and artillery, although it claims this is merely a strategic maneuver.

To pay for the war, British Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George proposes doubling the income tax and increasing the tax on beer and, so that the “elusive teetotalers” don’t escape having to pay, on tea as well (at this point Liberal MP and temperance advocate Leif Jones stalked out of the House of Commons chamber in protest).

Britain declares the whole North Sea a military zone, supposedly in response to Germany using civilian shipping vessels to lay mines.  So really, this military zone thing is a benevolent act to protect neutral ships from German perfidy and not at all a naval blockade intended to starve Germany.

Britain denies German charges that it uses dum-dum bullets, and says Germany does.  On the standard British army bullet, “In the opinion of Sir Victor Horsley, a well-known surgeon [and well-known vivisector of dogs], this bullet is ‘probably the most humane projectile yet devised’”.

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Today -100: November 17, 1914: The Germans all boast of their culture

Russian troops may have set Cracow on fire.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: More Russian rumors about Austria: Austria is planning to seek a separate peace, independently of Germany;  Germany demanded that Austria fire 11 generals and the heir-apparent, Archduke Karl Franz Josef (as a field marshal; he can continue being heir-apparent); and have taken command of Cracow’s defenses away from the Austrians.

The war is costing Britain £1 million a day.

Germany is re-naming French cities it claims to have annexed: Calais will be Kales, Dunkirk Dünkirchen, Lille Ryssel, Boulogne Boonen, Nancy Nanzig, etc.

Pope Benedict urges peace.  He blames the war on materialism and lack of brotherly love.  “The spirit of Christ does not reign today,” he says.

Pancho Villa accepts Carranza’s offer that they both quit their positions and leave the country.  So we’re all agreed, and this will definitely happen, right?  Eulalio Gutiérrez certainly thinks it has, and has written to Woodrow Wilson, “president” to president, that “the time of dictatorships born of violence and personal ambitions has passed forever” in Mexico.  So that’s all good.

Name of the Day -100: Americans with German names are being warned by the State Department against traveling to countries at war with Germany after complaints from a George Rottweiler of Chicago about ill-treatment in France and Britain.

In the NYT letters pages appears what you didn’t even realize the war needed: a limerick.

The Germans all boast of their culture
In a way that would almost insult you;
But the wreckage at Rheims,
And the loot of Louvain
Show their “culture” develops a vulture!

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Today -100: November 16, 1914: Of foxes, censorship, flügels, uriahs, fortresses, and Masonic conspiracies

First World War Problems: the war is seriously interfering with fox hunting in England.

All train passengers heading from London to the Continent will be searched for spy stuff.

The Daily Chronicle (UK) complains again about military censorship.  Germany has accredited war correspondents and “If Germans die in the performance of a heroic exploit, they do not die unheard of, unhonored, and unsung, as with rare exceptions their British and French opponents do.  In this way the martial enthusiasm of the nation is kept at the highest pitch.”  But the French War Office’s “policy it has been to hound down British correspondents in France like vermin and treat them as if they were worse than spies.”  And the British government has taken to seizing reporters’ passports.  The Chronicle claims Germany treats reporters from neutral countries very hospitably, but NYT correspondents report frequently being arrested as suspected spies.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Worry Over War Kills Dr. Fluegel.”  Worst Dr. Seuss book ever.  Ewald Flügel was chair of the Stanford English Philology Dept, working on a massive project to create a concordance to Chaucer’s work.  And he was worried about the war.

Also dead: Uriah Hill, a retired stove manufacturer.  Nothing noteworthy, but you just don’t see many Uriahs anymore.

Russia is imposing financial penalties on East Prussian towns, just like Germany does in Belgium.  The German military authorities have ordered East Prussians to flee and leave nothing behind that the Russian troops can use, bringing their flocks with them and burning their homes.

Exotic-As-Hell Headline of the Day -100:  “Indians Take Turkish Fortress in Arabia.”

Cardinal O’Connell of Boston blames the disorder in Mexico on a “Masonic conspiracy.”

Masonic conspirator Carranza offers to turn control of the military over to Masonic conspirator Gutierrez and go into exile in Cuba – provided that Masonic conspirator Villa does the same, on the same date.

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Today -100: November 15, 1914: Of little Bobs, touchy czarinas, Belgian caps, audaciouses, illustrations independent of accordance with fact, and ice

Field Marshal Frederick “Little Bobs” Roberts, the 1st Earl Roberts of Kabul and Kandahar, the retired former Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, dies of pneumonia at age 82 in France, where he had gone to visit Indian troops.  He bounced around the colonies most of his military career, which spanned the Indian Mutiny to the Boer War.  He spent the last years before the war agitating for compulsory military service and for the army to rebel and refuse to enforce Irish Home Rule.  At five foot two, he was too short to be an enlisted man, even with the newly reduced minimum height.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Touch of Czarina Like Miracle Cure.”  A barracks near the Winter Palace has been converted into a military hospital, and Mrs Tsar and a couple of the czarettes play at nurses.

Fashion Headline of the Day -100:  “BELGIUM MAY BE INSPIRATION FOR WINTER'S NEW FASHIONS; Details of Costumes Worn by Inhabitants of Little Nation Which Has Stirred the Imagination of the World May Be Reproduced in Other Lands. Already Belgian Cap Is the Smart Thing in Millinery.”  I’m assuming a Belgian cap is some sort of contraceptive device.

The super-dreadnought HMS Audacious, the 3rd largest ship in the British Navy, was sunk by a mine last month in the North Sea.  Most of the crew was rescued by the Olympic.  The news was kept secret for more than two weeks, despite being known by the crews and civilian passengers of multiple ships.

If a dreadnought fears nothing, what is a super-dreadnought?

The federal commissioner of Indian Affairs, Cato Sells, admits that Kate Barnard’s accusations about Indians being robbed of millions are true, but says he inherited the situation from previous regimes and he’s now sending probate lawyers to try to straighten it out.  He doesn’t seem to be as willing as Barnard to accuse the newish state of Oklahoma of being a giant criminal conspiracy to defraud Indians of their lands, which is what it was.

The Rev. Hugh MacCauley of the Second Presbyterian Church in Paterson, NJ, says that his mention in a recent sermon of a New Jersey woman who adopted two Belgian boys, only to find when they arrived that their hands had been cut off by German soldiers, was just a rumor which he used as an “illustration” and “its value as an illustration was quite independent of its accordance with fact.”

The city of Bakersfield’s new charter, which has to be ratified by the California Legislature, declares ice a public utility and authorizes the city to manufacture and sell it.

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Quote of the Day

Asked in Burma about press freedom, Obama says he has raised the issue with both the Chinese and Burmese governments: “I’m pretty blunt and pretty frank about the fact that societies that repress journalists ultimately oppress people as well”. First they came for the journalists, but they weren’t people, so I said nothing....

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The return of In Other Words

George Bush is interviewed by NPR, because of course he is. He mostly talked in other words about the book he totally wrote all by himself about his father.

IN OTHER WORDS: “He had a strategy to deal with Saddam Hussein. And then when he said, this will not stand, he meant it. In other words, he understood that when a president speaks, he’s got to mean what he says.”

IN OTHER WORDS: “We both went to the United Nations to get a resolution. In other words, this wasn’t a unilateral American action.”

IN OTHER WORDS: “It was more complex because this decision was made in a post-9/11 world. In other words, the removal of Saddam from Kuwait was definitely in our national interest. But it didn’t necessarily mean that the United States’s homeland would be threatened or not threatened depending upon his actions.” No, it didn’t necessarily mean that. I think. Wait, what did you say?

WHAT GEORGE CAN UNDERSTAND (NOT GRAMMAR. NEVER GRAMMAR): “I can understand the comparisons between he and me.”

WHAT GEORGE COULD ENVISION: it was totally necessary to invade Iraq because “one could envision a nuclear arms race between Iran and Iraq.”

A BETTER SHOT: “And I would argue that the people of Iraq have a better shot at living in a peaceful state.” They certainly have enough ammunition.

THE CONDITION ELSEWHERE MATTERS:

GREENE: I guess I just wonder broadly what you tell Americans who look at the chaos today and link it back to your decision to invade in 2003. And...

BUSH: I just say the condition elsewhere matters to the security of the United States, and we cannot become isolationists.

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Today -100: November 14, 1914: Of insane dukes, passports, villas, and punctured romances

Headline of the Day -100:  “Duke of Cumberland Made Insane By War.”  Found wandering around in a demented state because his son, the Duke of Brunswick, has been declared missing in battle.  I don’t know if either element of this story – the insanity or the MIA thing – have any truth to them.  This could be British disinformation aimed at two guys on the German side (the elder Duke used to be the king of Hanover, when there was still a kingdom of Hanover, and the younger is married to Kaiser Wilhelm’s daughter) who happen to possess English titles (which they will be deprived of in 1919).  The inter-marrying of royalty creates these problems.  The dukes are direct descendants of George III, who was king of both Britain and Hanover, as were all British monarchs from George I until Victoria – Hanover’s rules of succession did not allow for female monarchs.  (Update: Germany denies, a few days later, that Brunswick is wounded or missing or a prisoner.)

The US says it will end its occupation of Vera Cruz in 10 days.  Evidently trying to get out before the newest civil war heats up.  Now they just have to decide which government to give the customs duties they’ve been collecting.

Kate Barnard, the state commissioner of charities in Oklahoma, says there is a conspiracy in the state legislature and congressional delegation to rob Cherokees, Seminoles and Chickasaws, especially orphans, of tribal funds.  This theft was facilitated by the 1908 decision to turn the cases over from federal courts to Oklahoma courts.  Once she started advocating for Indian wards, the Legislature de-funded her Department of Charities and Correction, which now runs on, well, charity.  Incidentally, state commissioner of charities is the only office a woman was allowed to hold under the OK constitution.

Britain will now require Americans boarding steamships for America to show passports, but...

The State Department admits that foreign spies have gotten American passports (such as Carl Lody, who was just executed in Britain) pretty easily.  Under new rules, people will have to do more than pretend they’ve lost their passport and swear that they’re American, like Lody did.

Kaiser Wilhelm, afraid that Greece might soon join the Allies, is trying to sell his villa, Achilleion, on Corfu before it gets confiscated.  Which is in fact what happened.  It became a wartime hospital, an orphanage, a Nazi headquarters, and a museum/casino (in which the casino scene in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only was filmed).

Speaking of film history, “Tillie’s Punctured Romance,” the first full-length comedy motion picture, starring Marie Dressler, Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand, directed by Mack Sennett, is released.  This is a pretty good print, but turn off the obnoxious sound.



The New Statesman publishes George Bernard Shaw’s article “Common Sense About the War,” which will also begin running in the NYT tomorrow and lead to much vituperative debate in Britain, questions in Parliament about why it wasn’t censored, etc (some of the debate is reproduced in the book version at the link). Read it and decide for yourself (in other words, I completely forgot I intended to read it by today).

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Today -100: November 13, 1914: Before the leaves have fallen from the trees

Berlin: Censorship to repress any news of the Russian invasion of East Prussia doesn’t really work if your city is filling up with refugees.

A guy told a guy who told a NYT correspondent that Kaiser Wilhelm, visiting a field hospital, told soldiers, “Mark my word, there will be peace before the leaves have fallen from the trees.”

Russia claims that Armenians are gleefully welcoming Russian troops and even joining them.  Which a few certainly are doing, but this Russian  propaganda plays into the pre-genocidal all-Armenians-are-traitors propaganda that the Turkish government is already beginning to ramp up.  Also, it will soon be clear that the move into Armenia was more of a feint by a single army corps than a real invasion, so any Armenians who did gleefully welcome Russian troops would be kind of screwed.

Japan is upset at California’s re-election of Gov. Hiram Johnson and the election of still more racist legislators.  They fear new legislation will prevent Japanese not just owning land in California as at present, but leasing it.

Headline of the Day -100:  “President Resents Negro’s Criticism”  (Alternate headline, in the LA Times: “Wilson and a Negro Clash in White House”).  The critical negro is William Monroe Trotter of the small National Equal Rights League and the criticism is over Wilson’s segregation of federal offices.  Wilson repeatedly insists that segregation, which was of course implemented for the comfort and in the best interests of negroes, is not a political issue.  Trotter promises united negro opposition to the Democrats in 1916 and expresses disappointment in Wilson, who says he’s never been so insulted in his life, and that mentioning votes is a form of blackmail, finally ordering Trotter out, saying that if the NERL ever came to the White House again, it had better be without Trotter.  The next day, various negroes sent telegrams to the White House disavowing Trotter, and the White House trumpeted its great support of black federal employees: why, two negro messengers have been advanced to clerkships!  Two of them!  One of whom had only been waiting for a promotion for 45 years.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Disobeyed His Orders, Killed 600 Germans.”  A French gunner, so it’s okay.

Headline of the Day -100 (Chicago Tribune):  “Sneeze Powder Kills Man.”  In a New York streetcar. James C. Allan, 78, one-time Greenback-Labor Party candidate for lieutenant-governor.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Kaiser Clips Ends off His Mustache.”  The London Standard claims this has brought home to Germans that they are losing the war.

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Today -100: November 12, 1914: The Battle of Cocos. No, really, that’s what it’s called.

The German cruiser Emden, which has been very successful against Allied ships – mostly British – for two months (2 warships, 16 steamers and a merchant ship captured or sunk) is attacked and destroyed by the Australian cruiser Sydney off the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean, with 1/3 of its crew killed.  The Emden’s captain and officers will be allowed to keep their swords.  They won’t be returned to Germany until 1920.  A landing party on Direction Island when the battle occurred escaped capture, stole a ship and got back to the German fleet safely.  One of the Emden’s guns may now be viewed in Hyde Park, Sydney:

German newspapers are neglecting to mention that Russian troops have crossed into German territory.

The NYT’s military expert says “The close fighting of the last nine weeks in France has been very trying to the morale of the troops.”

Luxemburg’s Parliament opens, not that it matters, given the German occupation.  Grand Duchess Marie says the Germans are promising an indemnity, presumably because they didn’t resist like Belgium did.  “Our rights, though violated, remain. ... I thank the people for their correct attitude, whereby disagreeable events have been prevented.”

Carranza declares war on Villa.

The NYT praises Southern women suffragists for opposing the federal route to women’s suffrage:  “If they cram the vote down the throats of a large part of the United States which does not want it and is even hostile to it,” the Times says, the “indifference and lack of intelligence” which the new voters will display “will be a body blow to the influence and standing of women in politics.”  The lesson from negro voters is that “the real friends of the negroes” wanted to start with just a few negroes voting and gradually expand it and had this been done, the Times says, some negroes might still have the vote, because evidently the reason they were deprived of the vote was that they weren’t very good at it, and for no other reason.

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Today -100: November 11, 1914: They will do what is just

Formal declaration of war by Britain, France, Russia, Belgium and Serbia on Turkey.

At the Southern States Suffrage Conference in Chattanooga, Alva Belmont says that with the European armies “shelling cities and destroying everything before them, leaving women and children without a place to lay their heads, it is somewhat illogical to talk of woman’s sphere as the home.”  Asked whether negro women in the South should be allowed to vote, Belmont would not venture an opinion, saying it should be “left entirely to the men of the South to decide.  They will do what is just.”  There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.  “We seek for women political rights equal to those of men.  Negro women could share the rights of negro men. If they are disfranchised let the women share the same treatment.”  Since she, unlike most Southern suffragists, supports a national constitutional suffrage amendment, I wonder how she thinks it should be phrased to allow for racial discrimination.

The German government is complaining about vulgar cartoons of the heads of enemy states.  “Germany does not require such poisonous medicine and should leave such things to the English mob, the Paris apaches, and Russian moujiks.”

14 states are under quarantine for foot-and-mouth disease.

Psychic Headline of the Day -100:  “Psychic War News.”  The Occult Messenger (UK) reports, via psychic sources, that the Allies will do very well in November and that “The United States, the most unlikely people of all, will put a finger in the Turkish pie.”  Very unlikely: when the US finally did join the war with the Central Powers, it did not declare war on Turkey.

Carl Lody, the German spy, is executed at the Tower of London, the first execution there since the 11th Lord Lovat, a Jacobite, in 1747.

Germany is threatening to ban the importation of food into Belgium (whose population is being partly fed by American charity) unless Belgians return to work.  What work? the Belgians wonder, since the Belgian economy has been wrecked, bombed, thoroughly looted, and is in no shape to provide jobs.  Every means of transportation has been commandeered.

Mexico orders a secret German wireless station in Ensenada closed.

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Today -100: November 10, 1914: More men and still more

Carranza declares himself chief head of Mexico, ordering generals to ignore the convention and subordinate officers to ignore their generals if they follow the convention.  Gutierrez also declares himself president.

Lord Kitchener, the British secretary of war, wants “more men and still more, until the enemy is crushed.”  He admits casualties have been “severe,” but says those casualties “will act as an incentive to British manhood to prepare themselves to take the places of those who have fallen.”  Come on, British manhood, those mass graves won’t just fill themselves.

Headline of the Day -100:  “RAIN OF GERMAN SHELLS MAKES YPRES A RUIN; Fine Old Buildings Destroyed ;- Lone Woman Fights Flames With Buckets of Water.”

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Today -100: November 9, 1914: Of absinthe & glass eyes

The US will intern the German cruiser Geier at Honolulu after it missed a deadline to leave port because it was trying to out-wait a larger Japanese ship waiting to sink it.

France bans absinthe.

First World War Problems: all of Germany’s glass-eye factories have shut down, and the US is running out of them.  The US manufactures some of its own, but the material came from Germany.

Britain denies German claims that German ships bombarded Yarmouth.

Germany imposes yet another $1.25 million fine on Brussels, for the crime of Brussel’s police having helped newspaper vendors resist arrest by German secret police for selling contraband Dutch newspapers.

The Mexican convention gives Carranza until Tuesday to relinquish the presidency, or force will be used.

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Today -100: November 8, 1914: Of beer, internment, wireless, and cow pictures

Japan previously said it would only keep Kiautschou temporarily but, now that it’s been captured from Germany, says it will administer it until the end of the war and then “open negotiations with China.”  Germany hasn’t left much of it intact.

Headline of the Day -100:  “A.F.L. Declares for Beer.”  Says prohibition is contrary to freedom and would throw (unionized) brewery employees out of work.

As threatened, Germany has ordered all male English nationals aged 17 to 56 to report for internment.

The exposition for New York’s tercentenary opens. It is opened by an Indian named... White Man Runs Him.

Cuba says it has put down an army mutiny.

The US military is searching for secret wireless stations that certain unnamed European countries (Germany) are using to transmit military information – the positions of sinkable ships, that sort of thing.

Headline of the Day -100:  “War Facts in Cow Pictures.”  Supposedly, the German army is using cow-themed graffiti to leave messages directing troops – the cow’s head pointing in the direction of French troops, the size of the cow indicating the size of enemy forces, that sort of thing.

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What North Korean orphans shout for – joy, evidently

With all the election hoopla you may have missed the important news that North Korea has opened a new Pyongyang Baby Home and Orphanage.

“The baby home and orphanage were garbed in a festive atmosphere as the children were very happy and pleased with the best cradles. Entering the fairytale nurseries, education rooms, exercise rooms and other best-furnished places for living and entertainment, the children were so happy that they shouted for joy. Nurses, teachers and officials were very grateful to Marshal Kim Jong Un. The children gave art performances in their new buildings and they sang of their happiest life in the world.”

Kim Jung Un visited a few days before it opened, so he wouldn’t be bothered by actual babies and orphans, because you’d hate to have anything distracting mess up your PR photos.

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Today -100: November 7, 1914: We cannot see beyond the range of our guns

As the Turko-Russian war heats up, Russian newspapers have started calling Constantinople “Tzargrad.”

Woodrow Wilson declares the US neutral in the war between Britain and Turkey.  Jeez, we get it, you’re neutral already.

Germany surrenders the port of Tsing-tau to Japan after a 65-day siege.

Turkey’s chief religious leader, the Sheik-ul-Islam, decrees that it is the religious duty of all Muslims to fight Russia, France and Britain.  Yup, jihad.

Headline of the Day -100:  “English Eat Grapefruit.”

Britain is intercepting shipments of copper from the United States to Italian ports but intended, Britain says, for the German war machine.  All ships bound for Italy are being diverted to Gibraltar and copper removed.  American copper magnates say it’s just an excuse for Britain to create a monopoly in copper manufacturing.

George Bernard Shaw writes an open letter to Woodrow Wilson, asking him to request Britain, France and Germany all withdraw from Belgium and fight their war (which he calls “the quaint absurdity of a war waged formally between the German Kaiser, the German Czar, the German King of the Belgians, the German King of England, the German Emperor of Austria, and a gentleman who shares with you the distinction of not being related to any of them and is therefore describable monarchically as one Poincaré, Frenchman”) on their own territories.  He is appealing to the US because “We cannot be just.  We cannot see beyond the range of our guns.  The roar of the shrapnel deafens us; the black smoke of the howitzer blinds us.  And what these do to our bodily senses our passions do to our imaginations.  For justice we must do as the mediaeval cities did – call in a stranger.”

Montana suffragists are concerned that the delay in election returns from Anaconda might be part of a dirty trick to defeat the women’s suffrage referendum.  Evidently the poll workers just... forgot to count votes on the propositions. I mostly mention this because it’s the first time I’ve seen the name of future Congresscritter Jeanette Rankin, now the president of the Montana Equal Suffrage Association, in a newspaper (the LA Times).

Although on the same page they mis-spell the name of Frances Munds, an Arizona suffrage activist just elected to the state Legislature from Yavapai County, the first woman legislator in Arizona.

The NYT reports on a women’s suffrage meeting in Carnegie Hall, and for once doesn’t describe what a single one of the women speakers was wearing.  Is that even legal?

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Today -100: November 6, 1914: Of declarations of war, cypruses, dead klucks, and Ostendais

Britain and France declare war on Turkey (actually, France says that Turkey created the state of war by attacking a French steamer, I guess at Odessa, without immediately making amends by firing all the Germans in its army and navy as a way to disclaim responsibility for the act).

Britain annexes Cyprus.

France, Britain and Russia all having large numbers of Muslim subjects, there’s some concern about unrest in sympathy with the Ottoman Empire, although they’re all pretending not to worry.  Britain issues a proclamation – in India, which included what is now Pakistan – promising not to molest – is that really the exact word they used? – Muslim holy sites in the Middle East.

Death Rumor of the Day -100: The French newspaper Excelsior says that German Gen. Alexander von Kluck died 10 days ago, and they’ve been covering it up.  Nope.

Ostend, Belgium is about to come under artillery attack, and the Ostendais have been ordered (by whom?) to hide in their cellars for the next five days.

Ostendais: that’s what people in Ostend call themselves.  Now you know.

Someone from the Christian Science Committee on Publication feels obligated to write the NYT a letter denying that Gen. Moltke, former head of the German General Staff, is a Christian Scientist.

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Today -100: November 5, 1914: Subordinate to our rules and desires

This is the 5th anniversary of my first Today -100 post.

Headline I Really Didn’t Want to Click On of the Day -100:  “Wants Cat Skins for War.”

Okay, now I really want Germany to lose.

Headline of the Day -100:  “PICK OFF RUSSIAN OFFICERS.; German Soldiers Then Have to Stand Revengeful Bayonet Charges.”  Another London Standard propaganda story, the gist of which is that Russian soldiers love their officers and that Germans hate hand-to-hand fighting, preferring to take pot-shots from a distance, because they’re cowards.

Headline of the Day -100:  “French Officers Swordless.”  Not a euphemism.  Because of that pot-shot thing, they’re trying to be less conspicuous.  Their new uniforms will be indistinguishable from those of the grunts (poilus, to use the French term coming into use right about now).  Officers are also ordered to lead from the rear, because they’re so much more valuable than the poilus.

Mrs. Arthur Dodge of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage says the elections show that women’s suffrage is doomed.  In addition to losing 5 of the 7 state referenda, none of the 18 anti-suffrage members of Congress targeted by the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage lost their seats.

Turkey breaks off relations with Britain, France, Russia and Serbia.  Russia invades Armenia.  The London Daily Chronicle says “The campaign in this wild, mountainous Armenian region will mean considerable hardship at this season of the year, but it will certainly be a most picturesque episode of the great war.”  So that's okay then.

Gen. Paul von Hindenburg says “The war will not end until all the nations who are fighting against us have become subordinate to our rules and desires.”

Woodrow Wilson warns the people of the part of Arkansas into which he’s sending federal troops against “doing, countenancing, encouraging, or taking any part in such unlawful obstructions, combinations, and assemblages” and says they should return to their homes.

The British government pays Orville Wright £15,000 to settle his patent-infringement case and to cover any future use of airplane-related patents.

Walter Lanfersieck, executive secretary of the Socialist Party, is happy with the election results.  One Socialist congressman, several state legislators and city council members.  But with the general collapse of the Progressive Party, “There is now no place for honest Progressives to go but to the Socialist Party.”

The German minister of war bans the use of Boy Scouts in the field.  They have been used up to now to bring food, ammunition and such to the troops.

NYC Mayor Mitchel (a Democrat) says the poor showing of Democrats in the state’s elections shows that Tammany’s Boss Murphy must go.  Boss Murphy disagrees.

Elsewhere in fixing-the-blame news, the White House says congressional election losses were down to the changes made in tariffs.

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Today -100: November 4, 1914: The Suez Canal is threatened by camels?

Election results:

Women’s suffrage was on the ballot in 7 states yesterday, passing only in Nevada and Montana, bringing the number of suffrage states to 12 (plus Alaska), but losing by a 56% no vote in South Dakota (that initiative included a provision allowing foreigners who intended to become citizens to vote), 55% in North Dakota, 64% in Missouri, I dunno in Nebraska, and 60% in Ohio, whose constitution defined voters as white male until 1923.  Jane Addams thinks the bad suffrage showing is the result of the European war causing men to lapse into primeval instincts.  “Persuasion has no place in the psychology of men who are contemplating resort to force.” Ain’t it the truth.

The 8-hour day and/or the 48-hour week fails everywhere they’re on the ballot (California, Oregon, Washington).  Prohibition wins in Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, but loses in California and Ohio.  There are now 14 dry states.  Arizona narrowly fails to abolish the death penalty (putting 15 prisoners who had been reprieved pending the vote back on death row), votes to require that 80% of employees at companies employing more than five workers be U.S. citizens, and limits railroad fares to 3¢ per mile.  California bans poll taxes and prize fighting but rejects a proposition allowing only property-owners to vote on bond measures.  Oregon will require voters to be American citizens and abolishes the death penalty by a narrow vote (which will be overturned in 1920).  Washington state votes 79% against foreigners being allowed to own land.

These were the first US Senate elections under the 17th Amendment.  Democrats picked up 3 seats, giving them 56 of the 96 seats.  New senators include Warren G. Harding for Ohio and Charles Curtis (Hoover’s vice president) for Kansas.

The House of Representatives: Democrats also continue to hold a majority in the House, with 230 seats, down from 290.  The R’s have 196.  Former Speaker of the House Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon (R), who lost his Illinois seat in 1912, returns, as does Nicholas Longworth (aka Mr. Alice Roosevelt).  Charles Randall, a Prohibition Party member (and formerly a Republican, a Democrat, and a Progressive, not necessarily in that order), wins a congressional seat from California’s 9th district (Los Angeles County) in a tight three-way race, defeating an incumbent Republican 30.9% to 30.3%.  He will serve three terms, the only Prohibition Party congresscritter ever.  Meyer London, a labor attorney, is elected for New York’s 12th district (Manhattan) as a Socialist.  London is a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, and that’s his real name.  He will serve two terms before being defeated by Henry Goldfogle, the Democrat he defeated this time.  He admits he can’t pass any legislation, but he hopes to call Congress’s attention to the study of social problems and labor legislation.  Good luck with that.  “The business of socialism,” he will say at a celebration held in Madison Square Garden, “is to give intelligence to discontent.”  He says he will show Congress “what the east side of New York is and what the east side Jew is.”  Both Randall & London will vote against entry into World War I.  Victor Berger, the former one-term Socialist congresscritter from Milwaukee, loses a bid to return in the district he lost last election.

Charles Whitman is elected governor of New York in a Republican landslide that gives the party both houses of the legislature and all the statewide offices.  Voters were presumably turned off by the intra-Democratic fighting that culminated in last year’s impeachment of Gov. Sulzer and the victory of Tammany corruption.  Sulzer ran this time under the American Party and the Prohibition Party banners, coming a distant third but he calls himself “vindicated” by Glynn’s defeat).  Even New York City didn’t give many votes to Democratic Gov. Glynn.  The anti-Catholic campaign against him didn’t help, but neither did a series of corruption scandals and Tammany appointments.

California re-elects Hiram Johnson as governor.  In 1910 he was elected as a Republican, this time he ran as a Progressive, winning just shy of 50%, with Republican John Fredericks getting 29% and Democrat J.B. Curtin 12.5%.

Supposedly Austria is sounding out Russia about making a peace separate from Germany.

Japanese sailors have requested permission to make a raid on Kaio-Chau to capture the German governor, but they’ve been turned down.  The request was written in the sailors’ own blood; no word on what bodily fluid the rejection was written in.

French newspapers are speculating that Germany, which unlike France is fighting on two fronts, must be running out of munitions.

The Turkish ambassador, about to leave Russia as the two countries start their war, refuses to pay the embassy’s Russian employees the back wages he owes them and makes a smart-ass jibe about paying them in Odessa when Turkey captures it. A clerk clobbers him, as is only fitting and proper.

Headline of the Day -100:  “SUEZ CANAL IS THREATENED.; German Officers with a Camel Corps ;- Agitators Sent to Egypt.”  The canal is threatened by camels, because of course it is.

Woodrow Wilson sends federal troops to Arkansas to see that a federal judge’s orders are enforced – something about bankrupt mines, mines being blown up, and miners rescuing other miners from the cops.  Yes, the troops will have machine guns, as was the custom.

Carranza rejects the convention’s attempt to replace him, claiming that the resignation he sent them was a “telegraphic error.”  Fuckin’ autocorrect, amiright?  So Mexico now has two rival presidents, as was the custom.

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Today -100: November 3, 1914: Did you know one of those could be closed?

Montenegro declares war on Turkey.  No one notices.

Headline of the Day -100:  “North Sea Closed by British Order.”  Supposedly Britain is laying mines in the North Sea purely in retaliation for Germany laying mines off the coast of Ireland along the shipping route between Liverpool and the US, but a naval blockade of Germany is an obvious, indeed inevitable tactic given Britain’s naval superiority.  (Update: This must be a response to the sinking of the super-dreadnought Audacious by a submerged mine a week ago, which the public hasn’t been told about yet).

The Mexican convention accepts Carranza’s resignation and elects Gen. Eulalio Gutiérrez president for a term of... 20 days, but Carranza says he never officially resigned, because his conditions (the retirement of Villa and Zapata as commanders) were not met.

The Turkish government has asked if it’s too late to apologize for starting a war with Russia and blowing all that shit up (some people in government are less intent on war than others, the others being primarily Young Turks).  Russia isn’t really saying, but the minimum conditions would be the removal of all German officers from the Turkish army and navy and the dismantling of two cruisers Germany transferred to Turkey.  The grand vizier has apologized for Turkey’s actions, while blaming the Russian navy for starting it.  I’m not sure what that means – Russian ships fired on the Turkish ships which came to bombard Odessa?

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Some random Englishwoman reports that since the start of the war Kaiser Wilhelm’s hair has turned white.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Pooh-Poohs Invasion Talk.”  Britain does, because what other country would “pooh pooh” something?

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Coercing young people

OK, clearly I’m not writing that long post about the decline of respect for the concept of free speech, but I do want to mention something Obama said at the UN in September: “Their [the Islamic State] propaganda has coerced young people to travel abroad to fight their wars, and turned students – young people full of potential – into suicide bombers.” And Obama wasn’t even talking about person-to-person propaganda in mosques, say, he was talking about the internet. Free speech, even hortative speech, is not “coercion.”

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Today -100: November 2, 1914: You should have seen the one that got away

Turkey invades Egypt.

The NYT ponders why Europeans are apprehensive about the use of dark-skinned troops in the Great War.  The problem, it thinks, may be that “the ‘savages’ show themselves practically equal to us in the very things for which we admire ourselves most”.

The Netherlands say that several hundred German troops – out of uniform – tried to cross the border.

Britain says that since Germany is holding French and Belgian civilians (males liable for military service in France and Belgium) as POWs, Britain will start doing the same to enemy nations’ reservists found on neutral ships.

A Dutch trawler catches a German u-boat in its fishing nets.

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Today -100: November 1, 1914: Of fancy prices, occupations, and the eight hour penalty

Theodore Roosevelt criticizes the anti-Catholic attacks on NY Gov. Martin Glynn, saying that Progressives treat everybody alike, whether they’re Catholics, Protestants, or Jews, just as long as they’re not black.  OK, he didn’t say the last bit, but c’mon.

The French and British armies are buying so many American horses, at “fancy prices,” that the US army is getting worried about running short for its own needs and thinking about banning further exports.

The US is not only not withdrawing from Vera Cruz, but is considering expanding its intervention in Mexico.  It’s currently moving army & navy officers to Vera Cruz and the border.  Meanwhile, Carranza says that he won’t do the things the US has demanded he not do as a condition of withdrawing from Vera Cruz, like not double-charging duties already collected by the Americans and not arresting customs officials who worked for the US, but that these are matters of Mexican sovereignty, not to be decided by ultimata from foreign nations – he doesn’t want to set a bad precedent for Mexican sovereignty.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Allies Giving One More Chance to Turkey to Keep Out of the War.”  They ask Turkey for an explanation of the bombardment of Sevastopol, which was evidently too subtle for them to understand.  Actually, there is speculation that the German officers running the Turkish military might have acted under orders from Germany rather than Turkey, and they’re giving Turkey a chance to back down (and fire all the Germans).  Turkey is being informed that it won’t just be fighting Russia, but France and Britain as well.

The LA Times prepares for Tuesday’s elections with its usual calm, measured, unbiased attitude.  Headlines today include “HOW GOVERNOR JOHNSON HAS SOAKED THE STATE.: Amazing Official Record of Extravagance and Boss Politics that Have Cost the People of California Millions of Dollars--Indictments that Have Stood the Test of Challenge--Not Mere Accusations, but Facts” and “Girls Oppose Vicious Law” (orange and lemon farmers send “girl” packers into the city to urge voters to reject what the LAT calls “the Socialist universal eight hour penalty”).  The Times also has an editorial against Prop. 3, the 8-hour day, and Prop. 45, the 6-day week: “It is a part of the punishment of a convict in a penitentiary that he cannot choose his own time for work or rest. ... It is designed to rank the working men and women of this State with thieves and assassins in that it prescribes the number of hours in which they will be permitted to work... It makes of them slaves and the slavery is not any the more tolerable because a law instead of a man is the master.”

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Today -100: October 31, 1914: I am going somewhere where I think I can get more votes

The new British First Sea Lord, replacing Prince Louis of Battenberg, is Adm. Jacky Fisher, who previously held the job before retiring at age 70.  Now 73, he has been in the Navy since he was 12, which means he actually served during the Crimean War, when it was all wooden sailing ships.

Woodrow Wilson has some advice for the voters of New York: “an American citizen should never vote as a sectarian but always as an American citizen.”  In other words, he’s criticizing the anti-Catholic campaign against Gov. Glynn waged by the secretive but well-funded Guardians of Liberty.  Some of the people endorsed by the Guardians have repudiated them, but not Whitman.  (Update: Do NYT reporters ever talk to each other? Another article this issue has Whitman doing just that, although very belatedly).

Suffragists hold a meeting at Carnegie Hall.  Gov. Glynn drops by but doesn’t make a speech: “I am going somewhere where I think I can get more votes.”  Which kind of makes their point.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Russia Welcomes Turkey As An Enemy.”  The whole of the Balkans is now in play.  Neither side has declared war yet, and the Turkish ambassador to Russia claims to believe that Turkish military actions in the Crimea must be some sort of mistake, perhaps naval commanders – which means Germans on secondment – acting on their own.

A German newspaper in German-occupied Russian Poland quotes a supposed proclamation from Kaiser Wilhelm who calls a “miracle” his “decision to wage war with Russia and restore to Poland her saints and annex her most cultured land to Germany,” which he’s doing because the Virgin Mary came to him in a dream.  I don’t know if this story is real: the only Google hits for it are 3 contemporaneous news stories.

Meanwhile, Russia is allowing Poles to form legions under Polish commanders.  “Proclamations have been posted in all Polish towns and villages exhorting the people to join the legions and expel the enemy.”  I’ll bet the Russians are very careful to specify that when they say “the enemy” they mean Germans, to avoid any wacky but understandable mix-ups.

Today’s dead prince rumor: Prince Heinrich of Reuß.  You’d think that would be easy to fact-check on Wikipedia, but turns out there were two German micro-principalities named Reuß, ruled by two branches of the same family who evidently both named every one of their boys Heinrich and probably some of the girls as well and there’s also some weird numbering system, so if this article is about the one I think it is, it’s Heinrich XXXIV, son of Heinrich XXVIII (!) and he wasn’t killed but lived until 1956.  And yes, this will all be on the quiz.

Belgium is fighting the Germans with water, flooding the Yser River valley.

Rumors say the Allies have retaken Lille.

Germany warns Britain that if it doesn’t release German civilians from internment, Germany will do the same to British civilians in Germany.

Germany denies yesterday’s rumor that it made peace offers through the German Social Democratic Party.

Halloween 1914 Story: Britain claims German spies have been disguising themselves as Boy Scouts and Scout Masters.

The Lusitania is late.

It was just delayed by bad weather.

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Today -100: October 30, 1914: Turkey has pronounced her own doom

Turkey starts war against Russia (without declaring war), attacking the Crimea and the Caucasus, making it the 10th combatant (if you don’t include Canada, South Africa, Togo and other colonies).  The London Times says: “By her foolish yielding to the instigations of Germany, Turkey has pronounced her own doom.”  Doom, I tell you!

Oh, let’s name the 10 warring countries, in case those of you playing the home game have forgotten any of them (Montenegro, you’ve forgotten Montenegro, admit you’ve totally forgotten Montenegro): Austria, Serbia, Germany, Russia, France, Montenegro, Belgium, Britain, Japan, Turkey.

Speaking of Canada, some Canadians along the border fear an invasion by Germans and Austrians living in the US.

Germany is said to be building new submarines four times as large as existing ones, able to remain at sea without resupply for 40 days.

The Comte de Chambrun, once the French military attaché in Washington but now an artillery officer, has had what he calls “the great pleasure” of having to bombard his own château, which the Germans are occupying.

A “League of Honour” is formed in Britain for educated girls to show lower-class ones how to be nice to soldiers – but not, um, too nice.

A politician asks Gen. Joffre what his plans are: “I’ll just keep nibbling at them for the time being.”

IWW activist Becky Edelstein is tried for making speeches against John D. Rockefeller.  She tells the jury that she has the right of free speech, and that whatever they do she will “come back here and harass John D. Rockefeller.”  She is acquitted.

Alice Paul, head of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, says no California woman should vote for a Democrat for any office because Wilson and congressional leaders haven’t supported the women’s suffrage amendment.

The Mexican convention continues. Zapata’s delegates have finally arrived.  They demand the break-up of the large landed estates.  “The convention for several minutes was in confusion.  The delegates reached for their revolvers, but finally yielded to the becalming speeches of their colleagues.”

Prince Louis of Battenberg resigns as First Sea Lord, in response to a xenophobic press campaign against him (he was born in Austria and raised abroad in Germany and Italy, but has served in the British Navy for 45 years, since he was 14).  The Battenbergs will change their name to Mountbatten later in the war in an attempt to avoid more of this sort of thing.

Woodrow Wilson asks his attorney general if he has the power to close the mines in Colorado (the White House will deny this story). Gov. Ammons says it’s perfectly safe to withdraw the federal troops, as the state national guard (now even more heavily infiltrated by mine-company guards) is perfectly capable of keeping order.

US business is booming because of the literal booming in Europe.  Belligerent nations have placed orders for 2.2 million pairs of shoes in New England.  The hob-nailed boots the French army wants have to be made by hand.  Also tinned meat, lots of tinned meat.  And 20,000 horses.

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Today -100: October 29, 1914: All enthusiasm is dead

Gavril Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, is sentenced to 20 years (lenient because of his age, which is also 20 years), while 4 of his convicted co-conspirators are sentenced to death, 1 to life, and the rest for terms ranging from 3 years to 20 years.  Several were acquitted. 

Wilson issues the annual presidential Thanksgiving proclamation, which mostly talks about the European war (one could be excused for thinking the proclamation is aimed more at next week’s election than Thanksgiving).  “It has been vouchsafed to us to remain at peace, with honor,” he says.  “Our crops will feed all those who need food; the self possession of our people amidst the serious anxieties and difficulties and the steadiness and resourcefulness of our businessmen will serve other Nations as well as our own.”  So... we’re giving thanks for the war because it’s good for business?

Kodak says it has developed a color film process easy enough for ordinary photographers to use.  But the photos can’t be printed, they can only be seen as transparencies.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Germany is explaining (in placards in Belgium) its recent retreat: Paris has cholera, so it’s just healthier for German troops to winter in Germany instead of capturing Paris.  Totally believable.

The NYT continues to reprint reports from the eminently unbiased London Standard: “An evil spirit seems to have rendered the Austrian Army impotent from the very commencement of hostilities.”  It says that the wounded are so many that every hospital, barracks and school in Vienna have been converted into wards, as well as many theaters, museums and offices.  “Convalescent soldiers wander like vagabonds through the streets, clothed in uniforms and still bandaged, begging alms.”  The public are indifferent: “All enthusiasm is dead.”

Le Petit Parisien interviews a 12-year-old soldier.

Woodrow Wilson meets Mother Jones, who asks him not to keep the federal troops in Colorado, and says if the mineowners continue to reject Wilson’s proposed settlement he should just close the mines.

Belgian troops are finally winning against Germany.  OK, it’s in a battle between the Belgian Congo and German Tanganyika, but it still counts, sort of.

Prince Maurice of Battenberg, a grandson of Queen Victoria and the brother of Queen Victoria of Spain, is killed in action in France, at 23.  Er, fighting on the British side, despite the German-sounding title.

When Greece saw Italy invading and occupying Albania’s capital, it looked like such fun that it has invaded southern Albania.  Like Italy, Greece claims not to be acquiring territory but acting purely out of humanitarian motives.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Bomb Angers the Swiss.”

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Today -100: October 28, 1914: Please advise your government and my family that I died a traitor

Portugal has not entered the European war, although it frequently threatens to do so, but Germany goes ahead and invades its colony Angola anyway.  Probably preemptively, since the British navy is currently sailing Portuguese troops out to reinforce Angola and Moçambique.

NY Gov. Martin Glynn suspends the warden of Sing Sing, Thomas McCormick, for showing favoritism to prisoner David Sullivan, who was president of the Union Bank of Brooklyn until he wiped it out.  The warden made Sullivan his chauffeur, which gave Sullivan the opportunity to meet with his secretary and conduct business in Yonkers.  McCormick explained that he chose Sullivan, rather than any of the qualified chauffeurs who graced Sing Sing’s cells, because “he had the appearance of a gentleman”.  McCormick claims he bought the car with his own funds, expecting to be reimbursed by the state later, but the money actually came from Sullivan.  (I wonder what happens to the car now that McCormick has been suspended, shortly to be fired.)

Italy says it is occupying Avlona, the capital of Albania, but only for sanitary reasons.  Given the civil war or disorder or whatever you want to call the current situation in Albania, it’s getting a little stinky.

Pancho Villa has supposedly thwarted a plot to assassinate him, paid for by Gen. Pablo Gonzales, a supporter of Carranza.  The would-be assassin confessed, in front of a US consular agent: “Mr. Consul, please advise your government and my family that I died a traitor.”  Villa has him executed.

Russia and France are both considering giving soldiers steel breastplates, which they ultimately won’t do, because it’s a stupid idea.

No sooner has one rebellion ended in South Africa then another begins, led by Generals Christiaan De Wet and Christiaan Frederick Beyers.  The latter resigned as commandant-general of the South African army when war was declared on Germany.

Carranza submits his resignation – conditional on Villa and Zapata leaving public life altogether.

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Today -100: October 27, 1914: The woman’s movement and war cannot flourish together

Prinzip and the other 23 alleged conspirators are convicted of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  The verdict was read over the sound of Serbian artillery.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Kaiser All Intent on War.”  What was your first clue?

Headline of the Day -100:  “Germans Suffocated in Great Forest Fire.”  Set by Russian troops, in Poland near the Vistula.

South African forces defeat Salmon Maritz’s rebellion.  Maritz is wounded and flees into German Southwest Africa.  He will return to South Africa in 1923, receiving no punishment (the sentences of his men who were captured will be commuted after just two years).  He will go on to form a small anti-Semitic fascist organization in the 1930s.  As one does.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Sends Kaiser Pictures of His Looted Chateau.” The French chateau of Jefferson Davis Cohn, publisher and horse-breeder, was commandeered by German troops during the Battle of the Marne.  Cohn is outraged that it was looted and vandalized, his tapestries and horses stolen, and the wine cellar drunk up.  He has sent photos of the damage to the kaiser, with whom, he says, he has drunk beer and whose sister he once hosted at this very chateau.

In other expatriate-owned-castles-in-France news, Gen. von Bülow is threatening to burn down a castle near Rheims owned by Prince Albert of Monaco unless he pays a fine which was imposed on a nearby village for what Albert calls “some insignificant mischief,” whatever that means. (Update: a later story says they are accused of scattering glass on the road.  The prince says he’s willing to pay... after the end of the war, if his château is intact.)

Headline of the Day -100:  “COURT SITS IN OVERALLS.”  The Mississippi Supreme Court.  Also cotton shirts.  In honor of Cotton Day, which supports the “wear cotton clothes” movement.

The Association of American Women of German Descent holds its first meeting at the Hotel Astor.  The speakers (the 3 official speakers quoted are all male) deplore the American press’s bias against Germany.  A Mrs Gerard Bancker of the Federation of Women’s Clubs interjects that American women should be neutral, just like the president asked, and anyway Germans are cutting the hands off Belgian children, her sister saw it.  She is hissed down.  The poet Hanns Heinz Ewers attributes American hostility to Germany to a misunderstanding of the term “pan-Germanism,” which he helpfully explains before reciting his poem “Tremble, Ye Britons.”  Ewers will be interned from 1918 to 1921. I had no idea the US interned Germans so long after the end of the war.

Another British suffragist arrives in New York. Christabel Pankhurst’s old colleague Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence will also speak at Carnegie Hall.  Her view of the war is quite different from Christabel’s: “The whole woman’s movement must be turned to the destruction of this monster, war. ... The woman’s movement and war cannot flourish together.”

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Today -100: October 26, 1914: Of delegates, doctrines, and man-killing devices

The 1916 Republican Convention will have many fewer delegates from the South, where the R’s don’t have any voters anyway.

There has been some silly discussion in the NYT lately over whether Germany has acknowledged the Monroe Doctrine or, on the contrary, might try to annex South America if it wins the European war.  Not helpful: Ambassador to the US and Mexico Count von Bernstorff says that Canada’s participation in the war exempts it from the Monroe Doctrine and therefore it would be perfectly proper for Germany to invade it.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Edison Won’t Invent Man-Killing Devices.”  Well, not on purpose anyway.

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Today -100: October 25, 1914: Of too much man-governed countries

Congress adjourns, Southern congresscritters temporarily giving up on their filibusters over cotton.  Hoke Smith of Georgia has been particularly anxious to secure higher prices, having made a campaign promise that cotton would sell at 12¢ a pound; cotton farmers have been sending him bales of cotton and billing him at that price.

British Secretary of War Lord Kitchener asks the public to refrain from buying drinks for members of the military.

Columbia undergrads are suddenly interested in European history, for some reason.

Women may not yet have the vote in New York, but they can and are running as candidates for the 1915 constitutional convention.

Former impeached NY Gov. William Sulzer’s American Party, which is basically just him, has a rather simple, not to say simplistic platform: 1) Beat the bosses. 2) Stop the stealing.  3) Get the grafters.  Etc.  He is also running as the candidate of the Prohibition Party, whose candidate for lieutenant governor is Charles Welch, the grape juice king.

In South Africa, rebel leader Lt. Col. Salomon Maritz offers to surrender if his followers are pardoned and the German soldiers with him are allowed to return to South-West Africa.  South Africa ignores him.

Christabel Pankhurst gives a speech at Carnegie Hall.  She contorts herself to present her support of the war as analogous to the now suspended militant suffrage movement, or as an extension of it: “Now, I am a militant. That is not to say that I prefer war to peace; but it is to say that when people want to govern me by physical force and not by the moral force of justice, then I am prepared to defy their physical force to the very death.”  (Or give orders from Paris, as the case may be.)  “I maintain that we are fighting for democratic government. We are fighting for the right of the different peoples of the world to govern themselves. And I maintain that the victory of the Allies will, as a matter of fact, be a victory for the German people themselves.”  And I’m sure they’ll be properly grateful.

“When the women of the world are enfranchised, then indeed we may hope to see the reign of universal peace.”  An odd claim from a woman making a pro-war speech.

She genders the war (which is hardly unique to her), calling Belgium “the suffragette country” for its resistance to the mighty German Empire, which she portrays as “a male nation, a country in which the counsels of women emphatically do not prevail,” and if it succeeds, “then you will have the peace-loving nations always on the defensive, always compelled to be arming and preparing to meet the armed aggression of that too much man-governed country in which women are not free.”

My favorite line, about Germany’s claim to need more land: “We cannot be bullied by birth-rates.”

People in America, she says, have asked her why Britain was so unprepared for war.  “Some of us think that the British Government would have been better employed in preparing to defend the country against the German enemy than in fighting so hard against the Suffragettes. If, instead of searching our Suffragette literature for alleged illegalities, the British Government had been reading more carefully the enlightening works of General von Bernhardi; if, instead of watching the offices of the W.S.P.U., they had paid more attention to spies and to the fortresses disguised as factories which Germany was erecting in our midst”.

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Today -100: October 24, 1914: Yet you’re still alive

Headline of the Day -100:  “GERMAN WOMEN SPIES MEET DEATH BRAVELY; Allies Shoot Many Suspects Whose Accent Betrays Their Teutonic Origin.”  Which doesn’t really sound like they’re shooting actual spies.  “So many spies have been caught in France recently that the possession of papers apparently in good order avails a man or woman nothing once an accusation has been made or suspicion aroused.  It is asserted that no German tongue can ever pronounce certain French words without betraying itself.”  Um, right.

There are demands in India that the British do more to protect Indian shipping from German attacks.  The Times of India calls for convoys and “alludes to the possible effect on the crude native mind of the [cruiser] Emden’s successes, which will seem to their humble intelligences an indication of German success in the naval war.”

Carranza says he’s willing to resign as chief executive, provided Pancho Villa doesn’t come to power - or get any of the credit for Carranza leaving.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Kaiser Wilhelm supposedly rebukes one of his generals, who retreated from the Marne, for not going down fighting: “You fell back, and yet you’re still alive.”

Haiti now has two people claiming to be president, Orestes Zamor and Davilmar Théodore.  Which are both fantastic names.

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